Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research by Analayo

Author:Analayo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Minor Variants

Leaving aside the cases discussed above as probable memory errors, in what follows I survey other instances where the chanting differs from what is found in the standard Pāli editions consulted in this study. For this purpose I distinguish between “minor variants,” variants that concern different spellings of a term,350 and “major variants,” which involve the addition or lack of a whole term or even of several terms. This distinction is merely for the purpose of ease of presentation and is not intended to convey that all major variants are invariably more important than those designated as minor variants. Whereas some major variants involve several terms and even phrases and for this reason are indeed highly remarkable, the same category also accommodates the absence of the quotative iti, which is considerably less significant.

Based on the distinction between minor and major variants and on the count of editions in which a variant is found, I present a series of tables to convey the main pattern that emerges from comparing the recitations to the printed editions. The tables list from left to right the editions that differ from the wording employed in the chanting. Here the abbreviation Be stands for the Burmese Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana edition of Myanmar, Ce for the Ceylonese Buddha Jayanti edition of Sri Lanka, Ee for the European PTS edition, and Se for the Siamese Red Elephant edition of Thailand. Where the respective edition has a corresponding term in its notes on variants, the abbreviation for this edition carries an asterisk*.

To the right of the editions comes a column that gives the rate of frequency of the term in question in the chanted text, where 1 stands for a single occurrence. To the right of that comes the location of the term in question, which combines an abbreviation for the text, such as DN for Dīgha-nikāya, and a number combination that indicates the time at which the term occurs in the recording.

The first case, for example, is DN 22: 1–33.21. This stands for the twenty-second discourse in the Dīgha-nikāya (which is the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta). The “1” signifies that this is the first of several recordings of this discourse, and “33.21” stands for the occurrence being roughly at about 33 minutes and 21 seconds from the start of the recording.

The (Mahā-)maṅgala-sutta, the Ratana-sutta, and the Metta-sutta occur once in the Khuddakapāṭha and again in the Sutta-nipāta. Since these discourses are found twice in the Pāli canon, I have consulted both extant versions from each of the studied editions. I refer to variants found in both with the combined abbreviation Khp/Sn. The single Khp or Sn then reflects the rare occasion when a particular variant is found in only one of these two.

Where more than one occurrence of the same variant can be identified in the same text, I list the other occurrences in a footnote (this includes cases where the term in question is conjugated or declined differently). Within occurrences of the same type, the listing follows the order of

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