In Pāli commentarial literature—as in Sanskrit commentaries—the meaning of canonical texts is often explained in a dialogical structure of objections and replies. If an objection contains two or more positions, a passage pointing out their consequences may be inserted between the objection and the reply. To mark these three different sections, commentators introduced specific words or phrases, among them etthāha to introduce an objection, kiñ c’ ettha to open the explication of the consequences of the positions given in an objection, and vuccate to indicate the reply. All three are syntactically detached from the subsequent sentences.
目次
Objection (etthāha) 35 Corpus 37 Analysis of the occurrences 37 Discussion of Consequences (kiñ c’ ettha) 43 Reply (vuccate) 44 Conclusions 45
