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240-437: [REDACTED] Religion portal Śūnyatā ( / ʃ uː n j ə ˈ t ɑː / shoon-yə- TAH ; Sanskrit : शून्यता ; Pali : suññatā ), translated most often as " emptiness ", " vacuity ", and sometimes "voidness", or "nothingness" is an Indian philosophical concept. In Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and other Indian philosophical traditions , the concept has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It

480-553: A seer called Majjhantika (following the prediction earlier) and five hundred of his followers, who converted to Buddhism. Some sources add that Ānanda passed the Buddha's message on to him. When Ānanda was crossing the river, he was followed by King Ajātasattu (Sanskrit: Ajātaśatrū ), who wanted to witness his death and was interested in his remains as relics. Ānanda had once promised Ajāsattu that he would let him know when he would die, and accordingly, Ānanda had informed him. On

720-403: A sense of urgency (Pali: saṃvega ), deeply moved by the events and their bearing: "Terrible was the quaking, men's hair stood on end, / When the all-accomplished Buddha passed away." Shortly after the council, Ānanda brought the message with regard to the Buddha's directive to Channa personally. Channa was humbled and changed his ways, attained enlightenment, and the penalty was withdrawn by

960-496: A stūpa in Ānanda's honor during celebrations and observance days . On a similar note, in 5th–6th-century China and 10th-century Japan, Buddhist texts were composed recommending women to uphold the semi-monastic eight precepts in honor and gratitude of Ānanda. In Japan, this was done through the format of a penance ritual called keka ( Chinese : 悔過 ). By the 13th century, in Japan a cult-like interest for Ānanda had developed in

1200-488: A Buddha in the future. He would accomplish this slower than the present Buddha, Gotama Buddha , had accomplished this, because Ānanda aspired to becoming a Buddha by applying "great learning". Because of this long trajectory and great efforts, however, his enlightenment would be extraordinary and with great splendor. Ānanda is depicted as an eloquent speaker, who often taught about the self and about meditation. There are numerous Buddhist texts attributed to Ānanda, including

1440-399: A black magic spell to enchant him. This succeeded, and Ānanda was lured into her house, but came to his senses and called upon the help of the Buddha. The Buddha then taught Prakṛti to reflect on the repulsive qualities of the human body, and eventually Prakṛti was ordained as a bhikkhunī , giving up her attachment for Ānanda. In an East Asian version of the story in the Śūraṃgamasūtra ,

1680-530: A certain Daśabāla Kāśyapa. According to the Pāli tradition, Ānanda's first teachers were Belaṭṭhasīsa and Puṇṇa Mantānīputta . It was Puṇṇa's teaching that led Ānanda to attain the stage of sotāpanna (Sanskrit: śrotāpanna ), an attainment preceding that of enlightenment. Ānanda later expressed his debt to Puṇṇa. Another important figure in the life of Ānanda was Sāriputta (Sanskrit: Śāriputra ), one of

1920-415: A crucial role in this council, and texts claim he remembered 84,000 teaching topics, among which 82,000 taught by the Buddha and another 2,000 taught by disciples. Many early Buddhist discourses started with the words " Thus have I heard " (Pali: Evaṃ me sutaṃ , Sanskrit: Evaṃ mayā śrutam ), which according to most Buddhist traditions, were Ānanda's words, indicating that he, as the person reporting

2160-643: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Ananda Scholars are skeptical about the historicity of many events in Ānanda's life, especially the First Council, and consensus about this has yet to be established. A traditional account can be drawn from early texts, commentaries , and post-canonical chronicles . Ānanda had an important role in establishing

2400-409: A disturbance they notice it and allow it to drop away; this leads to deeper states of calmness. Emptiness is also seen as a way to look at sense-experience that does not identify with the "I-making" and "my-making" process of the mind. As a form of meditation, this is developed by perceiving the six sense-spheres and their objects as empty of any self, this leads to a formless jhana of nothingness and

2640-536: A drunk and wild elephant released in the Buddha's presence. Ānanda stepped in front of the Buddha to protect him. When the Buddha told him to move, he refused, although normally he always obeyed the Buddha. Through a supernatural accomplishment (Pali: iddhi ; [ṛiddhi] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |likn= ( help ) ) the Buddha then moved Ānanda aside and subdued the elephant, by touching it and speaking to it with loving-kindness . Ānanda often acted as an intermediary and secretary, passing on messages from

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2880-429: A fellow monk Udāyī (Sanskrit: Udāyin ) ridiculed Ānanda. However, the Buddha reprimanded Udāyī in response, saying that Ānanda would certainly be enlightened in this life. The Pāli Mahā-parinibbāna Sutta related the last year-long trip the Buddha took with Ānanda from Rājagaha (Sanskrit: Rājagṛha ) to the small town of Kusinārā (Sanskrit: Kuśinagara ) before the Buddha died there. Before reaching Kusinārā,

3120-462: A final chance to allay any doubts. When no-one responded, Ānanda expressed joy that all of the Buddha's disciples present had attained a level beyond doubts about the Buddha's teaching. However, the Buddha pointed out that Ānanda spoke out of faith and not out of meditative insight —a final reproach. The Buddha added that, of all the five hundred monks that are surrounding him now, even the "latest" or "most backward" (Pali: pacchimaka ) had attained

3360-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had

3600-484: A gradual step-by-step mental cultivation process, they both stress the importance of the impermanence of mental states and the absence of a self. In the Kāmabhu Sutta S IV.293, it is explained that a bhikkhu can experience a trancelike contemplation in which perception and feeling cease. When he emerges from this state, he recounts three types of "contact" ( phasso ): The meaning of emptiness as contemplated here

3840-591: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to

4080-658: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit

4320-399: A mental state, in the early canons, means a mode of perception in which one neither adds anything to nor takes anything away from what is present, noting simply, "There is this." This mode is achieved through a process of intense concentration, coupled with the insight that notes more and more subtle levels of the presence and absence of disturbance (see MN 121). Emptiness as a meditative state

4560-416: A monk or his accomplishments as an attendant, and person memorizing the discourses. From a literary and didactic point of view, Ānanda often functioned as a kind of foil in the texts, being an unenlightened disciple attending to an enlightened Buddha. Because the run-of the-mill person could identify with Ānanda, the Buddha could through Ānanda convey his teachings to the mass easily. Ānanda's character

4800-475: A much higher frequency than the corresponding noun suññatā" and emphasizes seeing phenomena as 'being empty' instead of an abstract idea of "emptiness." One example of this usage is in the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta ( SN 22:95), which states that on close inspection, each of the five aggregates are seen as being void ( rittaka ), hollow ( tucchaka ), coreless ( asāraka ). In the text a series of contemplations

5040-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This

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5280-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be

5520-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given

5760-578: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and

6000-504: A refuge instead. Furthermore, the saṅgha did not have the Buddha as a master anymore, but they would honor those monks who were virtuous and trustworthy. Besides these suttas , a section of the Theragāthā is attributed to Ānanda. Even in the texts attributed to the Buddha himself, Ānanda is sometimes depicted giving a name to a particular text, or suggesting a simile to the Buddha to use in his teachings. In East Asian Buddhism, Ānanda

6240-538: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond

6480-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from

6720-704: A state of equanimity. Mathew Kosuta sees the Abhidhamma teachings of the modern Thai teacher Ajaan Sujin Boriharnwanaket as being very similar to the Mahayana emptiness view. There are two main sources of Indian Buddhist discussions of emptiness: the Mahayana sutra literature , which is traditionally believed to be the word of the Buddha in Mahayana Buddhism, and the shastra literature, which

6960-596: A teacher with a "closed fist" would. He also impressed upon Ānanda that he did not think the saṅgha should be reliant too much on a leader, not even himself. He then continued with the well-known statement to take his teaching as a refuge, and oneself as a refuge, without relying on any other refuge, also after he would be gone. Bareau argued that this is one of the most ancient parts of the text, found in slight variation in five early textual traditions: "Moreover, this very beautiful episode, touching with nobility and psychological verisimilitude with regard to both Ānanda and

