The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies v7.c49: Cūḷaniddesa

The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies v7.c49

Language: English

Cūḷaniddesa

The Cūḷaniddesa is most easily characterized as the canonical commentary on the Pārāyanavagga, the fifth vagga of the Suttanipāta. Yet the structure of the Cūḷaniddesa is somewhat more complex than that of its companion the Mahāniddesa, reflecting more obviously the composite nature of the Suttanipāta. The core of the Pārāyanavagga consists of sixteen sets of questions posed by sixteen sages, and the Buddha’s replies to them. These appear as suttas nos. 2-17 in the text, with suttas no. 1 and no. 18 serving as an introduction and conclusion which provide a frame story for the questions and answers. The Cūḷaniddesa begins with the first sutta, but it simply reiterates these verses without comment. It then gives a full commentary on the remaining suttas, including the final one. But it doesn’t stop there. Rather, it concludes with a commentary on the third sutta of the first vagga of the Suttanipāta, the traditionally admired Khaggavisāṇa (Rhinoceros-horn) sutta.

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The Cūḷaniddesa, like the Mahāniddesa, consists of formulaic definitions and explanations (glosses, Pali: niddesa; Skt. nirdeśa) of words and phrases in the original text. The version of the Cūḷaniddesa that has been reasonably accessible to scholars in the West for some time directly reflects the rather piecemeal nature of this type of commentary. This Pali Text Society edition (W. Stede, editor, London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1918) is not the usual straightforward edition based on manuscripts. Stede has modified the arrangement of the Cūḷaniddesa, presenting its individual glosses in dictionary form.

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In doing so, Stede has provided the potential student of the Suttanipāta and the Cūḷaniddesa with an edition that facilitates a terminological analysis of these texts. Yet certain aspects of his explanation for modifying the arrangement of this text tend to undermine our confidence that he has presented the text merely rearranged, and such confidence must be inviolable if we are to utilize his analysis and not be forced to repeat it ourselves from the manuscripts.

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His statements that throw this procedure into question are of two sorts. First, he justifies his reworking of the text by saying that:

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In reality the exposition is not an organic structure, but only an aggregate of disconnected pieces or atoms—each of them representing a stereotype phrase which serves for the word or words not only in this special setting, but in any setting. (p. ix)

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We have seen that this is not strictly true with reference to the *Mahāniddesa*, as the variations among the glosses for individual terms reveal a great deal about the particular instances of them *in situ*. Although Stede’s arrangement of them does not necessarily preclude recognition of such variations in the *Cūḷaniddesa*, it is certainly not legitimate to use this rearranged version of the *Cūḷaniddesa*—as Stede suggests—as “a sort of passage-index” to the *Mahāniddesa*. For if there is no variation among the *Cūḷaniddesa* glosses, they cannot accurately reflect the *Mahāniddesa* glosses; and if there is such variation, knowledge of the specific locations of the terms being variously explained in either the *Aṭṭhakavagga* or the *Pārāyanavagga* would be crucial to interpreting them.

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Stede also makes the general observation that all commentarial explanations are stereotypical and, consequently, he aims

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to one day reduce the whole of our explanatory matter (and I daresay a good deal of our text-matter as well) to its simplest form, its nucleus, and trace it back to its common source. (p. x)

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Putting his specific observation about the *Cūḷaniddesa* together with this claim concerning the commentaries in general, Stede concludes that the *Cūḷanidessa* fits nicely into his scheme for analyzing the Pali Buddhist literature, as the real value of its glosses

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lies by no means in their “speciality”, i.e. being an explanation of the passage to which they are appended, but rather in their “generality”, as being part of a greater commentary-whole, bricks in a larger building, to the reconstruction of which the new arrangement will help contribute. (p. x)

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The second sort of statement that could lead one to doubt the precise faithfulness of this edition to the original text is epitomized by Stede’s asseration:

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Thus its setting into the modern form is, I believe, in no way an impairment of its character; it only exchanges its Eastern garb for a Western one, and gains in its value as analysis ("exposition") by a further improvement of it. (p. x)

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Any serious textual scholar should beware of previous attempts, no matter how scholarly, to "improve" a text, especially when that improvement is presented as an analytical substitute for a basic edition of the text.

