Simon, Walter

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereTibetan stes, stes­te, etc. and some of their Sanskrit correspondencesWalter SimonBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 42 / Issue 02 / June 1979, pp 334 ­ 336DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00145884, Published online: 24 December 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00145884How to cite this article:Walter Simon (1979). Tibetan stes, stes­te, etc. and some of their Sanskrit correspondences. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 42, pp 334­336 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00145884Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 15 Oct 2012TIBETAN STES, STES-TE, ETC. AND SOME OF THEIRSANSKRIT CORRESPONDENCESBy WALTER SIMONAs is generally known, the correspondence Tibetan stes-dban-gis—Sanskritdaivdt or daivena was proposed by Johannes Nobel and translated by him as' durch Schicksalsfiigung ' (by dispensation of fate). He did so in his editionof the Tibetan version Udrayana,1 offering the correspondence as a conjecturefor naivam.2 The equation has been taken over by Professor Lokesh Chandrainto his Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary,3 though failing to refer to it there as aconjecture. While I do not wish to contest in any way Nobel's conjecture,I thought it useful to adduce certain other correspondences, most of whichwere found when trying—unsuccessfully so far4—to corroborate the con-jecture by quotations from actual texts.I venture to offer this attempt as a small tribute to the distinguishedIndian scholar whose work we are celebrating in this issue.I. SumatiratnaA translation of a substantial portion of the entry stes in Sumatiratna'sTibetan-Mongolian dictionary 5 has been included by J. E. Bosson in a noteto stanza 61 * of his edition of the Tibetan and Mongolian versions of Sa-skyaPandita's Subhasitaratnanidhi (Legs-par bsad-pahi rin-po-ch'ehi gter). Hesupports thereby his translation of stes-dban-gis as ' by good fortune ', whichis in fact the most common meaning of this compound. But before dealingwith it (under V), I wish to consider the single word stes and a few othercombinations.II. stes in re stesTwo examples for stes in combination with re ' how' have been adducedfrom the Tibetan translation of the Lalitavistara, translated as ' how ex-cellent !'. ' In the Sanskrit original the correspondence Sobhanam sydt formsthe main clause, preceded in the case of the two examples by a conditionalclause and translated by Foucaux as ' ce serait bien '.8III. stes followed by te or ho (so) (sometimes preceded by ma); stes incombination with laAs an example without a Sanskrit text I wish to adduce a passage fromthe Tibetan version of the Abhiniskramana-sutra, the mfton-par hbyun-bahi1 Udrayana, Konig von Roruka, eine buddhistische Erzahlung, 2 parts, Wiesbaden, 1951.See pt. 1 {Tibet. Text u. Ubersetzung), 110, n. 6, and pt. 2 (Worterbuch), 30.• Divyavadana (ed. E. B. Cowell and E. A. Neil), Cambridge, 1886, 585,1. 7.» Pt. 5 (New Delhi, 1968), 972.• daivdt followed by Icathamcit occurs in Divyavadana, Ioc. cit., 592, 1. 10. The text has,however, not been translated into Tibetan.6 1 , 884 of the Bod-hor-gyi brda-yig (Corpus Scriptorum Mongolorum, 6), Ulanbatur, 1959.• See p. 314 of his Treasury of aphoristic jewels (Uralic and Altaic Series, 92), Bloomington,1969. The Tibetan text of the stanza appears on p. 51, Bosson's translation of both versions onp. 213. It should be noted that Sumatiratna's equivalent for stes dbaii, stabs legs (good mode),occurs in fact as a textual variant of stes dban in stanza 61.' See ' Tibetan re in its wider context', BSOAS, xxxi, 3, 1968, 559.8 See Le Lalita vistara, traduit du Sanskrit en franqais par Ph. Ed. Foucaux (Annales duMusee Guimet, 6), pt. 1, Paris, 1884, 228 and 229.TIBETAN STES, STES-TE, ETC. AND SOME OF THEIR SANSKRIT CORRESPONDENCES 335rndo, where stes-so is followed by a sentence with stes-te, and in both cases thecombinations are preceded by ma. The death of a son is deplored as ' mostunfortunate ' : (Ti(betan) T(ripitaka), xxxix, 25e, 1-2) 'E-ma-ho Rans-byed-kyibu IHag-spyod si-ba de ni te-por ma stes-so/ 'e-ma-ho Rans-byed-kyi bu IHag-spyodsi-ba de ni sin-tu te-por ma stes-te/ c'os hdvl-ba hdi ma t'os-so.In the second chapter of the Divydvaddna, the Purndvaddna (Cowell andNeil, 29, 7-9 and 15-16), we find ma stes-te ' unfortunately ' twice for daivayogdt( = daivdt ' disposition of fate '), thus showing the Tibetan version to be morein sympathy than the Sanskrit original with the prospective recipients ofclothes and sugar who call on Purna on days when the more expensive relevantshops are closed (Ti. T, XLI, 114a, 5-6 and b, 1-2).In the 25th chapter (loc. cit., 443, 7-8), we find stes-te translating sobhanamwhen reading about the hunter Halaka who in pursuit of the Kinnari Manohararecalls having ' fortunately' (stes-te) received from his Naga the ' unfailingsling' which will enable him to catch her: sobhano 'yam maydmoghah pdsondgdl labdho Manohardydh kinnarydh ksepsydmi, Ti. T, XLI, 198d, 2 : bdag-gihhtrlas don yod-pahi iags-pa t'ob-pa stes-te de miham-cihi bu-mo Yid-hp'rog-ma-lagdab-po snyam-nas. . . .For stes-la (' luckily ') Sumatiratna offers an example in the entry mentionedunder I (though without a Sanskrit passage): nyes-can stes-la sor-ra-re (' Maythe guilty-one not have a lucky escape ! ' ) .For an example of stes-nas see under IV.IV. ji-zig-Uar followed by stes (-nas)An example from the Tibetan version of the Bodhicarydvatdra—F. Wellerin his Index9 lists in fact two—may serve to illustrate the addition of stes (-nas)to stress the good fortune of the event. ji-zig-Uar renders Sanskrit katham,kathamcid or kathamcidapi ' somehow'. In the verse concerned,10 F i n o t "translates tathd kathamcid api ( = de-bzin ji-zig-Uar stes-nas) as ' je ne saiscomment'.For the translation oiji-zig Itar by stes dban see under V.V. stes-dbanAs mentioned under I, J. E. Bosson translated stes-dban-gis as ' by goodfortune' in a stanza of Sa-skya Pandita's Svbhdsitaratnanidhi, which is pre-ferable to Nobel's ' by dispensation of fate \1 2 I shall adduce two furtherexamples to confirm this meaning, though in both cases we have no supportingSanskrit text. The first (Ti. T, XLIII, 222a, 8) relates the story of a son who,after the death of both his parents, on a walk meets his landlord who turnsout ' by good fortune ' to be his future benefactor: dus gzan-zig-na dehi p'a-magnyis dus-la bab-nas/ de p'an-ts'un hk'yam-pa-na stes-dban-gis k'yim-bdag dehik'yim-du p'yin-pa. . . . The second example (Ti. T, XLIII, 199e, 1-2) reportsthat a woman has become pregnant whose husband had for a long time beenpraying for a son: dehi ts'e-na/ hbrog-gnas-na k'yim-bdag cig hdug-pa de-la bu9 F. Weller, Tibetisch-Sanskritischer Index zum Bodhicarydvaldra (Abhandlungen derSachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Kl. 46, 3 and 47, 3), Berlin,1952-5, 118 and 170." i n , 27 (Finot) == in, 28 (Weller).11L. Finot, La marche a la lumiere, Paris, 1920, ni, 27, p. 41.18 This was in fact an improvement on Schiefner's ' power of fate', included in Jaschke'sdictionary (p. 222b).336 TIBETAN STES, STES-TE, ETC. AND SOME OF THEIR SANSKRIT CORRESPONDENCESined-nas de yun-rih-po-nas kye-ma bdag-la bu yod-par gyur-cig ces smon-nas stas(instead of stes) dbah-gis dehi c'un-ma-la sems-can zugs-par gyur-to. . . .An interesting example of stes dban-gis occurs in the Tibetan version ofthe Suvarnavarndvaddna which was edited, together with its Sanskrit originalby Tissa Eajapatirana in his (unpublished) thesis (Canberra, 1974), ch. 91,translation p. 80. We find there our compound, not like stes-te in IV as anaddition to ji-zig-ltar, but as its equivalent: the caravan leader Kama, hisship destroyed in the great ocean, together with a child somehow found aplank. . . . Tibetan: ded-dpon rNa-can yah rgya-mts'o c'en-por gru zig-pa dan /stes-dban-gis byis-pa zig dan lhan-cig spah-leb-h hjus-te. . .. Sanskrit: Kamcdcasdrthavdho mahdsamudrdd bhagnayanapatrah Jcathandt phalakam dsddya. . ..In a similar way Sumatiratna in the entry ji-zig-ltar of his dictionary(i, 695) notes ji-zig-ltar-te stes dbah understanding the te as ni and translatingit as inu: jarnbar nigen metu inu jol-un ike.In conclusion I should like to point out that sobhanam appears to be themost common correspondence to stes and its compounds. As its occurrencein the Divydvaddna has shown me, it is often translated13 by ma nyes-so, manons-so, or by legs and bzah-po, and sometimes it is completely ignored.18 Leaving out oases like mk'o (Div. 511,14/15 and 511,15/16) andrun-ba (Div. 437,29/438,1).

Tibetan "stes, stes-te", etc. and Some of Their Sanskrit Correspondences

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Tibetan "stes, stes-te", etc. and Some of Their Sanskrit Correspondences

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