On some who are not allowed to become Buddhist Monks or nuns: an old list of types of slaves or unfree laborers.

• Author: Schopen, Gregory
• Position: Report

As has been so often times the case in work on the social history of early India, when Buddhist sources have been cited in discussions of slavery or servitude those sources have been almost exclusively Pali sources. (1) This, of course, has introduced a degree of distortion that is only now starting to become clear since it is also starting to become clear that, for example, in matters of Vinaya the Pali material may be the least representative, (2) and Vinaya has a good deal of material bearing on Indian social history. But it has also meant that a wealth of material in Sanskrit and other Buddhist languages has been all but ignored and left unexplored, with potentially important connections being missed and lexical problems left unsolved. My purpose here is to give but one small example.

An Upasampada-karmavaca was among the very first Pali texts to become known in Europe. (3) It is a manual giving the rules and procedures for ordaining a Buddhist monk, and it gives a series of questions that the candidate must be asked regarding things that would disqualify him for ordination. Two of these things are of particular interest. In Spiegel's edition, published in 1841, after the candidate is asked if he is a human and a male, and he answers in the affirmative, he is then asked bhujisso'si "Are you a free man?" and anano'si "Are you free from debt?" (4) These, too, must be answered affirmatively or the individual cannot be ordained. It has already been pointed out that in the Mulasarvastivadin ordination formulary the second of these two questions differs significantly--and we have several versions of it preserved in Sanskrit. (5) In these Mulasarvastivadin versions the candidate is first asked if he has any debt (deya), whether small or large, and if he answers yes he is then asked if he will be able to pay it after he has entered the religious life (pravrajya). Unless he says he will be able to do so he cannot be ordained. (6) The Mulasarvastivadin version of the first question also differs significantly.

There are at least four versions of this first question which have come down to us in Sanskrit manuscripts. The earliest of these manuscripts is (I) the Gilgit manuscript of a Bhiksukarmavakya (7th cent.); then comes (II) a single leaf from Nepal (10th cent.); followed by (III) a Sanskrit manuscript from Tibet that Jinananda has edited under the title Upasampadajnapti (11th-12th cent?); and finally (IV) a Bhiksunikarmavacana manuscript also from Nepal (12th--13th cent.). (7) Unlike in the Pali formulary where there is a single question expressed positively--"Are you a free man?" --in the Mulasarvastivadin versions, which in terms of manuscript traditions are almost certainly much older, there is a series of questions expressed negatively:

1. masi daso II. m[asi] dasi III. masi daso IV. masi dasi ma ahrtakah (8) [m]ahrtila ma praptako ma ahrtika [Rd; -ka] (9) ma praptako ma praptika ma ma vaktavyako vikritika ma vaktavyakah ma vaktavyaka ma ahrtako ma praptika ma vikritako ma ma vikritako vaktavyika It should, of course, be possible to translate the individual terms in these lists--a generic meaning for some seems obvious, and others are listed in Edgerton. In regard to the first category, dasa/dasi, for example, would conventionally--if disputedly--be translatable by 'slave'; ahrtaka would be easily taken as 'captive' or 'one who was seized/taken away'; and vikritaka 'one who is sold'. Praptaka and vaktavyaka are less obvious, but they, like both ahrtaka and vikritaka, are also both listed in Edgerton. This, however, does not get us as far as one might have thought, and the problems emerge already with his entries for vikritaka and ahrtaka.

Of our Sanskrit lists Edgerton seems to have known only a first edition of IV, and since this was a formulary for the ordination for nuns his forms are cited in the feminine. His least problematic entry perhaps is under vikritika: "one that has been sold (as a slave) ... (not to be initiated as a nun)." (10) But his uncertainty about ahrtaka is clear from the fact that it is put in parentheses and also from his definition "(doubtless = Pali ahataka ...), perhaps hired servant (of some particular kind)." His other definitions have a similar tone. For praptika he gives "seemingly some kind of servant or slave, at any rate, one not to be accepted as a nun"; for vaktavyika "some kind of person not to be initiated as a nun; subject to orders (?), or worthy of reproach, blameworthy (?)."

Edgerton does not cite any Tibetan "equivalents" for our terms, but there are at least four Tibetan translations of what appears to be the same list. The first of these occurs in the Tibetan translation of the Pravrajyavastu, the first section of the canonical Vinayavastu. It is repeated in Kalyanamitra's commentary, the Vinayavastutika, and occurs twice in the Ekottarakarmasataka, a handbook of formal monastic procedures extracted from the canonical Vinaya which in the Tibetan tradition is ascribed to Gunaprabha, once in the section dealing with the ordination of monks, and once in the section dealing with the ordination of nuns. (11) Unlike in the Sanskrit sources, where the order of the questions seems to diverge as the manuscripts get later, the order in these Tibetan sources is always the same:

khyod bran ma yin nam/ brkus pa ma yin nam/ rnyed btson [v. 1. brtson] ma yin nam/ rtsod pa can ma yin nam/ btsongs |v. 1. brtsongs] pa ma yin nam/

If only the order of the questions was stable in our Sanskrit sources it would, of course, be a relatively straightforward matter to establish the Sanskrit terms that these Tibetan lists were translating, but the fact that there is an increasing divergence in the Sanskrit lists introduces an element of uncertainty, and this is further complicated by the additional fact that the meanings of two of the Tibetan terms here are not in themselves clear.

Starting with what is clear, however, it can be said that Tibetan bran is almost certainly translating dasa--this is a standard and widely attested translation, and bran means 'slave, servant'. It is almost equally certain that Tibetan brkus pa is translating ahrtaka: the Tibetan means 'steal, rob, or carry off and frequently translates forms of [[square root of] (hr)]. And btsongs pa is an attested equivalent for vikrita 'sold'. The standard Tibetan list is therefore almost certainly translating a Sanskrit list that had das a first, ahrtaka second, and vikritaka fifth, a list that--so far at least--would have corresponded to that found in the Bhiksukarmavakya from Gilgit, the earliest manuscript witness that we have for the Sanskrit list. For the correspondence to be complete would only require that rnyed btson [v. 1. brtson] was translating prdptaka, and rtsod pa can was a rendering of vaktavyaka. If this were the case, both of the earliest Sanskrit manuscripts (I and II) and the standard Tibetan lists would have the first four items in exactly the same order. The problem here is that--as we have seen--the meanings of both praptaka and vaktavyaka are far from clear, and the meanings of Tibetan rnyed btson [v. l. brtson] and rtsod pa can are equally obscure.

Neither rnyed btson [v. l. brtson] nor rtsod pa can occurs in the standard dictionaries, with one exception: the Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo lists rnyed brtson--note the spelling--and says it is "old" or "ancient" (rnying) for gta' ma'i tshul gyis sbyin pa, "one who is given by way of a surety (or pledge or pawn)." (12) This, of course, does not tell us what the correct reading was or whether we should read btson or brtson, nor does it explain the developments that allowed either collocation to have this meaning. It would seem, however, to indicate that if rnyed btson [v. 1. brtson] is translating praptaka--and the chances are good that it is--then praptaka is another, and perhaps (earlier) Buddhist name for a type of slave which Ndrada lists as adhattah svamind "one who was pledged by his master." and the Arthasastra calls an ahitaka "(a man or a woman) kept as a pledge." (13) Given the definition supplied by the Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo it could hardly be otherwise. But this definition itself appears, at first sight, not to be particularly well anchored.

The Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen...