Vinaya (2): The Mahavagga
by T. W. Rhys Davids | 1881 | 156,382 words
The Mahavagga (part of the Vinaya collection) includes accounts of Gautama Buddha’s and the ten principal disciples’ awakenings, as well as rules for ordination, rules for reciting the Patimokkha during uposatha days, and various monastic procedures....
Mahavagga, Khandaka 2, Chapter 33
“In case, O Bhikkhus, there assemble in a certain residence on the day of Uposatha a number of resident Bhikkhus, four or more; they know that other resident Bhikkhus are about to enter the boundary. They know that other resident Bhikkhus have entered within the boundary. They see other resident Bhikkhus who are about to enter, &c., who have entered within the boundary. They hear that other resident Bhikkhus are about to enter, &c., have entered within the boundary.”
Thus[1] a hundred and seventy-five systems of triads are produced which refer to resident and resident Bhikkhus[2]. (Then follow the same cases with regard to) resident and incoming Bhikkhus, incoming and resident Bhikkhus, incoming and incoming Bhikkus. By putting these words (successively) into the peyyāla[3], seven hundred triands are produced.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Remarks like this, which indicate the rules for supplying abbreviated passages, do not belong, strictly speaking, to the text of the Vinaya itself, but form a posterior addition, as is shown also by grammatical peculiarities. In chaps. 28-32 we have seventy-five cases, or twenty-five triads; all of these triads contain the words: 'They know that there are other resident Bhikkhus absent.' By successively varying these words six times, as is indicated in chap. 33, we obtain a hundred and seventy-five triads.
[2]:
I.e. the assembled Bhikkhus as well as the incoming reside in the same āvāsa.
[3]:
'Peyyāla' is identical in meaning and, we believe, etymologically with 'pariyāya.' See Childers s.v.; H. O.'s remarks in; Kuhn's Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung, vol. xxv, 324; Trenckner, Pali Miscellany, p. 66.