ཀན་ཏ་རྒྱ་བ་སན་རངས་ཀྱས་ཞས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་མད intro.4

intro.4

Etymologically, poṣadha has its roots in an older Sanskrit term, upavasatha (Pali: uposatha), which literally means “to dwell near.”² This can be traced back to Vedic India, where it was a day of rest and preparation preceding a ritual sacrifice.³ Sylvain Lévi notes that while one would expect the Pali uposatha to be translated into classical Sanskrit as upavasatha, the Buddhists ended up with the translation poṣadha, having as it does less of a brahmanical resonance. It means to nourish (poṣa) and cleanse (dha), which the Tibetans repeated in their rendering as gso sbyong.⁴ However, the older term upavasatha has not been entirely replaced by the term poṣadha; it is still used, usually with the alternate spelling upavāsa (Tib. bsnyen gnas, “abstinence”), in reference to the practice of abstinence with regard to the eight poṣadha vows or fasting, while only the term poṣadha is used as the name for the ceremony itself. Thus, at the end of the sūtra, Dīrghanakha vows to uphold the eight poṣadha vows in the context of the upavāsa, or abstinence. He does not merely vow to follow this for one day but pledges to make the special commitment of practicing them continuously for as long as he lives as “the instrument of my mind, and the accumulation of awakening.”