The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [2]
My aim in editing and revising this material, I must frankly state, has not been to reconstruct the suttas in a way that would conform as closely as possible to the intentions of the original translator. My aim has been, rather, to turn out a translation of the Majjhima Nikāya that simultaneously approaches two ideals: first, fidelity to the intended meaning of the texts themselves; and second, the expression of that meaning in an idiom that would be intelligible to a modern reader seeking in the Pali suttas personal guidance in the proper understanding and conduct of life. Terminological exactitude and internal consistency have been important guidelines underlying the endeavour to achieve those ideals, but care has been taken that their pursuit should leave the translation transparent as to the meaning.
To produce a translation of the Majjhima Nikāya that is both technically precise and lucid in expression required numerous revisions in the manuscript version. Most were quite minor but a few were substantial. Numerous alterations were made in the rendering of Pali doctrinal terms, most of Ven. Khantipālo’s changes having been incorporated. In place of Ven. Ñāṇamoli’s novel renderings I have in most cases returned to the clearer and better established terminology he employed in The Path of Purification. When doubts arose I always turned for help to Ven. Nyanaponika Mahāthera, whose wise advice helped to steer this translation closer towards its two guiding ideals. The handling of several important technical terms is discussed at the end of the Introduction, to which is attached a list showing the terminological changes that were made for this edition. By consulting the list the reader can obtain some idea of how the manuscript translation read. A glossary in the back gives the English renderings used for the major Pali doctrinal terms found in the Majjhima Nikāya as well as Pali words and meanings not included in the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary. The subject index also includes, for most entries, the Pali term after its chosen English rendering. Botanical names that could not be easily rendered by familiar English equivalents have been left untranslated.
Ven. Ñāṇamoli’s translation was based primarily on the Pali Text Society’s roman-script edition of the Majjhima Nikāya, published in three volumes, the first edited by V. Trenckner (1888), the second two by Robert Chalmers (1898, 1899). This edition was also used to check the translation, but on problematic passages I consulted as well two other editions: the Burmese Buddhasāsana Samiti’s Sixth Buddhist Council edition in Burmese script and the Sinhala-script Buddha Jayanti edition published in Sri Lanka. Instances are not unusual where the reading in one or the other of these editions was preferred to that of the PTS edition, though only occasionally are these mentioned in the notes. Seldom too do the notes refer to I. B. Horner’s long-standing English translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, The Collection of the Middle Length Sayings, with which I sometimes compared Ven. Ñāṇamoli’s translation. Since the first volume of that translation was published in 1954, and the next two in 1957 and 1959, while Ven. Ñāṇamoli’s manuscript indicates that he did his revised translation between 1953 and 1956, it seems unlikely that he had consulted Horner’s version in preparing his own; at most, he might have had access to the first volume after he had completed his first volume.
The text of the translation is divided into numerical sections. These divisions were introduced by Ven. Ñāṇamoli into his manuscript version of the suttas and are not found in the PTS edition of the Majjhima Nikāya. Sometimes, when logic seemed to dictate it, I have made minor alterations