Vinaya Texts

Author(s): T W Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford

Page 31

xxviii
VINAYA TEXTS FROM THE PÂLI.
was set free from the sense of the offence he had incurred 1. Pâtimokkha or Prâtimoksha means therefore 'Disburdening, Getting free.' The lengthening of the first vowel in the Pâli word is not without analogies which have been already adduced by Childers. It is certain that the word is older than the present shape of the Formulary now so called; for it is used several times in the Formulary itself, as well as in many of the oldest Suttas.
The Old Commentator makes the Pâtimokkha the head of the good Dhammas.' There is a curious passage in the Pâtimokkha where the Dhammas are said to be included in the Suttas :
'If a Bhikkhu at the half-monthly recitation of the Pâtimokkha should say, "Now for the first time do I notice that this Dhamma, as one handed down in the Suttas, embraced in the Suttas, gets recited every half-month!” then' &c. 2
It is plain here that neither Dhamma nor Sutta is used in the sense to which we are accustomed from the later books. The Dhammas recited half-monthly are those contained in the scheme of offences given in the Pâtimokkha, and the Suttas must therefore mean the separate clauses of that Formulary.
The fact is that the use of the word Sutta is by no means confined in the oldest Pâli to the texts of what was afterwards the Sutta Pitaka, nor is it exclusively used either in earlier or later times : in opposition to Vinaya. Thus we find it used again, as we think, of the Rules of the Pâtimokkha; and in contrast, as in the rule above quoted, to Dhamma, in Kullavagga IV, 14, 22, 23:
This Bhikkhu, of such and such a name, is a preacher
Compare Mahâvagga II, 3, 3. 2 Yo pana bhikkhu anvaddhamasam Pâtimokkhe uddissamâne evam vadeyya; idân' eva kho aham gânâmi, ayam pi kira dhammo suttâgato suttapariyâpanno anvaddhamâsam uddesam âgakkhatîti, tai ke... (the 73rd Pakittiya, quoted in Kullavagga III, 34, 2).
s Though more especially concerned here with the earlier use of the word Sutta, it may be well to remind our readers of the name Suttadharâ applied in the Sumangala Vilâsini to secular lawyers (see Alwis,'Introd.' &c., p. 100).
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