Khuddaka Nikaya - Nettippakarana - Author's Introduction III

Khuddaka Nikaya - Nettippakarana ( The Guide ) - Author's Introduction III

ACCORDING TO
KACCANA THERA

TRANSLATED FROM THE PALI BY
BHIKKHU NANAMOLI
Pali Text Society

9. PRACTICAL USE OF THE METHOD: DISCUSSION
OF ITS ELEMENTS
The nature of the Guide's in practice usually ignored subject-matter
and its modest though by no means unpractical main purpose, make
it easy to misuse by treating it as a normative work, which it is not.
In fact, what it is not needs to be constantly remembered: I t is not
a commentary but a guide for commentators; it is addressed to
commentators who know their subject, not to their audiences
(though it can serve anyone, since anyone can be, sometimes has to
be, and often is, his own commentator); it does not attempt to
) explain the Pitakas and assumes they have already been explained
(
to those to whom it is addressed; it draws no conclusions, proves
nothing, and is incapable of being made to do either. What, then,
• is its function, and how is it related to that of a commentary?
The function of a commentary, first, is twofold: (a) to explain,
coordinate, develop, adapt and bring up to date the ideas presented
in texts commented upon and perhaps to draw conclusions, give
proofs and introduce new theories, and (b) to justify and defend
against criticism and attacks from within and without the doctrines
of the individual texts or of the body of texts as a whole. In order
for this to be done efficiently the material latent in the whole body
of texts must be available to the commentator who desires to
comment on an individual textual passage, and when the body of


texts is very bulky, this aspect may present great difficulties and
assumes no little importance.
The function of the Guide is to make the trend of this bulky
material more readily visible by means of its method. By means of
a selection of contextual type-situations drawn from the Suttas it
offers aid in eliciting from the wording of a given text the relevant
implications required or allowed by the Suttas as a whole, and it
provides for such wording to be directed to the meaning-as-aim
prescribed by the Suttas. If the commentator is regarded as a
retailer to the public, then the Guide may be compared to an
organization of wholesalers whose business is not with the public
but with the retailer, to make available to him as full a choice as
possible, in bulk, of the various sorts of materials made by reputable
manufacturers. Being addressed as it is to would-be commentators
of the Buddha's discourses, it assumes that its clients know what
they need—that is, word-connexions allowed by the Tipitaka and a
choice of lines to its meaning-as-aim—and only require to have it
made available in such a way that what is allowable may not be
overlooked and what is not allowable may be excluded. The Modes
are thus 16 contextual departments in each of which an individual
text chosen for comment can be considered for particular implica-
tions. This consideration is designed to indicate in each department
how to avoid wrong re-wording and to elicit the main implications of
the particular text's wording which the body of texts as a whole
suggest and permit in each department. What is thus elicited and
made available is—or should be—no more than a range of legitimate
material for the commentator to choose from in order to construct
his comment to suit his particular purpose. The Modes are designed
to cover economically as wide a range as possible (16 is simply a
favourite number in India), and the 5 Guide-Lines offer a choice of
verbal highways leading to the meaning-as-aim prescribed by the
Suttas. This is the Guide's function. That being so, though it
exemplifies its elements by comments, it is not itself a commentary
properly speaking and cannot directly produce one (its ch. ii is one
sample of what it can produce, see below), yet it belongs entirely
under the general head of 'commentary' (atthakatha), 'delineation of
meanings' (atthavannana), or 'detailing of Threads' (suttasam-
vannana).49

49 One of the difficulties with such a work as this is that there is no recognized
name for the genre (like, say, 'grammar' or 'dictionary'). I t is nowhere said
what the work is in this sense, that being left to emerge as best it can. The


I t is, in fact, this function that is meant in the Guide by its
frequent use of the term 'demonstration' (niddesa and derivatives),
namely the 'demonstration' with material drawn from here and
there of what can be elicited under a given Mode from the wording
of a given text. (N.B. logical 'demonstrative proof is not meant,
since its peculiar scope is not the dimension of logic, whose dimension
it crosses perhaps in Mode 3; but the logical is not the only or most
usual sense for the English word 'demonstration'.)
50
Practical application (see also sect. 7b). The use of the Guide's
method is no application of rules (for properly speaking it has none)
but rather the exploiting of a set of 'reminders' for legitimate
word-connexions for trains of thought and 'warnings' against
deviations. In this it is intended to stand for the Pitakas as a whole.
The working of it is extremely loose, leaving wide freedom in the
hands of its user.
In using it on a given text, the two cognate aspects of phrasing
and meaning (aim) have to be worked often together since the

Tika's statement 'Tepitakassa hi buddhavacanassa samvannanalakkhanam
Nettippakaranarti (p. 38) tells us that it is a commentarial work, which in
^the very general sense it is, but not where it fits in, which badly needs to be
known but is not on the surface at all evident.
50 For instance, Prof. Hardy (PTS Netti p. xx) says that 'the Netti may
be styled a commentary': it may; but doing so does not illuminate its function.
Before that, (same page) he takes its Counter-demonstrative Subsection to
'explain the Pitakas as a whole', which it does, but, only as a subsidiary and
inessential by-product. He then continues: 'At every turn the author of the
Netti draws on them in illustration and corroboration of his doctrines, but a
scheme being throughout ready in advance, the power of demonstration comes
only from the artificial interpretation carried into them. There is no passage
that might not be turned to fit at last into the meaning aimed at by the author'
(translator's italics). It is not clear what is meant here by 'his doctrines'
and the 'artificial interpretation' and the 'meaning aimed at' since they are
not specified; but if this refers to what is said later (p. xxiv), for example,
about 'the venerable ones' (see trsln. §280), Prof. Hardy there attributes to
the Netti'a author what is actually drawn straight from M. Sutta 117, and the
other matters he there attributes to the Netti'a author are in fact all taken
from elsewhere. Further, no 'power of demonstration', in the logical sense
obviously intended, arises at all: the Guide has been assumed to be trying to
prove something and is found (quite rightly) not to be doing so; for it is only
'demonstrating' in a non-logical sense ways of arriving at the Suttas' known
meaning-as-aim. As to the last clause, if a Pitaka passage could not be shown
to imply the meaning-as-aim of the whole teaching, it would go against the
4 'Principal Appeals'. But see sect. 15 below. The Guide has no 'meaning'
of its own apart from the Thread's.


employment of the Modes must involve the Guide-Lines whenever
the opposites of 'unprofit (corruption)/profit (cleansing)', or the 18
Boot-Terms, or the Thread's meaning (aim), appear (as, for instance,
in the working out of Modes 1, 7 and 16). The Modes are thus not
intended to be first completed and then the Guide-Lines applied
afterwards as something additional (sect. 7b). This is one reason
why ch. iii is set out without quotations for treatment (either
'separate' or 'combined'). But when the 16 Modes have been
applied, then the Guide-Lines should be reviewed in the working
already done in order to straighten out the word-connexions from
this aspect. The 16 Modes, too, involve each other to varying
extents. For instance, the demonstration and conversion shown in
working out Modes 1 and 7 respectively involve the word-con-
nexions (see below) prescribed by other Modes (say 4, 5, 9, or 10) in
the way in which the Truths, say, are elicited from the text-
quotation chosen for comment. Or, say, in demonstrating the
implied footings and ideas under Mode 4, the admission only of the
permissible involves Mode 3. And so on. (While in Grammar the
parts of speech, say, are separate entities, here each Mode is a
reviewing of all the others.)
For these reasons, and because of the nature of this contextual
aspect of language (sect. 1), it has to be remembered that all ex-j
positions—that is, exemplifications, as in chs. i and ii—of the
Modes are, and cannot be other than, 'specimen workings' (ch. i to
establish the Modes, ch. ii to apply them, ch. iii to direct them, ch. iv
to classify material for them). They are not regardable in any way
as fixed formulations; for the method is such that it can only
produce samples, or choices of samples, never normative paradigms.
In fact the Modes leave the widest possible freedom of expression in
the ways they can be exemplified, even on the basis of a single text,
the 'formulation' of them being that contained in the 'label-verses'
in the Demonstrative Subsection (§§5-20), repeated at the beginnings
and ends of the respective Modes in the Counter-demonstrative Sub-
section. For instance, there is no absolute reason why, in ch. ii, the
first two modes should not have been exemplified as briefly as the
rest, or the rest as lengthily as the first two, or why each should not
have followed various quite other connexions allowed by its own
particular context-type. Ch. iii could have been set out as in Pe
ch. viii. And so on. Any such choice must of necessity be more or
less arbitrary. (Just as, once the decision to speak out in language
has been made, the choice of the individual language and the way it


