Psalms of the Sisters · 19 of 20

Commentator’s Envoi

The Psalms of them who through the Gospel’s grace

Became the true-born children and the heirs,

Mouth-born, of Him who is the Master Blest,

King o’ the Norm, creations of the Norm,

Excelling in all virtue, Arahants,

Who wrought all that ’twas possible to do–

These Psalms, their utterances when AÑÑĀ

They did proclaim, or whensoe’er it was,

Beginning with Brother SUBHŪTI’S verse,

With Sisters Psalms, headed by ‘STURDYKIN’–

All these the Leaders of the Order took,

And in one ordered serial compiled,

The THERAGĀTHĀ-THERĪGĀTHĀ named.

To elucidate the import of that work

Three Older Commentaries are extant. 453

Thereto this exegesis I have tried

T’ indite, the which, in that where’er ’twas fit,

I strove to set the highest meaning forth,

I named the Paramattha-Dīpanī;

The whole whereof, now finished to the end,

By orderly decision is arranged,

For recitation from the sacred text,

In chapters of the number ninety-two.

Thus by the efficacy of such good

As has accrued to me, by me applied,

Have I made bright the glory of the word,

The system, of the Sovran of the world;

That, by their pure attainment in all truth

And virtue, mortals all may come to taste

The essence of emancipation won.

Long may the Very Buddha’s Word and Law

Abide, and ever may it be revered

By every creature that hath life and breath!

And may the weather-god in season due

Send rain on earth, and may the powers that be

Govern the world as lovers of the Norm!

Thus endeth the Commentary on the Therigāthā, by the Teacher, Brother Dhammapāla, residing at the Padara-Tittha-Vihāra.

410 See Ps. lxi., n.

411 The two Kings and their capitals are all names unknown in Indian records. Vāraṇavatī=having elephants, or ramparts. Koñca = heron.

412 Cf. Ps xli. In the Commentary, p. 273, read, for patikulamanasikāraŋ, paṭikkūla°.

413 Sāsanakārā=, according to the Commentary, Ariyans–i.e., Arahants, including the Buddhas. Just below, sāsana is rendered by ‘system.’ Sumedhā=very wise.

414 See note, verse 436.

415 In Pali ‘no eternal rebirth.’

416 Rebirth in ‘hell,’ as animal, as ‘ghost,’ as demon, are the four (‘purgatorial lives,’ vinipāta, in 452); as human or as god. the two.

417 The Ten Powers peculiar to a Tathāgata are: (1) He knows thoroughly right and wrong occasions; (2) he knows thoroughly the effect of all karma-series; (3) the methods for accomplishing anything; (4) the elements (data) of the world; (5) the various tendencies, inclinations, of beings; (6) the capacities of beings; (7) the nature and procedure of all contemplative disciplines; (8) former lives; (9) he has the ‘celestial vision’; (10) he has realized the intellectual emancipation of the Arahant (A., v. 33 ſſ.).

418 Kāyakalinā asārena. The rendering of the former obscure term is, perhaps, a trifle forced, but was chosen from the use of kali in Jātaka, v. 134 (=khela, spittle, froth), because of the juxtaposition of asāra=pithless, without essence (cf. Saŋy. Nik., iii. 140), in preference to the more usual association of kali with gambling. See ver. 501.

419 Vāreyyam. So above, lit., ‘Let there be choosing for thee, child,’ the term for marriage in high life, whether or no the woman had any voice in the matter.

420 Lit., ‘What is it like?’

421 Apetaviññāṇo.

422 Yoniso aruciŋ. Cf. Pss. xxx., xxxviii., lvii.

423 Cf. Samyutta Nikāya, iii. 149: ‘Eternal, brethren, is the wandering (saŋsāro)–nor is the beginning thereof revealed–of them, who, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, run to and fro, and wander (among rebirths). . . .’ So op. cit., v. 431: ‘It is because we had not grasped the Four Truths, brethren, that we have run and wandered up and down so long, both I and you.’

424 ‘In the Nirayas.’ See p. 162, n. 1.

425 The Commentary holds she went on to the other ‘signs’–Ill, or Sorrow, and Soullessness.

426 A mythical ancestor of Sumedhā’s and the Buddha’s people, the Sākiyas. Mentioned in Ang. Nik., ii. 7; Jātaka, ii. 310, iii. 454 ſſ.; Dīpavansa, iii. 5; Mahāvansa, 8, 231; Milindapañha, 115, 291, etc.

427 These similes are all quoted from Majjhima Nikāya, i. 130, 364 ſſ. Cf. Saŋy. Nik., i. 128; Ang. Nik., iii. 97. See below.

428 The text in these four lines gives merely the metaphor As this would call up no associated similes in us, I expand the terms after the similes in Majjhima Nikāya, 54th Sutta, whence they are borrowed.

429 A simile frequent in the Nikāyas. Presumably muslin turbans, let alone oily hair-dressing, often caused such mishaps. Cf. Saŋy. Nik., i. 108, v. 440; Any. Nik., ii. 93, etc.

