The Common misinterpretations of a Pali Verse that states the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not
This verse I
have heard many politicians of yesteryear utter in tandem with
political speeches, I often wonder from where it originated.
This has nothing to do with Buddhism or Dhamma.
Somebody
with knowledge with Pali had coined this verse and all politicians of
yesteryear and present use this as a phrase to propagate his or her name
and tribe.
This is how the post-colonial culture and politics
developed.
“Rupam Jirati Majjanam (Body decays)
Nama Gottam Najirathi” (name and tribe do not)
The
face value seems all Buddhist in nature but its implication in modern
day is really disruptive to the nature of Dhamma as stated in the
Tripitaka (the Three Baskets).
There is no problem with the first statement.
The second statement destroys the whole tenet of Dhamma in its entirety.
In Buddhist
phenomenology self (Nama or Soul) does not exist and the tribe (Gothra)
is an illusion that originate from the above wrong premise.
I have to restate the same with my own invention as below.
The meaning
I am trying to derive at is, that the Mind State does not vanish at
death but (Patisandhi) re-link with the next Bhava using Kamma as the
vehicle or the driving force.
Rupam Jirati Majjanam
Nama (means Mind here) Kittam (means Kamma) Najirathi
(The Gotham is substituted with Kittam-Kriya)
In
Abhidhamma context it is realistic to use the above version of the verse
(even though I am not a Pali scholar) to express the conditional
existence of Bhava.
The term Nama Rupa
occurs frequently in Abhidhamma and Nama is used interchangeably with
the Mind.
The term for body is corporeality and not Rupa in Pali
context.
Who
perpetuated this myth is immaterial but the damage it has done is
enormous. In that context writing something of my own contradicting the
statement is appropriate even though it is a departure from the original
tenets of my discussions.
This I
think originated with the British rule.
It is common for us to blame the
British for every little mishap we are going through in our modern
history. But this one is a direct antecedent. They are the one who
started naming the streets even in Kandy with British names of
inheritance and their Governors. All the streets in Colombo have some
relevance to British authorship. In their tradition it is a normal and
is all welcome by every British administrators big and small.
What went
wrong was that we adapted this tradition without scrutiny in the
post-colonial period and continue to do so even now. Instead of naming
the street with some meaningful road traditions like main street, cross
street, first lane or second lane we started adapting our own names.
Politicians in turn for their gain started naming these streets with the
names of their kith and kin.
They invented and used the above jargon
riddled Pali verse for the propagation of the political agenda.
Even though, the tradition is British the wrongful doing is our own ill vision, political patronage and heritage.