is used are dictated by the arbitrariness of circumstances and
inclination, though some individual language must be used and must
be applied in some kind of context.)
The many definitions and exegetical passages appearing in the
Guide are all to a greater or less degree made ad hoc, though within
the limits of avoiding contradiction and conflict with the Thread.
Such defining mechanisms as that, say, used in §162 with its
'characteristic', 'footing' and 'manifestation' (taken over and
enlarged by the later Commentaries) are incidentally indispensable
to the exemplification of its elements, but not more than that.
This explains why it defines many terms not once but twice or even
more (as the Index shows), and not always in the same way: for
instance 'faith', 'ignorance', and 'understanding' have such variant
definitions given purposely. All this, however, is no attack upon,
say, Grammar, etc., but rather emphasis of a different dimension.
Such is the Guide's, function and the particular service it has to
offer. (As 'reminders' most if not all its Modes directly affect its
translator.)
I t now remains to consider the Modes' individual functions and
mutual relationships. (For renderings of their names see sect. 8.)
What follows here is based on a consideration of the Netti, the Pe
and the other expositions.
Mode 1 requires the demonstration from the wording of a text
chosen for comment that it is a teaching, and specifically a teaching
of one or more of the main Pitaka doctrines. The exemplifying
demonstration will make use of certain word-connexions, such as
that by 'footings' (see below), furnished by other Modes.
Mode 2 requires investigation, by demonstrating how the text
chosen is an investigation if it is one (i.e., question, answer and
summarizing-verse) and by inquiring into the phrasing and meaning
of each word of it. As in Mode 1, the word-connexions in the
demonstration will be those furnished by other Modes. Mode 13 is
ancillary to it.
Mode 3 requires the demonstration, from the chosen text's
wording, of what is and what is not construable with it in working
it out with the other Modes: construable or not, that is, according
to the Teaching as a whole, as laid down in the 'Principal Appeals
to Authority'. I t is at this point that the planes of use of Logic (as
exemplified in the Yamaka, say, and the Kathavatthu) and of the
Guide might be said to intersect. The ancillary Mode 12 shows
through what channels this demonstration should be made.