430 These and the following verses are apparently allusions to the first Vagga of the Anamatagga Saŋyutta (‘World-without-end’ Collocation) in the Saŋyutta Nikāya, vol. ii., 178 ſſ. The only feature lacking there is the perennial blood-flow–a point not without interest in the history of the Pali Canon. The bone-cairn gāthā in the Vagga is quoted by the Commentator, and runs thus:

‘But one man’s bones who has one æon lived

Might form a cairn–so said the Mighty Seer–

High as Vipulla, higher than the Peak

Of Vultures, mountain-burg of Magadha’– i.e., the ancient hill fortress of the Magadhese before they built their capital Rājagaha in the plain. No more ancient remains than these in India have yet been identified (Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, 37).

The repetition in verses 496, 497 is curious in a work where redundancy is so severely repressed. Either it goes to strengthen the symptoms that the last two Psalms are by a different and later hand, or else two versions have here been incorporated. In 496 Sumedhā first speaks to all her three chief hearers: ‘Call ye to mind’ (saratha); the following admonitions are to the Prince only: ‘bear in mind’ and ‘remember’ (sarāhi, sara).

431 In the Vagga just alluded to, the earth itself, and not India (Jambudīpa), is the insufficient source. The ‘squares of straw’ is from the same Vagga.

432 This simile is from Majjhima Nik., iii. 169, and Saŋyutta Nik., v. 455. The ‘body-parable’ is from the latter work (iii. 140). The body (rūpa) is as empty of essence (soul) as the clot of foam drifting down the Ganges.

433 The danger from crocodiles is, in two of the Nikāyas, used metaphorically for gluttony, one of the four perils of ‘those who go down to the water’; it is in the Canon applied only to a Bhikkhu’s temptations (Majjh. Nik., i. 460; Ang. Nik., ii. 124).

434 Nectar=amataŋ, rendered elsewhere in this work by ‘ambrosia,’ its etymological equivalent. Usually considered one of the many terms for Nibbana, it is here by the commentarial tradition associated with the Dhamma–‘the Amata of the Norm brought to us by the Very Buddha in his great compassion.’

435 Lit., ‘Are bitterer by the fivefold-bitter,’ explained by the Commentary as ‘by the following after of the yet sharper Ill’ (dukkhaŋ). Fivefold, referring to the five senses.

436 Kuthitā may be from one of three roots: kuth, smell; kuth, distressed; kvath, cook (cf. Müller, Pali Grammar, 41). The first, chosen by Dr. Neumann, seems forced here. The last accords best with the other three metaphors of heating process.

437 Lit., ‘The unhostile being’ (locative absolute). The Pali has no metaphor of place whatever.

438 Mokkhamhi vijjamāne, lit., exists. Mokkho, probably substituted metri causa for vimutti, is a relatively late term.

439 These two terms are, in the text, the same as the corresponding pair in the preceding line.

440 In Majjhima Nik., i. 365, where the torch is said to be borne against the wind, not held too long.

441 A simile from Saŋyutta Nik., ii. 226,–iv. 158; Jātaka, v. 389; vi. 416, 432, 437.

442 The dog, according to the Commentary, being unable to get away from them, is killed, and presumably eaten. There is no suggestion to the effect that it was acting as watch-dog, and that the pariahs were thieves, beyond stealing the dog. ‘Will they do’=kāhinti; Commentary= karissanti. Pischel pronounced the other reading khāhinti as ‘no doubt correct,’ because of a passage in Hemacandra’s Prakrit Grammar. But Dhammapāla, nearer to the age of the Therigāthā Pali by at least 500 years, seems to me to have the stronger claim, let alone plausibility.

443 She now, says the Commentary, turns to show forth the excellence of Nibbana.

444 Asambādhaŋ. The Commentary takes this figuratively: ‘from the absence of the crowd of corruptions’ (or torments, kilesā.). In view of the cardinal importance in the Vinaya of cultivating solitude (cf. Dhammadinnā in Ps. xii.), because, too, of its being the path of the minority, and because of the Suttanta phrase calling the lay life sambādha, and the religious life abbhokāsa, free as air, I incline to take it literally.

445 [No footnote matches this number in the original text.]

446 This narrative repeated in from the Apadāna.

447 The two friends are said to have been Khemā (Ps. lii.) and Dhanañjānī, a brahminee convert (Saŋ. Nik., i. 160).

448 For these, see Buddhist Suttas (S.B.E., xi.), pp. 251 ſſ.

449 Khanti. See Dīgha Nik. ii. 49.

450 Another reading is, ‘Thus telling.’

451 Lit., ‘Who has immeasurable wisdom.’

452 This line expands the Pali word virajjati, according to the commentary, which supplements ‘purified’ by ‘set free.’ On the metre of the whole Psalm, see Introduction.

453 On these, see my Buddhist Psychology, xx.-xxii.