Enticing

Be Warned! This is Mrs. Rhys Davids in all her glory. Spouting her essentially Mahayanist view and making her usual unproven (and unprovable) assertions.

From the Introduction, by Mrs. Rhys Davids: "Lastly, a word in passing on the frequent occurrence in this volume of the term bhāvanīyo, with or without the prefix mano- (mind). Here we have the compound for the first time translated rightly. Let the reader consult p. 225 and n. 1. The Commentarial definition ettha manaṅ vaḍḍheti means 'herein one makes the mind grow.' It was at the very heart of original Buddhism, that the very man, spirit, soul, should be 'made to grow,' made to become. And the mind was not the very man, as the second so-called 'sermon' warned men. But there had been growing a new culture of 'the mind' in India, due to Kapila, fl. probably a generation or two before Buddhism began. And experts in this culture, members of the Sakyan Order, are probably meant by the compound term. Its immense influence on Buddhism I have discussed elsewhere. We note this in the fairly obvious gloss with which the mainly ancient Dhammapada begins:

Things are forerun by mind, have mind as best, are compounds of the mind.
If with corrupted mind a man do speak or act,
therefrom ill follows him as wheel the foot of drawing beast.

Here the couplet proper, 'If ... beast,' is in keeping with the Upanishads - the man acting 'with his mind.' But the inserted superfluous first line is the new note due to Kapila's influence; yet not altogether new, but in a way an echo and revival of the high importance seen in mind (manas) in the earlier Brāhmaṇa books of ritual; sayings - for so they then were - which may have inspired Kapila.

Bhāvanīyo without the mano is at times a very hard word to translate. Not on p. 192, where 'becomes not what he ought to become' (a-bhāvanīyo hoti) is unexceptionable; so p. 87. This is literally correct, but in the compound, the 'participle of necessity' in -iyo seems to me not here at all; we have the affix of agency: -iko or -iyo. This gives us a 'mind-making-becom-er,' an uncouth compound with is fairly well rendered by 'student of mind.' Let the reader not think I comment on trifles. In the wording of growth, of a making to grow, making become, we have the one central driving force that arose with Buddhism. That man 'is' was not enough. Man must become a More, else never will he attain to his full stature as God: - here is original Buddhism carrying out to the Many the torch drooping in the hands of the Brahman teaching of the Few.

— p.p.