Note 14 — V THE DOCTRINE OF THE BUDDHA

The texts give the true meaning of Jāti with sufficient frequency, as, for instance, in the ninth Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya, as follows:—

“Khandhānaŋ pātubhāvo, āyatanānaŋ paṭilābho, ayaŋ vuccat’ āvuso jāti.” Which means: “The coming into manifestation of the Khandhas (that is, the arising anew of corporeality, sensations, perceptions, discriminations, and cognition-acts, such as at every moment are exhibited in every individual combustion process, every alimentation process), the ever repeated seizing of the Ayatanas (that is, of the objects of sense, or of that, supported by which—in the objective as in the subjective sense—the senses are able to come into activity),—this, friend, is called birth.”

I embrace the opportunity of calling attention to the equally misleading rendering of Nāma-rūpa by “name and form.” The native pandits laugh at such a rendering. Here Nāma is “that which bends” (nāmeti), i.e. that which conglobates the material (rūpa) into that specific form through which even it becomes an individual. It is not merely name, but the totality precisely of what most is worth naming. As a matter of fact, the pandits of Ceylon explain it as the evolutional form of Viññāṇa.

In harmony with this, in the above cited Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, Sāriputta gives the following explanation: “Sensation, perception, volition, thought-contact, cogitation, this is called nāma.” And in the Milinda Pañha it is said: “What is gross, that is rūpa; what is of fine, mind-like constitution, that is nāma.” In the Abhidhamma exegesis, the so-called Nāma-series is directly identified with Viññāṇa.