These three Modes are closely related (§156; also n. 270/1) and
apply to all the types of texts (as classed in ch. iv). Not all those
that follow have such general application, and the relevance of each
will depend to a greater or less extent upon the type of text chosen
for comment. Mode 6 in its 4 parts is ancillary to these three in
common.
Mode 4 requires the eliciting, from the text chosen, of what the
ideas stated in it are footings for and what are their footings, the
wording of each idea being regarded as definable (more or less ad
hoc) by specific-characteristic and by footing as appropriate and as
in conformity with the usage of the Thread as a whole. This Mode
recognizes a word-connexion by way of term-footing and vice versa.
I t has an ancillary in Mode 15.
Mode 5 requires demonstration from the text how, in conformity
with the whole Thread, each idea worded in it is treatable either as a
class or as a class-member according to context, and for eliciting the
appropriate possible class-characteristics (general characteristics)
and class-membership. Under it a word interpreted as wording any
class-member implies the other class-members of the imputed class.
(E.g., the word 'feeling' is interpretable, according to context, as
wording a class whose members are pleasure, etc., but also as wording
a class-member of the 5-Categories class, of which it is the 2nd, and
then it implies all the other four. Also, according to context, a
term can (without punning on an accident) be (through generality or
analogy and metaphor or recognized concomitance) a member of
more than one class, e.g., the word 'concentration', regardable in
some contexts as wording a class (including 3 kinds, etc.), can in
others word a class-member of the classes 5 Faculties, 8-Factored
Path, 7 Enlightenment Factors, etc., according as the Thread's
usages allow. Hereby a second kind of word-connexion, from class-
member via class to class-member is recognized. If the most
general level is imputed, then on that level anything implies every-
thing else.
Mode 6 requires the text chosen to be demonstrated to possess the
four qualities of grammaticalness, intelligible purport, specific cir-
cumstance of its utterance, and coherence. Grammar and syntax are
thus represented here. This Mode is jointly ancillary to the first
three.
Mode 7 requires demonstration, in the text chosen, of the implied
(if not already explicit) ethical pair of opposites of unprofit/profit
worded in one of the ways established by usage, and the conversion


of this opposed dialectic pair, by way of the recognized connexions,
to the pattern of the 4 Truths taken pairwise as suffering-and-
origin and path-and-cessation. (This substitution affects the scope
of ordinary negations, both single and double, and reflects the
mechanism in the 'gratification/disappointment — escape' stated
in §§32ff.).
51
Mode 8 requires the text chosen to be demonstrated how far its
wording is a unilateral limited statement and to be analysed in order
to demonstrate exceptions to its general validity.52

51 The orthogonal pattern frequently recurring in the Suttas in various
forms and expressed in one way by the formula
escape
A
('gratification^>disappointment')
is of fundamental importance for the understanding of them. 'The untaught
ordinary man understands no escape from painful feeling other than sensual
desires' (8. iv, 208) and so, through ignorance and craving, is caught up in the
endless alternation of dialectic. The true escape from this is given in M.
Sutta 13 (cf. S. v, 193; A. i, 258; etc.) as the 'outguiding (disciplining) of will
and lust' . This same fundamental pattern, here instanced by 'gratification/
disappointment > escape', is also represented in the Suttas in other terms
(e.g., anuruddhajpativiruddha >niruddha, etc.). The Guide uses this
pattern too. 'Escape' to what is not liberation (see 1st quotation above),
whether from one side of a dialectic to the other by unilateral insistence or
from a dialectic about one determined (sankhata) idea to another determined
idea with its dialectic is a false escape that offers no final release. 'Escape'
via the pattern of the 4 Truths, of which the third is undetermined (asankhata),
provides the true escape from dialectic. This is pointed to as follows: with
a special emphasis on words which is not without relevance here; ' "Then,
one gone out, does he no more exist? Or is he safe and sound eternally?" . . .
"For one gone out there's no criterion; . . . That whereby one might word
him, he has not : Where all ideas obliterate themselves, obliterated too are
ways of wording" ' (Sn. 1075-6).
52 Four kinds of question are given at A. i, 197: 'declarable ( = decidable)
unilaterally (by empirical verification), declarable after analysis, declarable
through a counter-question, and unanswerable'. The last is of the type cited
in §908. I t is unanswerable since the answers yes and no alike confirm an
assumption. An affirmative or negative answer to the double question
(dvikotikaparlha), e.g., 'Is the world finite? infinite?' alike both affirm the
ideas worded by 'world' and 'is' as unquestionably valid ideas not subject to
analysis; affirmative or negative answers to the quadruple question (catuko-
tikapanJia), e.g., 'After death, does a Perfect One exist? not exist? both exist
and not exist? neither exist nor not exist?' alike all affirm a 'person' and 'being'
(existence) as unquestionably valid ultimate ideas not subject to analysis.
But the Buddha put Being (existence and non-existence) into question,


