1.8. Lokasutta The World (SN 56:28; V 435)

Question 1

sadevake loke samārake sabrahmake

“Cattār’imāni, bhikkhave, ariyasaccāni. . . . Sadevake loke samārake sabrahmake, sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadevamanussāya, tathāgato ariyo; tasmā ‘ariyasaccānī’ti vuccanti.”

Answer 1

“in the world with its devas, with Māra, with Brahmā.” Loke is a masculine noun in the locative case, preceded and followed by adjectives constructed by prefixing sa-, “together with,” respectively, to deva, māra, and brahmā, and adding the suffix -ka, which becomes -ke as modifying the locative singular loke. We find here a common syntactical pattern in Pāli: when a series of adjectives (including adjectival compounds and present participles) modifies a noun, the first precedes the noun and the others follow it. This might be represented as M1 N M2 M3 . . ., where N represents the noun and M the modifiers.

Question 2

sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadevamanussāya

“Cattār’imāni, bhikkhave, ariyasaccāni. . . . Sadevake loke samārake sabrahmake, sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadevamanussāya, tathāgato ariyo; tasmā ‘ariyasaccānī’ti vuccanti.”

Answer 2

“in this population with its ascetics and brahmins, with its devas and humans.”

Pajāya is the singular locative of the feminine noun pajā, “the created order, the population.” It is first described by the bahubbīhi sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā, built on the dvanda compound samaṇabrāhmaṇa with prefix sa-. The double -ss- occurs through the influence of the -śr- cluster in Skt śramaṇa. The compound is turned into an adjective by the suffix -iyā, a feminine singular locative in agreement with pajāya. Sadevamanussāya is a bahubbīhi formed by prefixing sa- to the dvanda devamanussa, which takes a feminine locative termination agreeing with pajāya.

Question 3

tathāgato

“Cattār’imāni, bhikkhave, ariyasaccāni. . . . Sadevake loke samārake sabrahmake, sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadevamanussāya, tathāgato ariyo; tasmā ‘ariyasaccānī’ti vuccanti.”

Answer 3

untranslated; an honorific designation of the Buddha, explained by the commentaries as meaning (among other things) “thus come” (tathā āgato) — that is, come in the way the previous buddhas have come — and “thus gone” (tathā gato), gone to nibbāna by cultivating the factors of the noble path.83 The word is a kammadhāraya compound composed of an adverb and a past participle.

Question 4

tasmā “ariyasaccānī”ti vuccanti

“Cattār’imāni, bhikkhave, ariyasaccāni. . . . Sadevake loke samārake sabrahmake, sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadevamanussāya, tathāgato ariyo; tasmā ‘ariyasaccānī’ti vuccanti.”

Answer 4

“therefore they are called ‘noble truths.’” On this explanation, ariyasacca is a tappurisa compound, “a truth of the noble one” — that is, of the Buddha.