The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature c9.2.1

c9.2.1

A *bodhisattva* must practise the six or ten *pāramitās* (Perfections). This important word *pāramitā* has also been translated as "transcendental virtue", "perfect virtue", "highest perfection", "complete attainment", "die Vollkommenheit", etc. The form *pārami* is also found (*Divy.*, 637, 5, *mantrāṇām pāramiṃ gatāḥ*). In Pāli, the forms *pāramī* and *pāramitā* occur in the *Sutta-nipāta*, the *Jātaka*, the *Nettipakaraṇa* and other treatises¹; and T. W. Rhys Davids and W. Stede translate: "completeness, perfection, highest state" (*Pāli Dicy.*). The term *pāramitā* has been wrongly explained by Böhtlingk and Roth, Monier Williams, E. Burnouf, B. Hodgson and M. Vassilief as consisting of two words, *pāram* (the opposite bank, the further shore), and *ita* (gone, from the root *i*, Skt. Dicy., M.W. 566c)². Böhtlingk and Roth regard it as a contracted form of the abstract substantive *pāramitā* (the quality of having gone to the further shore). But E. Burnouf thinks that it is an adjectival participle, which really qualifies a suppressed substantive like *buddhi*, but which is employed as a substantive on account of its similarity to other abstract nouns ending in *-tā*. He says: "Ce mot, en effet, est le féminin de l'adjectif *pāramita* signifiant, 'celui qui est allé à l'autre rive, transcendant,' mais ce n'est ni ce ne peut être un substantif. Or c'est comme substantif que l'emploient les Bouddhistes . . .