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T.W. Rhys Davids
Public Domain
First Published 1903
[292]
The word "Dhamma" has given, and will always give, great trouble to the translators. It connotes or involves, so much. Etymologically it is identical with the Latin word forma; and the way in which it came to be used as it was in India, in Asoka's time, is well illustrated by the history of our own colloquialism "good form." Dhamma has been rendered Law. But it never has any one of the various senses attached to the word "law" in English. It means rather, when used in this connection, that which it is "good form" to do in accord with established custom. So it never means exactly religion, but rather, when used in that connection, what it behoves a man of right feeling to do -- or, on ther other hand, what a man of sense will naturally hold. It lies quite apart from all questions either of ritual or of theology.[1]
On such Dhamma the brahmins, as such, did not then even pose as authorities. But it was the main subject of thought and discussion among the Wanderers, and to them the people looked up as teachers of the Dhamma. And while, on the one hand, the Dhamma was common property to them all, was Indian rather than Buddhist, yet, on the other hand, the people we now call Buddhists (they did not call themselves so) were concerned so exclusively with the Dhamma, apart from ritual or theology, that their doctrine was called the Dhamma. It fell, naturally, for them into three divisions, quite distinct one from the other, -- the theory of what it was right (good form) for the layman (the upĪsaka) to do and to be, of what it was right for the Wanderer (the Pabbajita) to do and to be; and thirdly, what the men or women, whether laity or Wanderers, who had entered the Path to Arahatship, should do, and be, and know. On each of these three points their views, amidst much that was identical with those generally held, contained also, in many details, things peculiar to themselves alone....
[1]Dhammas, in the plural, meant phenomena, or forms of consciousness considered as such. See Mrs. Rhys-David's Buddhist Psychology, pp. xxxii.-xl.
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