Mode 9 requires demonstration of the contrary-opposites of what
is stated in the text chosen, and what a reversal (denial) of its
wording entails. This recognizes a third type of word-connexion
by way of term-opposite.
Mode 10 deals with the appropriate synonyms, allowed by the
Thread's usage as a whole, that can be elicited from the chosen text's
wording. The Dictionary is represented here. This Mode recog-
nizes a fourth kind of word-connexion by way of synonym-synonym.
Mode 11 requires demonstration from the text chosen what and
how many ideas are described by any single word or phrase in it, and
in what terms the word or phrase describes them. The Mode thus
covers in general that aspect of metaphor which allows more than
one idea for one word, the opposite, namely that which allows more
than one word for one idea being covered by Mode 14.
Mode 12 requires demonstration from the text chosen that a
permissible word-connexion is possible from the text's wording to
the general pattern of the teaching by way of certain recognized
classes (the Categories, etc.) regarded as ways of entry to it (i.e., to
the 4 Truths). This Mode is ancillary to Mode 3 since it shows how
to effect what that Mode requires, and it is close to Modes 1 and 7.
Mode 13, ancillary to Mode 2, requires that an answer must be
adequate to the question it professes to satisfy and so clear it up.
For its purpose it distinguishes between the basic idea (subject-
matter or 'instigation') prompting the question and the various
details (or 'terms') by means of which it is verbally asked about: it
has to be demonstrated that the 'instigation', and not only the
'terms', has been adequately answered.
Mode 14 deals with certain pairs of alternative terms of expression.
Whichever set of terms from such a pair the text chosen is expressed
in, this Mode requires that it be recognized and the opposite set of
terms in the pair be demonstrated from the text, without, however,
the idea so expressed being thereby displaced or transformed.
The sample alternative pairs of terminologies given are those of
unity/variety (= essence/attribute more or less) and ideas/
creatures. I.e., 'suffering' as an idea is expressible in some
contexts by the unitive term 'suffering' or in others by one of the
various subsidiary aspects describing 'suffering' such as 'birth',
etc.; or again the idea, say 'stream-entry', is likewise expressible

placing it in perspective with Consciousness in the pattern of Dependent
Arising. There they cannot become rivals for meta-physical Absoluteness,
and are subordinated to Action and its Cessation.


either by words that represent it impersonally such as 'Stream-
Entry Path', 'seeing', etc., or personally such as 'Stream-Enterer',
'Initiate', etc.; in every case, however, the basic idea so alternatively
wordable remains unaffected ('not disjoined') under this Mode.
(There are other such alternatives.) The Mode in recognizing that
an idea can be represented by several words thus in a sense balances
Mode 11, which recognizes that one word can represent several ideas.
Mode 15 deals with specifying cause and condition as requisite and
so is ancillary to Mode 4, which deals with the less specific term
'footing'.
Mode 16 offers a collating revision by its providing for demon-
stration of coordination of 'footings' (Mode 4), and 'synonyms'
(Mode 10) with what is implied by 'keeping-in-being' and 'abandon-
ing'. The two latter terms signify the 8-Factored Path in its 4
stages of verification, along with what is implied by the Thread as a
whole as necessarily 'kept in being' and 'abandoned' at each stage.53

