On the origins of the word Mara

After trawling through volumes of dictionaries, glossaries and texts, I've come pretty well to the conclusion of this line of enquiry. I'm sure that specialists in the field of Proto-Indo European culture would be able to extend the study further but this, I guess if for another day. So, what are my conclusions:

1. Whilst the Māra as found within Buddhist mythology can be demonstrated to by a modification of the Indra/Namuci myth, the origins of the term are derived from other sources.
2. The Buddha's initial quest was to find the deathless condition, i.e. amṛta. He overcome death in the form of Māra. but he does not eradicate Māra. The Buddha does not become Māra-mārāka, 'the killer of death'.
3. Māra does not come as pain, old age, sickness and death itself but as a plaguing spirit which seeks to 'rub-away' at the emotional stability of the Buddha.
4. There are other roots from which a word Māra could plausibly be obtained: i.e. mṛd and not mṛt.
5. Māra does not seek to destroy the Buddha or cut short his life, but to 'hinder' or 'thwart' the revelation of his teaching.
6. Māra appears in the hypogogic sate of mind between full awakening and sleep. Māra, is then, a mare.
7. Māra originates from within some pre-existing Proto-Indo European mythplex which is still reflected in extant European languages but becomes apotheosized in Buddhist subculture as Māra Deputra. Within Indo-Iranian mythology, the role of Māra is absorbed into Yakṣa mythplex whose origins are most likely founded within the mythologies of pre-aryan indigenous peoples.
   

 

A new semester begins...

The summer is over and I return to work towards the completion of my thesis. Over the summer I've done a number of things:

1. re-read the Chinese text and my translation.
2. made corrections/amendments based upon information obtained from Karashima's glossary.
3. resolved ambiguities in the reading of the text.
4. resolved a number of topics which were unclear including 12 ascetic practices. the rishi, the division of the bodhisattva path.
5. completed a chapter-by-chapter summary of the text.
6. examined the text for key questions which underpin the specific development of the narrative of the text
7. explored the topic of threshold experiences between altered states of consciousness.
8. read-up how research in such altered states contribute to our understanding of prehistoric culture
9. broadened the examination for evidence that might indicate how the Mara mytheme has origins in proto-indo-european culture. The evidence for this relies heavily upon comparative phonology, mythology and reconstructed phonology. This cannot rely upon Jungian ideas of the Archetype as, in general, the mythologies he considered are closely related.
   
10. reviewed Maleksara's view of the nature of Mara, metaphor vs psychological reality.
11. found an interesting reference to a parallel to Mara, but not developed in Jaina commentaries.
    
12. began to structure the list questions into a chapter
13. reflecting on how the prototype descriptions of the bodhisattva path can be contribute to the discussion of the text.
14. exploring the notion that the traditional etymology of the word Mara be reconsidered in the light of comparative linguistics and mythologies which describe of evil spirits approaching during sleep. The significant issue here is that the English word 'mare' denotes such a dream-spirit and in the earliest texts that contribute to the current Mara mythplex typically denotes and approach at the sleep threshold. (ie during night, raining and victim in a possible semi-samadhi/sleep condition.
    

Chapter 30 Finished!

Today is a good day. It means that after all these years a full review of my working translation has been completed! This means that I can put the text aside for now and work solidly on my thesis. I can tell that some of the terms used need reviewing in the light of Karashima's glossary but this does not alter the narrative rendering. Unlike Karashima whose work is largely philological in that it he largely seeks to match Chinese words with Indic counterparts and lists word usage which might be considered representative of the period in which the Daoxing was produced. He is not concerned with the narrative content. I've sought to produce a working English rendering of a Chinese text, not a deconstruction and in the hope of reconstructing a lost Indic original. The future revisions that I would look at modifying are those relating to binomes, ie. two ideas placed together to create a new, third notion, eg 看见 would ordinarily be translated as 'have seen', whereas I would have reduced this to 'look and saw'.

I've also had a dabble at the formatting of the TOC and, at long last, can see how the formatting options are set for the content styles.

Other issues today, include recieving an Email from Chuck Muller, the maintainer of the DDBT, for clarification of some propsed entries. Also, the PDF of my translation crashed PDFStudio and makes Acrobat think twice returning an error on what I now believe to be some of the highlighting or comments that I've created. I'll remove the highlights and lets see what happens!
 

Chapter 30, penultimate page!!

Just at the bottom of the penultimate page and my mental juices are drying up. I'll call it quits for the day and start again early tomorrow. I can tell when the day's peak has been crossed, the meaning of even the simple phrases seems just out of arms length!

Re-Enrolment

I must remember to re-enrol with KCL tomorrow!

Chapter 30

More than half-way through this, the final chapter. Again there is something of a translation style change. A number of sections are quite minimal and rely heavily upon narrative to clarify meanings. Also there have been a couple of phrases whose wording is relatively unique given the overall lexis of the text. In fact I would have thought that Karashima would have picked these up an added them into his glossary. The first is the occurrence of 薩和薩 which is usually a transliteration if the skt. sarvasattva, 'all beings'. In the text this doesn't make sense and the only possible meaning could be 'bodhisattva and bodhisattva'. The context being the writing down of the prajnaparamita sutra. It is an absurdity that all beings would do such a thing. Next to cause me to pause and think was 諦. This usually translated as 'truth' as in the Four Noble Truths (四諦). But no, we have 諦念 and  諦受. Here 諦 has the rarer literary meaning of 'something to think about', which is really what is implied in 四諦. In practice, this 諦 is not pondering, but taking care over something. Also 念 is not simply to think, but to recall.

Whilst Karashima's T224 glosses have no reference to 諦, his glosses on Dharamaraksha's Lotus Sutra did have 諦觀 and 諦聽: 'to observe minutely' and 'listen carefully'.

After modifying my text I sent a comment to the DDBT for the 諦 entry to add an additional meaning.

With some luck and peace and quiet I should have Chapt.30 finished by this time tomorrow night.

Chapter 27 -DONE!

Well, started at 9am this morning and apart from lunch and a two hour walk with my family and evening tea, I've pushed on with reviewing and ironing out issues in my rendering of Chapt.27! Unlike the previous few chapters, this one varies greatly in content as compared to the extant Sanskrit and the Conze English rendering. My general observation is that the key narrative elements are pretty well the same, the differences lie in the expansion and elaboration of descriptions and attributes.

There were a couple of phrases which I needed to ponder over, indeed, I pondered over them so much that I can't remember what they are now! I'm pretty well-brain numbed. Its almost 11pm and I need to call it a day.

Chapt 28/29 I remember working on last autumn and so I expect most of this to be fine with the exception of a few minor corrections. I know that there will be some issues with the final chapter but, fortunately this is something of an epilogue and is quite brief (5 pages).