Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)

Buddhaghosa comments on the former phrase when it occurs in the Assalayana (M. II, 147). There certain brahmins are said to be staying at Savatthi kenacid eva karawiyena (as Sir Robert Chalmers prints it), that is, 'on some business or other.' Prof. Pischel, however, in the separate edition he published at Chemnitz in 1880, prints it kena ci devakarawiyena, that is 'on some matter connected with worship of the gods.' The Papanca Sudani has kenacidevati yanniipasanadina. aniyamita-kiccena, ' on some undetermined matter such as sacrifice, worship, or so on.' This is an explanation of the meaning of the phrase as found in that connexion, and not a direction as to whether the phrase contains the word deva or the word eva. The gloss would be equally correct in either case. In our Suttanta the phrase occurs in § 11 where Jana-vasabha is sent by one god to another kenacid eva kara/nyena. Here it seems quite unnecessary to mention that he was sent ' on business referring to the god,' and the phrase may well be taken in its ordinary sense as, for instance, in the Maha-parinibbana (D. II, 147). There Ananda goes to the Mallas to announce the impending death of the Buddha and finds them assembled in their Mote Hall kenacid eva kara^iyena — clearly, in this connexion ' on some business or other.' (Cp. D. II, 159.) It may, indeed, be objected that the clansmen may have been consulting about some business ' connected with the gods.' That seems, how-

1 See further the remarks in 'Buddhist India,' pp. 219 flf.

ever, unlikely. If really meant it would have been expressed otherwise. And frankly it is most doubtful whether the suggested phrase deva-kara;ziya 'god-business' is really a good Pali idiom at all. The best conclusion therefore, in the present state of our knowledge of that idiom, is that the right reading is eva, not deva, and that the phrase always means ' on some business or other.'

The other case is more difficult. The phrase occurs at the end of the epilogue to our Suttanta. It recurs in the Sampasadaniya (D. Ill, 122). In both places it is evidently an excerpt from the stock episode found in the Anguttara IV, 308 ff., the Sawyutta V, 258 ff., and the Udana VI, 1, and incorporated in the Maha-parinibbana (D. II, 102 ff., see especially pp. 106, 114). There the Buddha refuses to die till certain things have been accomplished. These are (1) until the Bhikkhus shall have become true hearers, wise and well trained, &c. — (2) until they, having themselves learned the doctrine, shall be able to tell others of it, preach it, expound it, &c. — (3) until they shall be able, by the truth, to refute vain doctrine — (4) until the way of good life shall have become wide spread and popular — (5) yavad eva manussehi pakasitaw, apparently meaning 'until it shall have been well proclaimed among men ' (or perhaps ' by men ' as Prof. Windisch renders, Mara and Buddha, p. 72). The same set of conditions is then repeated, reading for ' Bhikkhus,' ' Bhikkhunis,' ' laymen ' and ' lay women ' respectively. The conditions, it will be observed, are all of them conditions to obtain among humans. Nevertheless the Divyavadana (p. 202), in Sanskritising (or re-writing) the passage, doubles the d (yavad devamanushyebhya/^),andso introduces the gods — 'until it shall have been well proclaimed among (or hy) gods and men.' Later tradition does the same. Buddhaghosa brings in the gods in his comments on the Digha passages. But the question is, did the version of the episode, as originally composed, have this meaning? The context is against it. Another constantly repeated phrase about the reform being ' for the good and the weal and the gain of gods and men,' is, as Dr; Estlin Carpenter suggests to me, in its favour. But it may be precisely the haunting memory of that phrase that influenced the author of the version included in the Divyavadana, and also Buddhaghosa. When once the gods got in, it would be most difficult to dislodge them. There the matter must, for the present, be left.