Talk:諸行無常

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Etymology of the JA term and Middle Chinese[edit]

@EdwardAlexanderCrowley, the first instance I can find of this expression in Japanese is in 984, whereas the separate component terms 諸行 and 無常 can both be traced to Japanese texts from the early 600s. This suggests that the four-character string may have been coined independently in Japanese.

I'm having trouble accessing the buddhism-dict.net source you mentioned in your edit comments -- does this show that the four-character string was in use in Chinese earlier than 984? I'm not finding the term in the few general-purpose Chinese dictionaries I have to hand, but my guess is that this four-character string is perceived by Chinese dictionary editors as a non-lexical, SOP phrase, rather than any kind of set phrase and idiomatic expression that would warrant a dictionary entry.

Meanwhile, I don't understand how the Tibetan references you mentioned would be relevant to the Japanese term...

Pinging also a few of the other Chinese editors in case they have any insight: @Justinrleung, Tooironic, Mar vin kaiser, 沈澄心, RcAlex36, Suzukaze-c. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:43, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also pinging @Frigoris, who I just learned might also have access to Buddhist-related materials. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:33, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See archive.org buddhism-dict.net source, wait until the whole page is ready and Ctrl+F 諸行無常. There're somehow five Sanskrit versions.
From 玄奘(602-664)'s translation of 瑜伽師地論卷三十四. [1]. Earlier translation of the same text is different. In general, I think Buddhism words never first originated in Japan, but since Japanese people think this is a compound, and this is a compound. There may be earlier sources though. EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 02:02, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
總結十行依三量觀（from the website above, T1579 瑜伽師地論 ~ 1 本地分 ~ 14 獨覺地）
何等為十？一、變異行，二、滅壞行，三、別離行，四、法性行，五、合會行，六、結縛行，七、不可愛行，八、不安隱行，九、無所得行，十、不自在行。如是十行，依證成道理能正觀察。此中且依至教量理。如世尊說：諸行無常。
katamairdaśabhis tad yathā / vipariṇāmākāreṇa, avināśākāreṇa, viyogākāreṇa, sannihitā (14B-1[1]) [/] kāreṇa, dharmatā-kāreṇa / saṃyojana-bandhanākāreṇa, aniṣṭākāreṇa, ayoga-kṣemākāreṇa, anupa(kāreṇa (1))lambhākāreṇa, asvātantrākāreṇa ca / etān punar daśākārān upapatti-sādhanayuktyā upaparīkṣate /
tatrāgamastāvadyathoktaṃ bhagavatā sarva-saṃskārā anityāḥ
You shouldn't change anityāḥ to anitya. EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 02:08, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since I can't browse the entries directly, I'm very thankful that you've copied the relevant details here. I'll update the Japanese entry accordingly.
  • The text in <big> tags confused me -- I didn't directly edit any romanizations, and instead I templated the content you'd added, in part to fix various formatting issues. When doing so, I used {{m|sa|...}}, which auto-generates the romanization directly from the devanagari spelling. After some further exploration, I think you mean to point out that the full expression includes declinations that are missing from the lemma forms that I moved into the templates, resulting in incorrect grammar. I'll tweak that in a moment, so the displayed spellings are the correct declined words, and the links go through to the lemma forms (our full entries).
Incidentally, the romanization you added included saṃskārā, which doesn't appear to be a valid declination for Sanskrit संस्कार (saṃskāra). I've assumed that you intended to spell this as saṃskārāḥ, the plural nominative, which seems to be the correct form to use after सर्व (sarva). If that was an incorrect guess, please advise. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 04:57, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[2] T1579 瑜伽師地論 ~ 1 本地分 ~ 14 獨覺地, Ctrl+F 諸行無常 and press Sh-SH, and that's enough. I don't know how to format correctly because I know nothing about Sanskrit, and adding Devanagari form causes issues, like declination, mis-adding Hindi, etc, that's why I use where in the last edition. I hope the correct form will be found. EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 05:18, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Eirikr, EdwardAlexanderCrowley, hello, I don't quite understand what the matter is. The entry looks just fine to me as it is now.. thanks. The grammatical case/number of the Buddhist Sanskrit probably don't matter much, as long as the correct headwords are linked to (and the entire phrase doesn't stand out as ungrammatical), I think.
Also, the exact phrasing were fluid to begin with, see these texts in the Univ of Oslo bilingual database:
The above are from Univ. of Oslo's multilingual text database. --Frigoris (talk) 10:50, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for verifying Sanskrit grammar. Let's leave various counterpart to Chinese section. User:Frigoris, is this a direct translation, or via Pali? EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 11:12, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EdwardAlexanderCrowley, what do you refer to in the question "is this a direct translation..."? --Frigoris (talk) 12:07, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is 諸行無常 ever translated from w:Pali(巴利语)? EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 12:24, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EdwardAlexanderCrowley, It's difficult to say with certainty what "the" source language of a particular translation was. The textual histories of Buddhist literature are very complex.. For this particular term which appears in the Chinese Madhyamāgama the source language was probably a historical Prakrit language of Northern India or a Silk Road state. In dictionaries I think it's conventional to use Sanskrit and Pali as the etymological language, perhaps not for textual-history accuracy but as convenience (using them as informative indices rather than "the" historically accurate form). --Frigoris (talk) 13:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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