53 See also sect. 8 under %ara\ I t may be noted for what it is worth that
the names of two of the 16 Modes (which deal with 'phrasing'), that is, Analysis
and Description, are also two of the 6 'Meaning-Terms' (see §28).
I t may be noted also here in passing—not in explanation, but rather as a
'train of thought'— that this scheme of 16 contextual Modes assumes certain
types of what may be called 'word-connexions' (legitimated by linguistic
usage), by exploiting which certain 'word-movements', or substitutions, can
be made to follow (or lead) and cooperate with trains of thought (which the
Guide-Lines are to guide to the prescribed meaning-as-aim). The theme of
Mode 11 ('descriptions') is how many ideas and in what terms a single word
(or phrase) can be taken to describe: A single word can be variously idea-ed
within limits. Balancing this, Mode 14 guards the integrity of the idea against
disintegration simply by varied wording of it : A single idea can be variously
worded within limits. As differing two-way lanes for these opposed kinds of
substitution, along which the wording can 'move' , four kinds of word-connexion
are assumed respectively by Modes 4, 5, 9 and 10. They are: term< ^
footing, class<±class-member, assertion^±denial , and synonym-a^z^
synonym-b. On principle, then, several words can be substituted, through
various reversible ways, in the wording of one idea; and several ideas can be
substituted, analogously, in the interpretation of one word; but neither can
be done indiscriminately and both must follow the statistical arbitrariness of
recognized usage. (If there were nothing of the kind, there would apparently
be no metaphor possible, and language as we know and use i t would then
seem unthinkable. The (normative) ideal precision of a one-word-to-one-idea
correspondence seems to be a limit sometimes tended to but never reached by
language.) This perhaps gives also a certain view of the mechanism of
metaphor—as assimilated analogy—; most terms for mental events are
metaphorical (see discussion of upadana in sect. 14); and it is by analogy
converted to metaphor that these private happenings are made publicly


Not all the Modes have general application. Modes 4, 5 and 8,
for instance, do not apply to a text that simply expresses nibbdna (as
in §§864-5), in the 2nd Grouping of ch. iv; and Mode 7 does not apply
to the types of Thread 'dealing with penetration' (§§805ff.) and
'dealing with the Adept' (§§823ff.) in the 1st Grouping since there is
no 'converting' to be done there.
The completed direct product of a full correct use made of the
Guide will never be a commentary: it will be simply a sound range or
sample of material and orientations, from which a commentary can
and should be constructed, and which it is intended should make it
easier for the commentary to go right and harder for it to go wrong.
Regarded as a treatise on scaffolding, the Guide produces frameworks
intended for removal before the building—the commentary finished
by its aid—is declared open. However, specimens of its completed
products will be found erected and purposely left standing in the
following places: Pe ch. vii (16 examples), Netti ch. ii (1 example),
NettiA (PTS Netti pp. 251-63: 2 examples), and the Tlkds to the
Digha and Majjhima Nikayas, at the end of their comment on the
1st Sutta of each Nikdya (1 example each). The two examples in
the NettiA are in fact slightly rewritten and 'improved' versions of
two of the Pe's examples in its Chapter vii. Those set up by the
two Tlkds are written in a rather Sanskritized late style of Pali with
long compounds and insistence on abstract nouns, and they introduce
many ideas peculiar to the Commentaries. They belong to the

discussable in familiar words. The metaphorization is then conveniently
forgotten. Rather than abuse of language's shortcomings (as grammatically
conceived), this 'controlled double ambiguity' would seem an easily abused
and normally ignored aspect of its essential nature, always implicated in
some degree. I t can, of course, be minimized for special purposes; but here
i t is emphasized in order that it may be recognized, controlled and exploited.
(Failing i t altogether, how would 'trains of thought ' ever 'start'?) In this
'double substitutability' , which makes the 'movement ' in the 'lanes' possible,
Mode 7 has a par t of peculiar importance, namely that of indicating how to
substitute for the aesthetic and ethical collisions of assertion/denial the
pattern of the four aspects of truth taken pairwise: the fourfold analysis of
truth profoundly affects the consequences of mere unanalysed negation,
whether double or single. Ordinary negation, single or double, then remains
within the dialectic of assertion/denial of some idea, which constitutes the
2nd Truth; but this dialectic situation the 3rd abolishes. (See also note 51.)
This, however, is merely noted in passing; for here is no place to venture
further—hardly perhaps even so far—into these matters. There are plenty of
instances of these 'movements' to be found and traced in the work, for example
in Modes 1, 2, 7, 9, 12 and 16; also in ch. iii.