7200-401: A total of 25 years, a duty which entailed much work. His relationship with the Buddha is depicted as warm and trusting: when the Buddha grew ill, Ānanda had a sympathetic illness; when the Buddha grew older, Ānanda kept taking care of him with devotion. Ānanda sometimes literally risked his life for his teacher. At one time, the rebellious monk Devadatta tried to kill the Buddha by having

7440-540: Is dharma -śūnyatā , the emptiness of phenomena. Theravāda Buddhists generally take the view that emptiness is merely the not-self nature of the five aggregates . Emptiness is an important door to liberation in the Theravāda tradition just as it is in Mahayana, according to Insight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal . The classic Theravāda text known as the Patisambhidamagga (c. 3rd century BCE) describes

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7680-443: Is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them. This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and

7920-516: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand

8160-533: Is also an important element of the Buddha-nature literature, which played a formative role in the evolution of subsequent Mahāyāna doctrine and practice. The Pāli Canon uses the term śūnyatā ("emptiness") in three ways: "(1) as a meditative dwelling, (2) as an attribute of objects, and (3) as a type of awareness-release." According to Bhikkhu Analayo , in the Pāli Canon "the adjective suñña occurs with

8400-400: Is also found in other uses of the term māyā , such as the following: "Monks, sensual pleasures are impermanent, hollow, false, deceptive; they are illusory ( māyākatame ), the prattle of fools." The Suñña Sutta , part of the Pāli Canon , relates that the monk Ānanda , Buddha's attendant asked, It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that

8640-485: Is considered one of the ten principal disciples . In many Indian Sanskrit and East Asian texts, Ānanda is considered the second patriarch of the lineage which transmitted the teaching of the Buddha, with Mahākassapa being the first and Majjhantika or Saṇavāsī being the third. There is an account dating back from the Sarvāstivāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda textual traditions which states that before Mahākassapa died, he bestowed

8880-457: Is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. In Theravāda Buddhism , Pali : suññatā often refers to the non-self (Pāli: anattā , Sanskrit: anātman ) nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres . Pali : Suññatā is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience . In Mahāyāna Buddhism , śūnyatā refers to

9120-500: Is explained at M I.297 and S IV.296-97 as the "emancipation of the mind by emptiness" ( suññatā cetovimutti ) being consequent upon the realization that "this world is empty of self or anything pertaining to self" ( suññam ida ṃ attena vā attaniyena vā ). The term "emptiness" ( suññatā ) is also used in two suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya , in the context of a progression of mental states. The texts refer to each state's emptiness of

9360-691: Is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form. In the Prajñāpāramitā sutras the knowledge of emptiness, i.e. prajñāpāramitā is said to be the fundamental virtue of the bodhisattva, who is said to stand on emptiness by not standing (-stha) on any other dharma (phenomena). Bodhisattvas who practice this perfection of wisdom are said to have several qualities such as the "not taking up" ( aparigṛhīta ) and non-apprehension ( anupalabdhi ) of anything, non-attainment ( aprapti ), not-settling down ( anabhinivesa ) and not relying on any signs ( nimitta, mental impressions). Bodhisattvas are also said to be free of fear in

9600-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to

9840-527: Is given for each aggregate: form is like "a lump of foam" ( pheṇapiṇḍa ); sensation like "a water bubble" ( bubbuḷa ); perception like "a mirage" ( marici ); formations like "a plantain tree" ( kadalik-khandha ); and cognition like "a magical illusion" ( māyā ). According to Shi Huifeng, the terms "void" ( rittaka ), "hollow" ( tucchaka ), and "coreless" ( asāraka ) are also used in the early texts to refer to words and things which are deceptive, false, vain, and worthless. This sense of worthlessness and vacuousness

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10080-667: Is historically certain, Cousins thought it likely at least one of the leading figures on the Second Council was a pupil of Ānanda, as nearly all the textual traditions mention a connection with Ānanda. Ajāsattu is said to have built a stūpa on top of the Ānanda's relics, at the river Rohīni, or according to some sources, the Ganges; the Licchavis had also built a stūpa at their side of the river. The Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang (602–64 CE) later visited stūpas on both sides of

10320-469: Is impaired ..." This prompted Ānanda to attain final Nirvana. He passed on the "custody of the [Buddha's] doctrine" to his pupil Sāṇavāsī and left for the river Ganges. However, according to Pāli sources, when Ānanda was about to die, he decided to spend his final moments in Vesālī instead, and traveled to the river Rohīni . The Mūlasarvāstivāda version expands and says that before reaching the river, he met with

10560-403: Is kindly, unselfish, popular, and thoughtful toward others. In the texts he is depicted as compassionate in his relations with lay people, a compassion he learnt from the Buddha. The Buddha relays that both monastics and lay people were pleased to see Ānanda, and were pleased to hear him recite and teach the Buddha's teaching. Moreover, Ānanda was known for his organizational skills, assisting

10800-424: Is not one of essences, but merely descriptive characteristics and hence is not the subject of Madhyamaka critique developed by Nagarjuna (see below). In Theravāda, emptiness as an approach to meditation is also seen as a state in which one is "empty of disturbance." This form of meditation is one in which meditators become concentrated and focus on the absence or presence of disturbances in their minds; if they find

11040-452: Is not preceded by any account of Ānanda learning Abhidhamma. According to some later Mahāyāna accounts, Ānanda also assisted in reciting Mahāyāna texts, held in a different place in Rājagaha, but in the same time period. The Pāli commentaries state that after the council, when the tasks for recitation and memorizing the texts were divided, Ānanda and his pupils were given the task to remember

11280-532: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in

11520-605: Is related to the concept of anatta in early Buddhism . Over time, many different philosophical schools or tenet-systems (Sanskrit: siddhānta ) have developed within Buddhism in an effort to explain the exact philosophical meaning of emptiness. After the Buddha, emptiness was further developed by the Abhidharma schools, Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamaka school, an early Mahāyāna school. Emptiness ("positively" interpreted)

11760-466: Is said to be empty and like a dream or magical illusion. In a famous passage, the Heart sutra , a later but influential Prajñāpāramitā text, directly states that the five skandhas (along with the five senses, the mind, and the four noble truths) are said to be "empty" ( sunya ): Form is emptiness, emptiness is form Emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness Whatever

12000-479: Is said to be reached when "not attending to any themes, he [the bhikkhu] enters & remains in internal emptiness" (MN 122). This meditative dwelling is developed through the "four formless states" of meditation or Arūpajhānas and then through "themeless concentration of awareness." The Cūlasuññata-sutta (MN III 104) and the Mahāsuññata-sutta (MN III 109) outline how a monk can "dwell in emptiness" through

12240-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,

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12480-589: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of

12720-477: Is usually not depicted in this manner, and the motif of transmission of the Dhamma through a list of patriarchs is not found in Pāli sources. Because Ānanda was instrumental in founding the bhikkhunī community, he has been honored by bhikkhunīs for this throughout Buddhist history. The earliest traces of this can be found in the writings of Faxian and Xuan Zang, who reported that bhikkhunīs made offerings to

12960-540: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside

13200-805: The Atthakanāgara Sutta , about meditation methods to attain Nirvana; a version of the Bhaddekaratta Sutta (Sanskrit: Bhadrakārātrī , pinyin : shanye ), about living in the present moment; the Sekha Sutta , about the higher training of a disciple of the Buddha; the Subha Suttanta , about the practices the Buddha inspired others to follow. In the Gopaka-Mogallānasutta , a conversation took place between Ānanda,

13440-580: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created

13680-478: The Dīgha Nikāya . During the same council, Ānanda was charged for an offense by members of the saṅgha for having enabled women to join the monastic order. Besides this, he was charged for having forgotten to request the Buddha to specify which offenses of monastic discipline could be disregarded; for having stepped on the Buddha's robe; for having allowed women to honor the Buddha's body after his death, which

