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Upajāti (Vāṇī)
kāle
tataś-cāru-payo-dharāyāṁ yaśodharāyāṁ
sva-yaśo-dharāyām
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śauddhodane-rāhu-sapatna-vaktro
jajñe suto rāhula eva nāmnā || 2.46
2.46
Then in time to a bearer of lovely
milk,
To Yaśodharā, a bearer of glory by
her own actions,
Was born a son who beamed like a rival
of “Eclipsing” Rāhu,
And that moon-faced son of
Śuddhodhana's son
was named Rāhula.
was named Rāhula.
COMMENT:
I think there might be more than one
way of reading the epithet cāru-payo-dharāyām,
depending on whether one thinks the phrase is valuing Yaśodharā for
the beauty of her breasts, or the quality of her milk. The
conventional way of reading cāru-payo-dharā is as a description of
Yaśodharā's breasts (payo-dharāḥ; lit. “milk-containers”) as
lovely (cāru); hence EBC/EHJ: “the
fair-bosomed” and PO “bearing alluring breasts.” But in the
spirit of opposing both feminism and whatever -ism feminism is opposed to (male chauvinism?), I have opted instead to read
cāru-payo-dharā
as a description of Yaśodharā as bearing (dharā) milk (payas)
which was lovely (cāru).
In
the same non-chauvinist spirit, sva-yaśo-dharāyām
in the 2nd
pāda, as I read it, describes Yaśodharā as bearing sva-yaśas,
glory by her own actions. The dictionary defines sva-yaśas as
“glorious or illustrious through one's own (acts),
self-sufficient;” so I am not going out of my way here to cater to
any special interest, but am just
following the dictionary, whose definition of sva-yaśas, emphasizing
indepedence of action or self-sufficiency, seems to have passed
previous translators by. Hence EBC had “who
was truly glorious in accordance with her name,” and EHJ/PO had
“bearing her own fame.”
Do you see, everybody, how free I am from the stain of sexist prejudice?
(Don't believe it for a minute! As they say in Japanese, kaeru no ko wa kaeru, the son of a frog is a frog.)
(Don't believe it for a minute! As they say in Japanese, kaeru no ko wa kaeru, the son of a frog is a frog.)
The
Rāhu of the 3rd
pāda is a demon who was supposed to seize the sun and moon and thus
cause eclipses. Rāhu-sapatna-vaktraḥ,
“having the face of Rāhu's rival,” therefore, compliments Rāhula
as beaming (as all healthy babies tend to beam) like the sun or the
moon.
If
we analyze today's verse into four phases, the 1st
pāda can be seen as relating to the value that is generally assigned
to women, for their beauty and utility; the 2nd
pāda is antithetical to this view in seeing Yaśodharā as one
individual woman of independent action in her own right; the 3rd
pāda expressess
a mutual relation between a beaming subject and astronomical objects; and the 4th
pāda describes the miraculous real event which is the coming into existence of an
individual human being.
The
motivation to analyze today's verse like this into four phases arises from a
desire to clarify, for self and others, how every verse is connected
to the practise of sitting-meditation as the Buddha taught it – as
the culmination of the path of cessation of suffering, and equally,
as the abandonment of subjective, objective, synthetic, and all other
philosophical views.
Digging
deeper, on that basis, jajñe sutaḥ means “a son/child is born”
and at the same time “an offspring comes into existence” -- which
raises the question, if one allows it to, of what it means in the
context of the one-to-one transmission of the Buddha's dharma for an
offspring to come into his or her own.
Does
it mean, for example, that transmitter and transmittee have come to
the same conclusion? Does it mean that they have arrived at the same
idea?
Does it mean they are abiding in the same state, swimming in the same sea of samādhi?
Does
it mean that they are devoted to the same process? Does it mean they
are working together on the same job?
Does
there have to be some magical personal chemistry between them, like
the sympathetic resonance of tuning forks? Or can the transmission
take place via an intermediary, or via the internet?
If
constancy is an important criterion, is it sufficient for transmittee
to manifest and for transmitter to observe a constancy like a flow of
water that seems to be so constant that one day it looks like it will
drill through rock? Or is it necessary to see hard evidence of
drilled rock?
The
reason I ask these questions is that today's verse, when I considered
it in four phases, and then slept on it, brought these questions into my mind
when I was sitting this morning.
So
if some stupid person says that there are verses in Aśvaghoṣa's
writing that are not so intimately related with sitting-meditation,
this morning I am less inclined to agree with that stupid person than
I would have been inclined yesterday to agree with that stupid person -- even if that stupid person is myself.
VOCABULARY
kāle
(loc. sg. m.): ind. in time, seasonably
tataḥ:
ind. thence, then
cāru-payo-dharāyām
(loc. sg. f.): having lovely milk-bearers, beautiful-breasted,
bearing agreeable milk
cāru:
agreeable , approved , esteemed , beloved , endeared ; pleasing ,
lovely , beautiful , pretty
payas:
n. any fluid or juice , (esp.) milk , water , rain
dhṛ:
to hold , bear (also bring forth) , carry ,
payo-dhara:
m. " containing water or milk " , a cloud ; a woman's
breast or an udder
yaśodharāyām
(loc. sg. f.): to Yaśodharā, “Bearer of Glory” (see BC2.26)
sva-yaśo-dharāyām
(loc. sg. f.): bearer of glory through her own [actions]
sva-yaśas:
mfn. glorious or illustrious through one's own (acts) ,
self-sufficient
sva:
her own
yaśas:
n. beautiful appearance , beauty , splendour , worth ; honour ,
glory , fame ,
dhara:
mfn. ifc. bearing
śauddhodaneḥ
= abl./gen. sg. śauddhodani: m. (fr. śuddhodana) patr. of gautama
buddha
rāhu-sapatna-vaktraḥ
(nom. sg. m.): having the face of Rāhu's rival, having a face like
the moon
rāhu:
m. " the Seizer " , N. of a daitya or demon who is supposed
to seize the sun and moon and thus cause eclipses (he is fabled as a
son of vipra-citti and siṁhikā and as having a dragon's tail ;
when the gods had churned the ocean for the amṛta or nectar of
immortality , he disguised himself like one of them and drank a
portion ; but the Sun and Moon revealed the fraud to viṣṇu , who
cut off rāhu's head , which thereupon became fixed in the stellar
sphere , and having become immortal through drinking the amṛta ,
has ever since wreaked its vengeance on the Sun and Moon by
occasionally swallowing them ; while at the same time the tail of the
demon became ketu [q.v.] and gave birth to a numerous progeny of
comets and fiery meteors ; in astron. rāhu is variously regarded as
a dragon's head , as the ascending node of the moon [or point where
the moon intersects the ecliptic in passing northwards] , as one of
the planets [cf. graha] , and as the regent of the south-west quarter
[ Laghuj. ] ; among Buddhists many demons are called rāhu)
sapatna:
m. (fr. sa-pátnī below) a rival , adversary, enemy
sa-pátnī:
f. a woman who has the same husband with another woman or whose
husband has other wives , a fellow-wife or mistress , female rival
vaktra:
n. " organ of speech " , the mouth , face ,
jajñe
= 3rd pers. sg. jan: to be born or produced , come into
existence ;
sutaḥ
(nom. sg.): m. son, offspring
rāhulaḥ
(nom. sg.): m. name of a son of gautama buddha
eva:
(emphatic)
nāmnā
(inst. sg. n.): ind. by name
時白淨太子 賢妃耶輸陀
年並漸長大 孕生羅睺羅
年並漸長大 孕生羅睺羅
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