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If we can rely on Stede's analysis—and there is no obvious reason to suspect it, aside from the ideological comments in his methodological introduction—he has indeed done us a great service. As he claims, Stede's rearrangement of the text facilitates the identification of the abbreviated "pe" passages so common in Pali texts. In such passages, a long or complex formulaic explanation is referred to by the first word or phrase in it, followed by the "etc." device. Often the full version of the passage can only be found at far remove from the "pe" passage at hand. This rearrangement also aids the study of Buddhist philosophical terminology. This latter benefit is quite welcome, as this text represents an early stage in the development of Buddhist Abhidharma terminology. Still, it would be better if we had a true edition of the text for the sake of comparing particular passages. Without such an edition, some uncertainty must remain as to whether Stede has overlooked minor glossing variations in the hope of reconstructing his commentarial building with uniformly made bricks. Perhaps the Pali Text Society has not yet reprinted this edition, although it did reprint the Mahāniddesa edition in 1978, because it recognizes the need for an edition of this text in a more conventional format.

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Despite Stede's efforts to improve on the Cūḷaniddesa, it seems to have been largely ignored by scholars of Pali texts in general. This is reflected in (and no doubt abetted by) the fact that this edition is fairly difficult to obtain, at least in the West. The Pali Text Society no longer sells it. In my experience, the only accessible copy in the U.S. is the rather decrepit one (thus not to be photocopied) held by the Library of Congress.

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Until a critical edition in a more traditional form is published, we must set aside our potential doubts about Stede's reworking of the text and use it to consider the philosophical content of the Cūḷaniddesa. Stede's edition facilitates this process greatly, whether one wishes to examine the definitions of the terms in particular verses, or the collected explanations of specific terms. This is because he first presents the Cūḷaniddesa in its original order, but without any of the actual glosses. For each verse he gives, rather, a list of the terms the *Cūḷaniddesa* explains and a number referring the reader to the location of their explanations in the Explanatory Matter or "dictionary" that constitutes the second portion of the edition.

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The *Cūḷaniddesa*, like the *Mahāniddesa*, uses a variety of explanatory formulas in a variety of ways. On the basis of the somewhat piecemeal ‘reading’ of these formulas one can get from Stede’s edition, his observation that the philosophical content of the *Cūḷaniddesa* does not differ from that of the *Mahāniddesa* in any significant way seems justified. The *Cūḷaniddesa* reveals the same kind of developed Theravāda soteriological, ontological, and epistemological conceptual schemes that the *Mahāniddesa* presents. It, too, utilizes many of the terms and formulas of the later tradition in explicating the earlier text.

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A comparison of the relationship between these two *Niddesas* and the texts they comment upon does lead to an interesting conclusion, but not one concerning the commentaries themselves. It seems clear that, while there is no great divergence between the two *Niddesas*, the philosophical and doctrinal differences between the *Cūḷaniddesa* and the *Pārāyanavagga* are not nearly as radical as those between the *Mahāniddesa* and the *Aṭṭhakavagga*. This indicates that the *Pārāyanavagga* is somewhat closer to the later tradition, especially in terms of its soteriology and metaphysics, than is the *Aṭṭhakavagga*. Thus the *Cūḷaniddesa* in some instances does not need to alter the original teaching a great deal in order to explain particular ideas or descriptions.

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The *Pārāyanavagga* is undoubtedly much closer to the point in the evolution of the tradition represented by the *Aṭṭhakavagga* than to the later, fully developed tradition of the *Niddesas*. It never uses the basic abhidharmic terms or classifications that are so standardized by the time of the *Niddesas*: nobles, stream-enterer . . . perfected being, the three types of enlightened ones, wrong views, precepts and vows, defilements, conditionings, constituents of desire, rebirth, self-nature, elements, faculties, *saṃsāra*. But its use of certain terms that the *Niddesas* and other later Theravāda texts utilize frequently—such as “*dharma*”, “enlightened one”, “*tathāgata*”, “ignorance”, “thirst”, “*upādhi*”, “birth and old age”, “path”, and “frustration”—indicate that it is at least slightly closer to the later text’s Abhidharmic view of reality than is the *Aṭṭhakavagga*.

Cites (3)

Mahāniddesa — Pāli
Cūḷaniddesa — Pāli
Suttanipāta — Pāli