13920-675: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c.  350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c.  late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in

14160-734: The Pali Canon . In his analysis of the Mulamadhyamikakarika , Kalupahana sees Nagarjuna's argument as rooted in the Kaccānagotta Sutta (which Nagarjuna cites by name). Kalupahana states that Nagarjuna's major goal was to discredit heterodox views of Svabhava (own-nature) held by the Sarvastivadins and establish the non-substantiality of all dharmas. According to Peter Harvey, the Theravāda view of dhammas and sabhava

14400-753: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became

14640-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to

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14880-463: The Vajji confederacy. According to later texts, an enlightened monk also called Vajjiputta (Sanskrit: Vajraputra ) had an important role in Ānanda's life. He listened to a teaching of Ānanda and realized that Ānanda was not enlightened yet. Vajjiputta encouraged Ānanda to talk less to laypeople and deepen his meditation practice by retreating in the forest, advice that very much affected Ānanda. In

15120-410: The bhikkhunī order may have well been initiated by Ānanda after the Buddha's death, and the introduction of Mahāpajāpati as the person requesting to do so is merely a literary device to connect the ordination of women with the person of the Buddha, through his foster mother. Von Hinüber concludes this based on several patterns in the early texts, including the apparent distance between the Buddha and

15360-553: The bhikkhunī order, and the frequent discussions and differences of opinion that take place between Ānanda and Mahākassapa. Some scholars have seen merits in von Hinüber's argument with regard to the pro- and anti-factions, but as of 2017, no definitive evidence has been found for the theory of establishment of the bhikkhuni order after the Buddha's death. Buddhist studies scholar Bhikkhu Anālayo has responded to most of von Hinuber's arguments, writing: "Besides requiring too many assumptions, this hypothesis conflicts with nearly 'all

15600-497: The five aggregates as being empty ( suññam ) of essence or intrinsic nature ( sabhava ). The Patisambhidamagga also equates not-self with the emptiness liberation in a passage also cited by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga (Vism XXI 70): "When one who has great wisdom brings [volitional formations] to mind as not-self, he acquires the emptiness liberation" -Patis. II 58. The Visuddhimagga (c. 5th century CE) ,

15840-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of

16080-522: The saṅgha , and more generally, that now the time had come for the Buddhist monastics and devotees to take the Buddhist texts as authority, now that the Buddha was dying. The Buddha gave several instructions before his death, including a directive that his former charioteer Channa (Sanskrit: Chandaka ) be shunned by his fellow monks, to humble his pride. In his final moments, the Buddha asked if anyone had any questions they wished to pose to him, as

16320-414: The saṅgha . Ānanda traveled to Sāvatthī (Sanskrit: Śrāvastī ), where he was met with a sad populace, who he consoled with teachings on impermanence. After that, Ānanda went to the quarters of the Buddha and went through the motions of the routine he formerly performed when the Buddha was still alive, such as preparing water and cleaning the quarters. He then saluted and talked to the quarters as though

16560-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined

16800-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and

17040-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to

17280-459: The Buddha allow him to accept invitations on his behalf, allow him to ask questions about his doctrine, and repeat any teaching that the Buddha had taught in Ānanda's absence. These requests would help people trust Ānanda and show that the Buddha was sympathetic to his attendant. Furthermore, Ānanda considered these the real advantages of being an attendant, which is why he requested them. The Buddha agreed to Ānanda's conditions, and Ānanda became

17520-436: The Buddha and Sāriputta, with whom he enjoyed a close friendship: in both cases Ānanda was very shocked. Ānanda's faith in the Buddha, however, constituted more of a faith in a person, especially the Buddha's person, as opposed to faith in the Buddha's teaching. This is a pattern which comes back in the accounts which lead to the offenses Ānanda was charged with during the First Council. Moreover, Ānanda's weaknesses described in

17760-698: The Buddha as a monk, or had his brother do so. Ānanda used this opportunity, and asked his brother Devadatta to stay at home, so that he could leave for the monkhood. The later timeline from the Mūlasarvāstivāda texts and the Pāli Theragāthā , however, have Ānanda ordain much later, about twenty-five years before the Buddha's death —in other words, twenty years in the Buddha's ministry. Some Sanskrit sources have him ordain even later. The Mūlasarvāstivāda texts on monastic discipline (Pāli and Sanskrit: Vinaya ) relate that soothsayers predicted Ānanda would be

18000-466: The Buddha at several crucial moments. Ānanda continued to teach until the end of his life, passing on his spiritual heritage to his pupils Sāṇavāsī ( Sanskrit : शाणकवासी , Śāṇakavāsī ) and Majjhantika ( Sanskrit : मध्यान्तिक , Madhyāntika ), among others, who later assumed leading roles in the Second and Third Councils . Ānanda died 20 years after the Buddha, and stūpas (monuments) were erected at

18240-414: The Buddha conveyed before his death, including the well-known principle that the Buddhist community should take his teaching and discipline as their refuge, and that he would not appoint a new leader. The final period of the Buddha's life also shows that Ānanda was very much attached to the Buddha's person, and he saw the Buddha's passing with great sorrow. Shortly after the Buddha's death, the First Council

18480-455: The Buddha did not accept them. All the while Ānanda remained quiet. When he was asked why, he said that the Buddha would know best whom to choose, upon which the Buddha responded by choosing Ānanda. Ānanda agreed to take on the position, on the condition that he did not receive any material benefits from the Buddha. Accepting such benefits would open him up to criticism that he chose the position because of ulterior motives. He also requested that

18720-400: The Buddha how such problems could be prevented after the Buddha's death. However, Findly argues that Ānanda's duty to memorize the Buddha's teachings accurately and without distortion, was "both a gift and a burden". Ānanda was able to remember many discourses verbatim, but this also went hand-in-hand with a habit of not reflecting on those teachings, being afraid that reflection might distort

18960-452: The Buddha intended all along to establish a bhikkhunī order. Regardless, during the acceptance of women into the monastic order, the Buddha told Ānanda that the Buddha's Dispensation would last shorter because of this. At the time, the Buddhist monastic order consisted of wandering celibate males, without many monastic institutions. Allowing women to join the Buddhist celibate life might have led to dissension, as well as temptation between

19200-486: The Buddha prohibited Ānanda from being involved himself, but rather had him instruct the Mallas to perform the rituals, these instructions have by many scholars been interpreted as a prohibition that monastics should not be involved in funerals or worship of stūpas (structures with relics). Buddhist studies scholar Gregory Schopen has pointed out, however, that this prohibition only held for Ānanda, and only with regard to

19440-417: The Buddha sent Mañjuśrī to help Ānanda, who used recitation to counter the magic charm. The Buddha then continued by teaching Ānanda and other listeners about the Buddha nature . In the role of mediator between the Buddha and the lay communities, Ānanda sometimes made suggestions to the Buddha for amendments in the monastic discipline. Most importantly, the early texts attribute the inclusion of women in

19680-622: The Buddha spent the retreat during the monsoon (Pali: vassa , Sanskrit: varṣā ) in Veḷugāma (Sanskrit: Veṇugrāmaka ), getting out of the Vesālī area which suffered from famine. Here, the eighty-year old Buddha expressed his wish to speak to the saṅgha once more. The Buddha had grown seriously ill in Vesālī, much to the concern of some of his disciples. Ānanda understood that the Buddha wished to leave final instructions before his death. The Buddha stated, however, that he had already taught everything needed, without withholding anything secret as

19920-401: The Buddha taught Ānanda is the passage about spiritual friendship (Pali: kalyāṇamittata ). In this passage, Ānanda stated that spiritual friendship is half of the holy life; the Buddha corrected Ānanda, stating that such friendship is the entire holy life. In summary, Ānanda worked as an assistant, intermediary and a mouthpiece, helping the Buddha in many ways, and learning his teachings in

