The following paper aims to discuss the Buddhist Sanskrit term sparśa(vihāra), which is derived from the Jaina and Buddhist Middle Indic terms phāsuya-vihāra and phāsu-vihāra. In order to first explain the philological background, references are made to Buddhist linguistic studies (§ 1.1), in particular when looking at the word sparśa for the Middle Indic word phāsu (§ 1.2). There are two form-like phrases in the Vinayavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivādins which clearly show (§ 2.1–§ 2.2) that the term sparśa(vihāra) is used in a similar context to that of the older monastic code of the Jainas and the Buddhist Theravāda school (§ 2.3). The sanskriticized word sparśa2 can probably be considered school specific as it was used by some monastic scholars belonging or related to the Mūlarvāstivāda school. For example, the Mahāvyutpatti, which follows Guṇaprabha’s Vinayasūtra (§ 3.1), and Sthiramati’s Triṃśikāvijñaptibhāṣya (§ 3.2) both interpreted sparśa(vihāra) as “amenity/convenience” in contrast to the regular Sanskrit sparśa1 meaning “touch/contact”. In comparison with the Mūlasarvāstivādins, three other Vinaya schools seem to use their own word forms: the Theravādins and Mahāsāmghika-Lokottaravādins used phāsu, while the form phāṣa occurs predominantly in the Turfan fragments of the Sarvāstivādins (§ 4.1). Finally, it is worth noting that the old Chinese translation 觸住 (chu-zhu) or 觸安隱住 (chu-anyin-zhu) for sparśavihāra, as noted in the Saṃyuktāgama (T 99) and some other early Chinese translations, can contribute to the much-discussed question concerning the “school affiliation” of such texts — a topic what will be investigated in a forthcoming essay by Ven. Huimin (§ 4.2).
目次
§1. Introductory Remarks 53 §2. Two Phrases in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-Vinaya containing sparśa 56 §3. sparśa being school specific for the Mūlarvāstivāda 58 §4. sparśa/phāsu/phāṣa as mark to distinguish different text versions 60
