Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c11.s3.t1.63

c11.s3.t1.63

That, if this supposition be correct, then also the signification of sa- and anupâdisesa, corresponding to that of upadhi, must be: “one with whom there is, or is not, respectively, still present a remnant of earthly, sinful nature,” is self-apparent. How it has come to pass that a so thoroughly different meaning has been given to both terms in the Itivuttaka, can naturally not be explained otherwise than by conjecture. It appears to me, that the expression anupâdisesâ nibbânadhâtu, which contains in fact a tautology—for the nibbânadhâtu implies the absence of upadhi—might by its form easily suggest to a misinformed mind the opposition of a saupâdisesâ nibbânadhâtu, while the word saupâdisesa, rightly comprehended, as we have pointed out from the Satipatthâna Sutta and the Vaṅgîsa Sutta, excludes the idea of Nirvâna. But if once this adjective had been employed regarding the nibbânadhâtu by an error like that we have supposed, if once the opposition of an anupâdisesâ and a saupâdisesâ nibbânadhâtu had been set up, then it was scarcely possible to attach a more passable meaning to these words, than that given to them in the Itivuttaka.