20160-456: The Buddha throughout a great part of his life, Ānanda was in many ways the living memory of the Buddha, without which the saṅgha would be much worse off. Besides his memory skills, Ānanda also stood out in that, as the Buddha's cousin, he dared to ask the Buddha direct questions. For example, after the death of Mahāvira and the depicted subsequent conflicts among the Jain community, Ānanda asked

20400-516: The Buddha was still there. The Pāli commentaries state that Ānanda did this out of devotion, but also because he was "not yet free from the passions ". According to the texts, the First Buddhist Council was held in Rājagaha. In the first vassa after the Buddha had died, the presiding monk Mahākassapa (Sanskrit: Mahākāśyapa ) called upon Ānanda to recite the discourses he had heard, as a representative on this council. There

20640-480: The Buddha whether women could become enlightened as well. Although the Buddha conceded this, he did not allow the Sākiya women to be ordained yet. Ānanda then discussed with the Buddha how Mahāpajāpatī took care of him during his childhood, after the death of his real mother . Ānanda also mentioned that previous Buddhas had also ordained bhikkhunīs . In the end, the Buddha allowed the Sākiya women to be ordained, being

20880-409: The Buddha with secretary-like duties. In many ways, Ānanda did not only serve the personal needs of the Buddha, but also the needs of the still young, growing institute of the saṅgha . Moreover, because of his ability to remember the many teachings of the Buddha, he is described as foremost in "having heard much" (Pali: bahussuta , Sanskrit: bahuśruta , pinyin : Duowen Diyi ). Ānanda

21120-400: The Buddha's attendant, accompanying the Buddha on most of his wanderings. Ānanda took care of the Buddha's daily practical needs, by doing things such as bringing water and cleaning the Buddha's dwelling place . He is depicted as observant and devoted, even guarding the dwelling place at night. Ānanda takes the part of interlocutor in many of the recorded dialogues. He tended the Buddha for

21360-472: The Buddha's attendant. In order to prevent Ānanda from leaving the palace to ordain, his father brought him to Vesālī (Sanskrit: Vaiśālī ) during the Buddha's visit to Kapilavatthu, but later the Buddha met and taught Ānanda nonetheless. On a similar note, the Mahāvastu relates, however, that Mṛgī was initially opposed to Ānanda joining the holy life, because his brother Devadatta had already ordained and left

21600-438: The Buddha's enlightenment. Furthermore, Mahāpajāpati was the Buddha's foster mother, and must therefore have been considerably older than him. However, after the bhikkhunī order was established, Mahāpajāpati still had many audiences with the Buddha, as reported in Pāli and Chinese Early Buddhist Texts. Because of this and other reasons, it could be inferred that establishment of the bhikkhunī order actually took place early in

21840-520: The Buddha's funeral ceremony. It has also been shown that the instructions on the funeral are quite late in origin, in both composition and insertion into the text, and are not found in parallel texts, apart from the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta . Ānanda then continued by asking how devotees should honor the Buddha after his death. The Buddha responded by listing four important places in his life that people could pay their respects to, which later became

22080-407: The Buddha's initial refusal rather as a test of resolve, following a widespread pattern in the Pāli Canon and in monastic procedure of repeating a request three times before final acceptance. Some also argue that the Buddha was believed by Buddhists to be omniscient , and therefore is unlikely to have been depicted as changing his mind. Other scholars argue that other passages in the texts indicate

22320-533: The Buddha's main disciples. Sāriputta often taught Ānanda about the finer points of Buddhist doctrine; they were in the habit of sharing things with one another, and their relationship is described as a good friendship. In some Mūlasarvāstivāda texts, an attendant of Ānanda is also mentioned who helped motivate Ānanda when he was banned from the First Buddhist Council . He was a "Vajjiputta" (Sanskrit: Vṛjjiputra ), i.e. someone who originated from

22560-474: The Buddha's ministry. If this is the case, Ānanda's role in establishing the order becomes less likely. Some scholars therefore interpret the names in the account, such as Ānanda and Mahāpajāpati , as symbols, representing groups rather than specific individuals. According to the texts, Ānanda's role in founding the bhikkhunī order made him popular with the bhikkhunī community. Ānanda often taught bhikkhunīs , often encouraged women to ordain, and when he

22800-407: The Buddha's teaching on Ānanda as a formal passing on of authority, telling Ānanda to pass the teaching on to Ānanda's pupil Saṇavāsī. Later, just before Ānanda died, he did as Mahākassapa had told him to. Buddhist studies scholars Akira Hirakawa and Bibhuti Baruah have expressed skepticism about the teacher–student relationship between Mahākassapa and Ānanda, arguing that there was discord between

23040-458: The Buddha, informing the Buddha of news, invitations, or the needs of lay people, and advising lay people who wanted to provide gifts to the saṅgha . At one time, Mahāpajāpatī , the Buddha's foster-mother, requested to offer robes for personal use for the Buddha. She said that even though she had raised the Buddha in his youth, she never gave anything in person to the young prince; she now wished to do so. The Buddha initially insisted that she give

23280-634: The Buddha, seems to go back very far, at the time when the authors, like the other disciples, still considered the Blessed One [the Buddha] a man, an eminently respectable and undefiled master, to whom behavior and utterly human words were lent, so that one is even tempted to see there the memory of a real scene which Ānanda reportedly told to the Community in the months following the Parinirvāṇa [death of

23520-481: The Buddha. At night, staff and torch in hand, he went nine times round the Buddha's cell and never put them down lest he would fall asleep and fail to answer a call to the Buddha." transl. by Ellison Banks Findly , Manorathapūranī Ānanda was recognized as one of the most important disciples of the Buddha. In the lists of the disciples given in the Aṅguttara Nikāya and Saṃyutta Nikāya , each of

23760-413: The Buddha. Mahākassapa then listed seven charges to counter Ānanda's objection. The charges were similar to the five given in Pāli. Other textual traditions list slightly different charges, amounting to a combined total of eleven charges, some of which are only mentioned in one or two textual traditions. Considering that an enlightened disciple was seen to have overcome all faults, it seems more likely that

24000-442: The Buddha]." The same text contains an account in which the Buddha, at numerous occasions, gave a hint that he could prolong his life to a full eon through a supernatural accomplishment, but this was a power that he would have to be asked to exercise. Ānanda was distracted, however, and did not take the hint. Later, Ānanda did make the request, but the Buddha replied that it was already too late, as he would die soon. Māra ,

24240-464: The Buddhist personification of evil, had visited the Buddha, and the Buddha had decided to die in three months. When Ānanda heard this, he wept. The Buddha consoled him, however, pointing out that Ānanda had been a great attendant, being sensitive to the needs of different people. If he was earnest in his efforts, he would attain enlightenment soon. He then pointed out to Ānanda that all conditioned things are impermanent : all people must die. In

24480-409: The Buddhist teachings and the cure for the disease of suffering. He stated that emptiness, as it relates to the practice of Dhamma, can be seen both "as the absence of Dukkha and the defilements that are the cause of Dukkha and as the absence of the feeling that there is a self or that there are things which are the possessions of a self." He also equated nibbana with emptiness, writing that "Nibbana,

24720-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on

24960-494: The Dhamma who stood in a spiritual lineage, receiving the teaching from Mahākassapa and passing them on to his own pupils. Ānanda has been honored by bhikkhunīs since early medieval times for his merits in establishing the nun's order. In recent times, the composer Richard Wagner and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore were inspired by stories about Ānanda in their work. The word ānanda (आनंद) means 'bliss, joy' in Pāli and in Sanskrit. Pāli commentaries explain that when Ānanda

25200-532: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with

25440-521: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of

25680-486: The First Council lasted for seven months. Scholars doubt, however, whether the entire canon was really recited during the First Council, because the early texts contain different accounts on important subjects such as meditation. It may be, though, that early versions were recited of what is now known as the Vinaya-piṭaka and Sutta-piṭaka . Nevertheless, many scholars, from the late 19th century onward, have considered

25920-522: The First Council was written after the Second Council , and based on that of the Second, since there were not any major problems to solve after the Buddha's death, or any other need to organize the First Council. Much material in the accounts, and even more so in the more developed later accounts, deal with Ānanda as the unsullied intermediary who passes on the legitimate teaching of the Buddha. On

