The ''Kaccānagotta Sutta'' is a short, but influential Buddhist text in the

Pali Canon The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school. During t ...

(''Saṃyutta Nikāya'' 12.15). A

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the la ...

and

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

(''Saṃyuktāgama'' 301; also a partial quotation in SĀ 262) parallel text is also extant. Although there is considerable agreement across versions, the Sanskrit and Chinese texts are more or less identical to each other and both slightly different from the Pāli version. The Chinese translation was carried out by

Guṇabhadra Gunabhadra (394–468) ( sa, गुणभद्र, ) was a monk and translator of Mahayana Buddhism from Magadha, Central India. His biography is contained in the work of a Chinese monk called Sengyou entitled ''Chu sanzang ji ji''. Life Gun ...

(c. 435-443 CE) as part of a '' Samyuktāgama Sutta'' (雜阿含經) translation project. Guṇabhadra is thought to have had the Sanskrit text brought to China from Sri Lanka. A separate Sanskrit text, also part of the fragmentary ''Saṃyuktāgama'' and dating from the 13th or 14th century, has been preserved. The text is cited in Sanskrit in works by

Nāgārjuna Nāgārjuna . 150 – c. 250 CE (disputed)was an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, scholar-saint and philosopher. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers.Garfield, Jay L. (1995), ''The Fundamental Wisdom of ...

and his commentators. Nāgārjuna's citation suggests he had a different version from the extant Sanskrit. The text is also cited in a number of other Mahāyāna Sūtras.

Themes in the Text

Mahākaccāna asks about the meaning of the phrase " right-view" (

Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhi ...

: ''sammādiṭṭhi''; Skt: ''samyagdṛṣṭi''; Ch: 正見). The main theme of the text is the avoidance of the extremes "existence" (Pāli: ''atthi'') and "non-existence" (Pāli: ''natthi'') with respect to the world (Pāli: ''loka''), and instead seeing the world in terms of the

Middle Way The Middle Way ( pi, ; sa, ) as well as "teaching the Dharma by the middle" (''majjhena dhammaṃ deseti'') are common Buddhist terms used to refer to two major aspects of the Dharma, that is, the teaching of the Buddha.; my, အလယ်� ...

which is illustrated by the twelve nidānas. The one with right-view understands this. In the Chinese version, the terms "existence" and "non-existence" are rendered 有 (''yǒu'') and 無 (''wú''). The Sanskrit text uses the terms ''asti'' and ''nāsti''. Nāgārjuna's Sanskrit citation uses the words ''bhava'' and ''abhava'' instead, although in context these terms mean more or less the same as the roots of both ''atthi'' (Sanskrit: ''asti'') and ''bhava'' come from verbs meaning "to be" (i.e. √''as'' and √''bhū''). The question of existence and non-existence is discussed in the context of right-view (''sammādiṭṭhi'') with Mahākaccāna initially asking the Buddha to define right view for him. Kaccāna is a moderately prominent character in the Pāli Canon, and two canonical commentaries are attributed to him.

Sources

Primary

*Pāli: ''Saṃyutta Nikāya'' (SN 12.15, PTS iii.16-17); also cited in toto in the ''Channa Sutta'' (SN 22.90). *Sanskrit: Sūtra 19 of ''Nidānasaṃyukta'', in a ''Saṃyuktāgama'' collection found in

Turfan Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015). Geonyms The original name of the ci ...

, probably copied c. 13th or 14th century. *Chinese: ''Saṃyuktāgama'' 301 (T. 2.99 85a-86c), probably translated from a Sanskrit original; also partially cited in ''Saṃyuktāgama'' 262 (T. 2.99 66c01-c18 = SN 22.90) with a significantly different rendering, suggesting a different translator.

Secondary

The ''sutta'' is quoted in the

Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra The ''Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra'' (Sanskrit, "Discourse of the Descent into Laṅka" bo, ལང་ཀར་བཤེགས་པའི་མདོ་, Chinese:入楞伽經) is a prominent Mahayana Buddhist sūtra. This sūtra recounts a teachin ...

(Section LXII; p. 145). It is also cited in Sanskrit in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārika (MMK 15.7) and in commentaries on this work by

Candrakīrti Chandrakirti (; ; , meaning "glory of the moon" in Sanskrit) or "Chandra" was a Buddhist scholar of the madhyamaka school and a noted commentator on the works of Nagarjuna () and those of his main disciple, Aryadeva. He wrote two influential w ...

, namely '' Prassanapadā'' and '' Madhyamakāvatārabhāṣya''. As the only text cited by name in MMK it is pointed to as evidence that Nāgarjuna might not have been a Mahāyānist.

David Kalupahana David J. Kalupahana (1936–2014) was a Buddhist scholar from Sri Lanka. He was a student of the late K.N. Jayatilleke, who was a student of Wittgenstein. He wrote mainly about epistemology, theory of language, and compared later Buddhist philo ...

has referred to the MMK as "a commentary on the ''Kaccānagotta Sutta''".

English Translations

from Pāli

*''Access to Insight''
Thanissaro
*Jayarava.
Kaccānagotta Sutta
(SN 12.15, PTS S ii.16.) along with Buddhaghosa’s commentary (PTS SA ii.32)''.

from Chinese

*Choong Mun-keat & Piya Tan (2004) ‘Saṃyukta Āgama 301 = Taishō 2.99.85c-86a’.
Dharmafarer
'. (pages numbered 89-91) *Jayarava
Kātyāyana Gotra Sūtra
*LapisLazuli Translations -

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References

External sources

*Kalupahana, David J. (1986). ''Nāgārjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way''. State University of New York Press. *Li, Shenghai. ''Candrakīrti’s Āgama: A Study of the Concept and Uses of Scripture in Classical Indian Buddhism''. hD Thesis 2012. *Mattia Salvini. 'The Nidānasamyukta and the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: understanding the Middle Way through comparison and exegesis.' ''Thai International Journal of Buddhist Studies'' II (2011): 57-95. *Tripāṭhī, Chandra. (Ed.). 'Fünfundzwanzig Sūtras Des Nidānasaṃyukta' in ''Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden'' (Vol. VIII). Edited by Ernst Waldschmidt. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962. ncludes translation into German*Vaidya, P. L. ''Saddharma-laṅkāvatāra Sūtram''. The Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning. Darbhanga. 1963.