26160-522: The Hindu Nyaya school. His best-known work is the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK), in which he used reductio arguments ( Skt : prasanga ) to show the non-substantiality of everything. Nāgārjuna equated the emptiness of dharmas with their dependent origination , and thus with their being devoid any permanent substance or primary, substantial existence ( svabhava ). Nāgārjuna writes in

26400-476: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that

26640-519: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of

26880-595: The MMK: Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from

27120-532: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around

27360-496: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support

27600-529: The Pali Canon do preserve for us the Buddha-vacana , 'the Buddha's words', transmitted to us via his disciple Ānanda and the First Council". "He served the Buddha following him everywhere like a shadow, bringing him tooth wood and water, washing his feet, rubbing his body, cleaning his cell and fulfilling all his duties with the greatest care. By day he was at hand forestalling the slightest wish of

27840-401: The Pāli tradition, the charges were laid after Ānanda had become enlightened and done all the recitations; but the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition has it that the charges were laid before Ānanda became enlightened and started the recitations. In this version, when Ānanda heard that he was banned from the council, he objected that he had not done anything that went against the teaching and discipline of

28080-499: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of

28320-638: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with

28560-542: The Tathāgata is the body of dharma(s), pure in nature. He [Ānanda] was able to retain it/them all; for this reason the offerings [to him] surpass [all others]"— body of dharma here referred to the Buddha's teachings as a whole. In Early Buddhist Texts, Ānanda had reached final Nirvana and would no longer be reborn. But, in contrast with the early texts, according to the Mahāyāna Lotus Sūtra , Ānanda would be born as

28800-447: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into

29040-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to

29280-569: The West of India, in the area of Kosambī (Sanskrit: Kausambī ), where he taught most of his pupils. Other sources say he stayed in the monastery at Veḷuvana (Sanskrit: Veṇuvana ). Several pupils of Ānanda became well-known in their own right. According to post-canonical Sanskrit sources such as the Divyavadāna and the Aśokavadāna , before the Buddha's death, the Buddha confided to Ānanda that

29520-459: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound

29760-517: The brahmin Gopaka-Mogallāna and the minister Vassakara, the latter being the highest official of the Magadha region. During this conversation, which occurred shortly after the Buddha's death, Vassakara asked whether it was decided yet who would succeed the Buddha. Ānanda replied that no such successor had been appointed, but that the Buddhist community took the Buddha's teaching and discipline as

30000-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era

30240-416: The charges were laid before Ānanda's attainment than after. Indologists von Hinüber and Jean Przyluski argue that the account of Ānanda being charged with offenses during the council indicate tensions between competing early Buddhist schools , i.e. schools that emphasized the discourses (Pali: sutta , Sanskrit: sūtra ) and schools that emphasized monastic discipline. These differences have affected

30480-527: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on

30720-614: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in

30960-498: The council started. The Mūlasarvāstivāda texts add that he felt motivated when he remembered the Buddha's words that he should be his own refuge, and when he was consoled and advised by Anuruddha and Vajjiputta, the latter being his attendant. On the night before the event, he tried hard to attain enlightenment. After a while, Ānanda took a break and decided to lie down for a rest. He then attained enlightenment right there, right then, halfway between standing and lying down. Thus, Ānanda

31200-431: The council was required, he did not want to be biased by allowing an exception to the rule. The Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition adds that Mahākassapa initially allowed Ānanda to join as a sort of servant assisting during the council, but then was forced to remove him when the disciple Anuruddha saw that Ānanda was not yet enlightened. Ānanda felt humiliated, but was prompted to focus his efforts to reach enlightenment before

31440-653: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting

31680-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and

31920-471: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in

32160-405: The disciples is declared to be foremost in some quality. Ānanda is mentioned more often than any other disciple: he is named foremost in conduct, in attention to others, in power of memory, in erudition and in resoluteness. Ānanda was the subject of a sermon of praise delivered by the Buddha just before the Buddha's death, as described in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta : it is a sermon about a man who

32400-422: The discourses and to determine which were authentic and which were not. Mahākassapa asked of each discourse that Ānanda listed where, when, and to whom it was given, and at the end of this, the assembly agreed that Ānanda's memories and recitations were correct, after which the discourse collection (Pali: Sutta Piṭaka , Sanskrit: Sūtra Piṭaka ) was considered finalized and closed. Ānanda therefore played

32640-460: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes

32880-571: The early saṅgha (monastic order) to Ānanda. Fifteen years after the Buddha's enlightenment, his foster mother Mahāpajāpatī came to see him to ask him to be ordained as the first Buddhist bhikkhunī . Initially, the Buddha refused this. Five years later, Mahāpajāpatī came to request the Buddha again, this time with a following of other Sākiya women, including the Buddha's former wife Yasodharā (Sanskrit: Yaśodarā ). They had walked 500 kilometres (310 miles), looked dirty, tired and depressed, and Ānanda felt pity for them. Ānanda therefore confirmed with

33120-448: The emptiness of the five aggregates and of svabhava as being "empty of essential nature". The Theravada Kathavatthu also argues against the idea that emptiness is unconditioned. The Mahāvastu , an influential Mahāsāṃghika work, states that the Buddha "has shown that the aggregates are like a lightning flash, as a bubble, or as the white foam on a wave." One of the main themes of Harivarman's Tattvasiddhi -Śāstra (3rd-4th century)

33360-412: The evidence preserved in the texts together'", arguing that it was monastic discipline that created a distance between the Buddha and the bhikkhunīs , and even so, there were many places in the early texts where the Buddha did address bhikkhunīs directly. Despite his long association with and close proximity to the Buddha, the texts describe that Ānanda had not become enlightened yet. Because of that,

33600-501: The face of the ontological groundlessness of the emptiness doctrine which can easily shock others. Mādhyamaka is a Mahāyāna Buddhist school of philosophy which focuses on the analysis of emptiness, and was thus also known as śūnyatavāda . The school is traditionally seen as being founded by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna . Nāgārjuna 's goal was to refute the essentialism of certain Abhidharma schools and

33840-566: The final days of the Buddha's life, the Buddha traveled to Kusinārā. The Buddha had Ānanda prepare a place for lying down between two sal trees , the same type of tree under which the mother of the Buddha gave birth. The Buddha then had Ānanda invite the Malla clan from Kusinārā to pay their final respects. Having returned, Ānanda asked the Buddha what should be done with his body after his death, and he replied that it should be cremated, giving detailed instructions on how this should be done. Since

34080-548: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to

34320-407: The first twenty years of the Buddha's ministry, the Buddha had several personal attendants. However, after these twenty years, when the Buddha was aged 55, the Buddha announced that he had need for a permanent attendant. The Buddha had been growing older, and his previous attendants had not done their job very well. Initially, several of the Buddha's foremost disciples responded to his request, but

34560-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as

34800-444: The four main places of Buddhist pilgrimage . Before the Buddha died, Ānanda recommended the Buddha to move to a more meaningful city instead, but the Buddha pointed out that the town was once a great capital. Ānanda then asked who will be next teacher after the Buddha would be gone, but the Buddha replied that his teaching and discipline would be the teacher instead. This meant that decisions should be made by reaching consensus within

35040-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in

35280-463: The highest perfection. Perceiving dharmas and beings like an illusion ( māyādharmatām ) is termed the "great armor" ( mahāsaṃnaha ) of the Bodhisattva , who is also termed the 'illusory man' ( māyāpuruṣa ). The Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra adds the following similes to describe how all conditioned things are to be contemplated: like a bubble, a shadow, like dew or a flash of lightning. In

35520-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with

35760-410: The historicity of the First Council improbable. Some scholars, such as orientalists Louis de La Vallée-Poussin and D.P. Minayeff, thought there must have been assemblies after the Buddha's death, but considered only the main characters and some events before or after the First Council historical. Other scholars, such as Bareau and Indologist Hermann Oldenberg , considered it likely that the account of

36000-412: The initial stage of sotapanna . Meant as an encouragement, the Buddha was referring to Ānanda. During the Buddha's final Nirvana , Anuruddha was able to use his meditative powers to understand which stages the Buddha underwent before attaining final Nirvana. However, Ānanda was unable to do so, indicating his lesser spiritual maturity. After the Buddha's death, Ānanda recited several verses, expressing

36240-486: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as

36480-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It

36720-646: The later Mahāvibhāṣa , also take up the theme of emptiness vis-a-vis dependent origination as found in the Agamas. Schools such as the Mahāsāṃghika Prajñaptivādins as well as many of the Sthavira schools (except the Pudgalavada ) held that all dharmas were empty ( dharma śūnyatā ). This can be seen in the early Theravada Abhidhamma texts such as the Patisambhidamagga , which also speak of

36960-428: The later timeline, however, Ānanda may have lived to 75–85 years. Buddhist studies scholar L. S. Cousins dated Ānanda's death twenty years after the Buddha's. Ānanda was teaching till the end of his life. According to Mūlasarvāstivāda sources, Ānanda heard a young monk recite a verse incorrectly, and advised him. When the monk reported this to his teacher, the latter objected that "Ānanda has grown old and his memory

37200-516: The latter had now made many material gifts, but had not given " the gift of the Dhamma ". When asked for explanation, Ānanda replied that Sāṇavāsī would give the gift of Dhamma by becoming ordained as a monk , which was reason enough for Sāṇavāsī to make the decision to get ordained. Though no Early Buddhist Text provides a date for Ānanda's death, according to the Chinese pilgrim monk Faxian (337–422 CE), Ānanda went on to live 120 years. Following

37440-566: The latter's student Majjhantika (Sanskrit: Madhyāntika ) would travel to Udyāna, Kashmir , to bring the teaching of the Buddha there. Mahākassapa made a prediction that later would come true that another of Ānanda's future pupils, Sāṇavāsī (Sanskrit: Śāṇakavāsī, Śāṇakavāsin or Śāṇāvasika ), would make many gifts to the saṅgha at Mathurā , during a feast held from profits of successful business. After this event, Ānanda would successfully persuade Sāṇavāsī to become ordained and be his pupil. Ānanda later persuaded Sāṇavāsī by pointing out that

37680-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and

37920-514: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,

38160-455: The main reason for his concessions with regard to the establishment of a bhikkhunī order. Many scholars interpret this account to mean that the Buddha was reluctant in allowing women to be ordained, and that Ānanda successfully persuaded the Buddha to change his mind. For example, Indologist and translator I.B. Horner wrote that "this is the only instance of his [the Buddha] being over-persuaded in argument". However, some scholars interpret

38400-459: The mango grove called Anupiya, part of Malla territory. According to a text from the Mahāsaṅghika tradition, King Suddhodana wanted the Buddha to have more followers of the khattiya caste (Sanskrit: kṣatriyaḥ , lit.   'warrior-noble, member of the ruling class'), and less from the brahmin (priest) caste. He therefore ordered that any khattiya who had a brother follow

38640-507: The mission following the Buddha's prediction. The latter's pupil Upagupta was described to be the teacher of King Aśoka (3rd century BCE). Together with four or five other pupils of Ānanda, Sāṇavāsī and Majjhantika formed the majority of the Second Council, with Majjhantika being Ānanda's last pupil. Post-canonical Pāli sources add that Sāṇavāsī had a leading role in the Third Buddhist Council as well. Although little

38880-511: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of

39120-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India

39360-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created

39600-602: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around

39840-595: The most influential classical Theravāda treatise, states that not-self does not become apparent because it is concealed by "compactness" when one does not give attention to the various elements which make up the person. The Paramatthamañjusa Visuddhimaggatika of Acariya Dhammapala , a 5th-century Theravāda commentary on the Visuddhimagga , comments on this passage by referring to the fact that we often assume unity and compactness regarding phenomena or functions which are instead made up of various elements, but when one sees that these are merely empty dhammas, one can understand

40080-409: The mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,

40320-417: The nature of things as emptiness, stating that things are like "illusions" ( māyā ) and "dreams" ( svapna ). The Astasahasrika Prajñaparamita , possibly the earliest of these sutras , states: If he knows the five aggregates as like an illusion, But makes not illusion one thing, and the aggregates another; If, freed from the notion of multiple things, he courses in peace— Then that is his practice of wisdom,

40560-435: The northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of

40800-404: The not-self characteristic: "when they are seen after resolving them by means of knowledge into these elements, they disintegrate like froth subjected to compression by the hand. They are mere states ( dhamma ) occurring due to conditions and void. In this way the characteristic of not-self becomes more evident." The modern Thai teacher Buddhadasa referred to emptiness as the "innermost heart" of

41040-404: The number of participants on the council, and the account of Ānanda's enlightenment just before the council. Regardless, today, the story of Ānanda's struggle on the evening before the council is still told among Buddhists as a piece of advice in the practice of meditation : neither to give up, nor to interpret the practice too rigidly. The First Council began when Ānanda was consulted to recite

41280-597: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,

41520-532: The one below. The Chinese Āgamas contain various parallels to the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta . One partial parallel from the Ekottara Āgama describes the body with different metaphors: "a ball of snow", "a heap of dirt", "a mirage", "an illusion" ( māyā ), or "an empty fist used to fool a child". In a similar vein, the Mūla-Sarvāstivādin Māyājāla Sūtra , gives two sets of metaphors for each of

41760-417: The ones that emphasized discipline; the former emphasizing the figure of Ānanda, the latter Mahākassapa. He further argued that the passage on Māra obstructing the Buddha was inserted in the fourth century BCE, and that Ānanda was blamed for Māra's doing by inserting the passage of Ānanda's forgetfulness in the third century BCE. The passage in which the Buddha was ill and reminded Ānanda to be his own refuge, on

42000-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as

42240-437: The order of bhikkhunīs (Sanskrit: भिक्षुणी , romanized:  bhikṣuṇī , lit.   'female mendicant'), when he requested the Buddha on behalf of the latter's foster-mother Mahāpajāpati Gotamī ( Sanskrit : महाप्रजापती गौतमी , Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī ) to allow her to be ordained. Ānanda also accompanied the Buddha in the last year of his life, and therefore was witness to many tenets and principles that

42480-433: The other hand, Bareau regarded as very ancient, pre-dating the passages blaming Māra and Ānanda. In conclusion, Bareau, Przyluski and Horner argued that the offenses Ānanda were charged with were a later interpolation. Findly disagrees, however, because the account in the texts of monastic discipline fits in with the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta and with Ānanda's character as generally depicted in the texts. Tradition states that

42720-475: The other hand, archaeologist Louis Finot , Indologist E. E. Obermiller and to some extent Indologist Nalinaksha Dutt thought the account of the First Council was authentic, because of the correspondences between the Pāli texts and the Sanskrit traditions . Indologist Richard Gombrich , following Bhikkhu Sujato and Bhikkhu Brahmali's arguments, states that "it makes good sense to believe ... that large parts of

42960-618: The other side of the river, however, a group of Licchavis from Vesālī awaited him for the same reason. In the Pāli, there were also two parties interested, but the two parties were the Sākiyan and the Koliyan clans instead. Ānanda realized that his death on either side of the river could anger one of the parties involved. Through a supernatural accomplishment, he therefore surged into the air to levitate and meditate in mid-air, making his body go up in fire, with his relics landing on both banks of

43200-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for

43440-606: The palace. Ānanda responded to his mother's resistance by moving to Videha (Sanskrit: Vaideha ) and lived there, taking a vow of silence. This led him to gain the epithet Videhamuni (Sanskrit: Vaidehamuni ), meaning 'the silent wise one from Videha'. When Ānanda did become ordained, his father had him ordain in Kapilavatthu in the Nigrodhārāma monastery (Sanskrit: Niyagrodhārāma ) with much ceremony, Ānanda's preceptor (Pali: upajjhāya ; Sanskrit: upādhyāya ) being

43680-405: The person who was responsible for the recitation of the monastic discipline, recited before Ānanda does: again, monastic discipline above discourse. Analyzing six recensions of different textual traditions of the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta extensively, Bareau distinguished two layers in the text, an older and a newer one, the former belonging to the compilers that emphasized discourse, the latter to

43920-529: The political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from

44160-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and

44400-494: The present age. He met the attendant of Padumuttara Buddha and aspired to be like him in a future life. After having done many good deeds , he made his resolution known to the Padumuttara Buddha, who confirmed that his wish will come true in a future life. After having been born and reborn throughout many lifetimes, and doing many good deeds, he was born as Ānanda in the time of the current Buddha Gotama . Ānanda

44640-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes

44880-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view

45120-493: The process. Ānanda was attractive in appearance. A Pāli account related that a bhikkhunī (nun) became enamored with Ānanda, and pretended to be ill to have Ānanda visit her. When she realized the error of her ways, she confessed her mistakes to Ānanda. Other accounts relate that a low-caste woman called Prakṛti (also known in China as 摩登伽女 ; Módēngqiénǚ ) fell in love with Ānanda, and persuaded her mother Mātaṅgī to use

45360-609: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly

45600-497: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,

45840-431: The remainderless extinction of Dukkha, means the same as supreme emptiness." Emptiness is also seen as a mode of perception which lacks all the usual conceptual elaborations we usually add on top of our experiences, such as the sense of "I" and "Mine". According to Thanissaro Bhikku , emptiness is not so much a metaphysical view, as it is a strategic mode of acting and of seeing the world which leads to liberation: Emptiness

46080-617: The river Rohīni. Faxian also reported having visited stūpas dedicated to Ānanda at the river Rohīni, but also in Mathurā. Moreover, according to the Mūlasarvāstivāda version of the Saṃyukta Āgama , King Aśoka visited and made the most lavish offerings he ever made to a stūpa : "Who in the Norm is widely versed, transl. by C. A. F. Rhys Davids , Theragāthā He explained to his ministers that he did this because "[t]he body of

46320-411: The river where he died. Ānanda is one of the most loved figures in Buddhism. He was known for his memory, erudition and compassion, and was often praised by the Buddha for these matters. He functioned as a foil to the Buddha, however, in that he still had worldly attachments and was not yet enlightened, as opposed to the Buddha. In the Sanskrit textual traditions , Ānanda is considered the patriarch of

46560-417: The river, or in some versions of the account, splitting in four parts. In this way, Ānanda had pleased all the parties involved. In some other versions of the account, including the Mūlasarvāstivāda version, his death took place on a barge in the middle of the river, however, instead of in mid-air. The remains were divided in two, following the wishes of Ānanda. Majjhantika later successfully carried out

46800-455: The robe to the community as a whole rather than to be attached to his person. However, Ānanda interceded and mediated, suggesting that the Buddha had better accept the robe. Eventually the Buddha did, but not without pointing out to Ānanda that good deeds like giving should always be done for the sake of the action itself, not for the sake of the person. The texts say that the Buddha sometimes asked Ānanda to substitute for him as teacher, and

47040-562: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with

47280-496: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had

47520-424: The scriptures of each tradition: e.g. the Pāli and Mahīśāsaka textual traditions portray a Mahākassapa that is more critical of Ānanda than that the Sarvāstivāda tradition depicts him, reflecting a preference for discipline above discourse on the part of the former traditions, and a preference for discourse for the latter. Another example is the recitations during the First Council. The Pāli texts state that Upāli ,

47760-556: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes

48000-536: The sensory consciousnesses to illustrate their vain, illusory character. Other Sarvāstivādin Āgama sutras (extant in Chinese) which have emptiness as a theme include Samyukta Āgama 335 - Paramārtha-śunyatā-sūtra ("Sutra on ultimate emptiness") and Samyukta Āgama 297 - Mahā-śunyatā-dharma-paryāya ("Greater discourse on emptiness"). These sutras have no parallel Pāli suttas. These sutras associate emptiness with dependent origination , which shows that this relation of

48240-465: The sexes. The garudhamma , however, were meant to fix these problems, and prevent the dispensation from being curtailed. There are some chronological discrepancies in the traditional account of the setting up of the bhikkhunī order. According to the Pāli and Mahīśasaka textual traditions, the bhikkhunī order was set up five years after the Buddha's enlightenment, but, according to most textual traditions, Ānanda only became attendant twenty years after

48480-615: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it

48720-411: The start of the bhikkhunī order. Ānanda had Mahāpajāpati ordained by her acceptance of a set of rules, set by the Buddha. These came to be known as the garudhamma , and they describe the subordinate relation of the bhikkhunī community to that of the bhikkhus or monks. Scholar of Asian religions Reiko Ohnuma argues that the debt the Buddha had toward his foster-mother Mahāpajāpati may have been

48960-428: The teachings as he heard them. At multiple occasions, Ānanda was warned by other disciples that he should spend less time on conversing to lay people, and more time on his own practice. Even though Ānanda regularly practiced meditation for long hours, he was less experienced in meditative concentration than other leading disciples. Thus, judgment of Ānanda's character depends on whether one judges his accomplishments as

49200-446: The tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature ( svabhava )", but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen , Shentong , or Chan . " Śūnyatā " ( Sanskrit ) is usually translated as "devoidness", "emptiness", "hollow", "hollowness", "voidness". It is the noun form of the adjective śūnya , plus -tā : The concept of śūnyatā as "emptiness"

49440-458: The text (Sanskrit: saṃgītikāra ), had first-hand experience and did not add anything to it. Thus, the discourses Ānanda remembered later became the collection of discourses of the Canon, and according to the Haimavāta , Dharmaguptaka and Sarvāstivāda textual traditions (and implicitly, post-canonical Pāli chronicles), the collection of Abhidhamma ( Abhidhamma Piṭaka ) as well. Scholar of religion Ronald Davidson notes, however, that this

49680-419: The texts were that he was sometimes slow-witted and lacked mindfulness, which became noticeable because of his role as attendant to the Buddha: this involved minor matters like deportment, but also more important matters, such as ordaining a man with no future as a pupil, or disturbing the Buddha at the wrong time. For example, one time Mahākassapa chastised Ānanda in strong words, criticizing the fact that Ānanda

49920-535: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but

50160-531: The two terms was already established in pre- Nagarjuna sources. The sutra on great emptiness states: "What is the Dharma Discourse on Great Emptiness? It is this—'When this exists, that exists; when this arises, that arises.'" The phrase "when this exists ..." is a common gloss on dependent origination . Sarvāstivādin Āgamas also speak of a certain "emptiness samadhi " ( śūnyatāsamādhi ) as well as stating that all dharmas are "classified as conventional". Mun-Keat Choong and Yin Shun have both published studies on

50400-449: The two, as indicated in the early texts. Regardless, it is clear from the texts that a relationship of transmission of teachings is meant, as opposed to an upajjhāya –student relationship in a lineage of ordination: no source indicates Mahākassapa was Ānanda's upajjhāya . In Mahāyāna iconography, Ānanda is often depicted flanking the Buddha at the right side, together with Mahākassapa at the left. In Theravāda iconography, however, Ānanda

50640-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines

50880-401: The various uses of emptiness in the Early Buddhist texts ( Pāli Canon and Chinese Āgamas ). Choong has also published a collection of translations of Āgama sutras from the Chinese on the topic of emptiness. Many of the early Buddhist schools featured śūnyatā as an important part of their teachings. The Sarvastivadin school's Abhidharma texts like the Dharmaskandhapāda Śāstra , and

51120-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit

51360-406: The world is empty?" The Buddha replied, "In so far as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty. According to the American monastic Thanissaro Bhikku : Emptiness as a quality of dharmas , in the early canons, means simply that one cannot identify them as one's own self or having anything pertaining to one's own self ... Emptiness as

51600-498: The world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering. Some Theravādins, such as David Kalupahana , see Nagarjuna 's view of emptiness as compatible with

51840-476: The worldview of these sutras, though we perceive a world of concrete and discrete objects, these objects are "empty" of the identity imputed by their designated labels. In that sense, they are deceptive and like an illusion. The Perfection of Wisdom texts constantly repeat that nothing can be found to ultimately exist in some fundamental way. This applies even to the highest Buddhist concepts ( bodhisattvas , bodhicitta , and even prajña itself). Even nirvana itself

52080-446: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times

52320-414: Was 35 years old), and was therefore much younger than the Buddha. The latter tradition is corroborated by several instances in the Early Buddhist Texts, in which Ānanda appears younger than the Buddha, such as the passage in which the Buddha explained to Ānanda how old age was affecting him in body and mind. It is also corroborated by a verse in the Pāli text called Theragāthā , in which Ānanda stated he

52560-451: Was a "learner" for 25 years, after which he attended to the Buddha for another 25 years. Following the Pāli , Mahīśasaka and Dharmaguptaka textual traditions, Ānanda became a monk in the second year of the Buddha's ministry, during the Buddha's visit to Kapilavatthu (Sanskrit: Kapilavastu ). He was ordained by the Buddha himself, together with many other princes of the Buddha's clan (Pali: Sākiya , Sanskrit: Śākya ), in

52800-399: Was a rule issued that only enlightened disciples ( arahants ) were allowed to attend the council, to prevent mental afflictions from clouding the disciples' memories. Ānanda had, however, not attained enlightenment yet, in contrast with the rest of the council, consisting of 499 arahants . Mahākassapa therefore did not allow Ānanda to attend yet. Although he knew that Ānanda's presence in

53040-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit

53280-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in

53520-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have

53760-568: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in

54000-433: Was born in the same time period as the Buddha (formerly Prince Siddhattha), which scholars place at 5th–4th centuries BCE. Tradition says that Ānanda was the first cousin of the Buddha, his father being the brother of Suddhodana (Sanskrit: Śuddhodana ), the Buddha's father. In the Pāli and Mūlasarvāstivāda textual traditions, his father was Amitodana (Sanskrit: Amṛtodana ), but the Mahāvastu states that his father

54240-475: Was born, his relatives were joyous about this. Texts from the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition, however, state that since Ānanda was born on the day of the Buddha's enlightenment, there was great rejoicing in the city—hence the name. According to the texts, in a previous life, Ānanda made an aspiration to become a Buddha 's attendant. He made this aspiration in the time of a previous Buddha called Padumuttara , many eons (Pali: kappa , Sanskrit: kalpa ) before

54480-408: Was carefully used, reused and recycled by the monastic community, prompting the king to offer another five hundred robes. Ānanda also had a role in the Buddha's visit to Vesālī . In this story, the Buddha taught the well-known text Ratana Sutta to Ānanda, which Ānanda then recited in Vesālī, ridding the city from illness, drought and evil spirits in the process. Another well-known passage in which

54720-455: Was composed by Buddhist scholars and philosophers. The Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) Sutras taught that all entities, including dharmas , are empty of self, essential core, or intrinsic nature ( svabhava ), being only conceptual existents or constructs. The notion of prajña (wisdom, knowledge) presented in these sutras is a deep non-conceptual understanding of emptiness. The Prajñāpāramitā sutras also use various metaphors to explain

54960-478: Was convened, and Ānanda managed to attain enlightenment just before the council started, which was a requirement. He had a historical role during the council as the living memory of the Buddha, reciting many of the Buddha's discourses and checking them for accuracy. During the same council, however, he was chastised by Mahākassapa ( Sanskrit : महाकाश्यप , Mahākāśyapa ) and the rest of the saṅgha for allowing women to be ordained and failing to understand or respect

55200-412: Was criticized by the monk Mahākassapa , several bhikkhunīs tried to defend him. According to Indologist Oskar von Hinüber , Ānanda's pro- bhikkhunī attitude may well be the reason why there was frequent discussion between Ānanda and Mahākassapa, eventually leading Mahākasapa to charge Ānanda with several offenses during the First Buddhist Council. Von Hinüber further argues that the establishment of

55440-412: Was in many ways a contradiction to that of the Buddha: being unenlightened and someone who made mistakes. At the same time, however, he was completely devoted to service to the Buddha. The Buddha is depicted in the early texts as both a father and a teacher to Ānanda, stern but compassionate. Ānanda was very fond of and attached to the Buddha, willing to give his life for him. He mourned the deaths of both

55680-515: Was known as the disciple who attained awakening "in none of the four traditional poses " (walking, standing, sitting, or lying down). The next morning, to prove his enlightenment, Ānanda performed a supernatural accomplishment by diving into the earth and appearing on his seat at the council (or, according to some sources, by flying through the air). Scholars such as Buddhologist André Bareau and scholar of religion Ellison Banks Findly have been skeptical about many details in this account, including

55920-427: Was known for his exceptional memory, which is essential in helping him to remember the Buddha's teachings. He also taught other disciples to memorize Buddhist doctrine. For these reasons, Ānanda became known as the "Treasurer of the Dhamma " (Pali: Dhamma-bhaṇḍāgārika , Sanskrit: Dharma-bhaṇḍāgārika ), Dhamma (Sanskrit: Dharma ) referring to the doctrine of the Buddha. Being the person who had accompanied

56160-452: Was not persuaded by him, and voted against him in a formal meeting. Ānanda's late spiritual growth is much discussed in Buddhist texts, and the general conclusion is that Ānanda was slower than other disciples due to his worldly attachments and his attachment to the person of the Buddha, both of which were rooted in his mediating work between the Buddha and the lay communities. After the Buddha's death, some sources say Ānanda stayed mostly in

56400-470: Was not properly dressed, and during which his body was sullied by their tears; and for having failed to ask the Buddha to continue to live on. Ānanda did not acknowledge these as offenses, but he conceded to do a formal confession anyway, "... in faith of the opinion of the venerable elder monks" —Ānanda wanted to prevent disruption in the saṅgha . With regard to having women ordained, Ānanda answered that he had done this with great effort, because Mahāpajāpati

56640-544: Was often praised by the Buddha for his teachings. Ānanda was often given important teaching roles, such as regularly teaching Queen Mallikā , Queen Sāmāvatī , (Sanskrit: Śyāmāvatī ) and other people from the ruling class. Once Ānanda taught a number of King Udena (Sanskrit: Udayana )'s concubines. They were so impressed by Ānanda's teaching, that they gave him five hundred robes, which Ānanda accepted. Having heard about this, King Udena criticized Ānanda for being greedy; Ānanda responded by explaining how every single robe

56880-399: Was the Buddha's foster-mother who had long provided for him. With regard to not requesting the Buddha to continue to live, many textual traditions have Ānanda respond by saying he was distracted by Māra, though one early Chinese text has Ānanda reply he did not request the Buddha to prolong his life, for fear that this would interfere with the next Buddha Maitreya 's ministry. According to

57120-409: Was travelling with a large following of young monks who appeared untrained and who had built up a bad reputation. In another episode described in a Sarvāstivāda text, Ānanda is the only disciple who was willing to teach psychic powers to Devadatta, who later would use these in an attempt to destroy the Buddha. According to a Mahīśāsaka text, however, when Devadatta had turned against the Buddha, Ānanda

57360-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as

57600-447: Was Śuklodana—both are brothers of Suddhodana. The Mahāvastu also mentions that Ānanda's mother's name was Mṛgī (Sanskrit; lit. 'little deer'; Pāli is unknown). The Pāli tradition has it that Ānanda was born on the same day as Prince Siddhatta (Sanskrit: Siddhārtha ), but texts from the Mūlasarvāstivāda and subsequent Mahāyāna traditions state Ānanda was born at the same time the Buddha attained enlightenment (when Prince Siddhattha

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