'medieval' period of Pali literature and were composed in Ceylon
in or about the 12th century A.C. That from the Majjhima-Nikdya
Tika is given here as an appendix.
10 . THE PALI COMMENTARIES' DEBT TO THE GUIDE
Statement and comment have always been a favourite Indian
method of presenting subject-matter. Ideas are expounded, then
commented on; the result is summarized into a 'compendium',
which is again expanded by a new commentary: a sort of 'notional
breathing process of expansion and contraction'.
In the Suttas the Buddha is found, in numerous instances, making
a brief (often intentionally difficult) statement and then com-
menting on it himself immediately (e.g., D. Sutta 22, M. Sutta 139)
or later (Sn. 1048 commented on by him at A. i, 133), or a verse
from the Suttanipdta is commented on by his disciples (Sn. 1038 at
S. ii, 47, 49, 50). Then the Buddha's disciple, the Elder Maha-
Kaccana, expounds brief statements made by the Buddha (e.g.,
M. Suttas 18, 133, 138). Further, still within the Tipitaka, the
Niddesa is found wholly concerned with commenting on and ex-
plaining the meanings of parts of the Suttanipdta, and some of the
Patisambhiddmagga's chapters (Ps. i, 175ff., and chs. 4, 8, 10-4,
16, 17, 19, 20, 24, 26, 28, and 29) are commentaries on Suttas from
the Anguttara and Samyutta Nikdyas. These two books both use
rather mechanical repetitive treatments for their comments and
serve in part as dictionaries. Again, much of the Vinaya Pitaka is
devoted to commenting on its own rules. The Abhidhamma
Pitaka has its own peculiar system of its Schedule (Mdtikd), which
controls its seven books, some of which have their own sub-
ordinate Schedules followed by detail in the form of patterns and
definitions.
However, in the field of Pali literature the word 'Commentary'
(atthakatha) is never used to refer to such commentings as those. I t
always refers to the exegetical material outside the Tipitaka. The
nucleus of this was handed down and added to in Sinhalese and then
converted to Pali by Buddhaghosa Thera and his school. This is
what is called the 'Commentary'. All these Commentaries properly
so called are deeply indebted to the Guide, its method and its
normative trappings. It is hard to overstress this. Acariya
Buddhaghosa's system doubtless owes the relentless and extra-
ordinary coherence of its great edifices beginning with the Visuddhi-


magga largely to careful use of the Netti's scaffoldings. And a
great number of its technical terms and normative details are
derived from it. And no less with the commentators that followed
him.
For instance, the formal denning device for ideas by 'characteristic
(lakkhana), function (rasa), manifestation (paccupatthdna) and
footing (padatthdna)' used constantly (e.g., Vis. 85) is simply an
enlarged version of the normative formula used here and there in
Mode 4 (§§161-2). The 'intention' or 'purport' (adhippdya), here
the second subdivision of Mode 6, is often looked for (e.g., MA. i,
19); the 'source' (niddna)—see Mode 6 third subdivision—when given
in a Sutta itself is always explained as such (e.g., MA. i, 15), and if
not so given, it is provided (see KhpA and SnA). The 'sequence of
meaning' (anusandhi) is often examined (e.g., MA. i, 175), with
which compare the 'consecutive sequence' (pubbdparasandhi) in
Mode 6 here. Again the distinction between teaching 'expressed in
terms of persons' and 'expressed in terms of ideas' (pttggalddhitthdna
and dhammddhitthdna) at MA. i, 24 is adapted from the Netti's
Mode 14 (§446). The Unity Guide-Line and Diversity Guide-Line
(ekattanaya and ndnattanaya) at Vis. 585 (rendered by 'Method' in
Ppn) are derived from the Netti's Mode 14. Mode 5 is quoted at
MA. i, 31, and its principle is often used as an argument (legiti-
mately ?). These are the more prominent examples of normative
material taken over from the Netti's normative details. More could
doubtless be traced. The concealed debt is enormous. These
techniques, with a mass of old material handed down, a measure of
syllogistic reasoning (much more common in the works of Acariya
Dhammapala than in those of Acariya Buddhaghosa), and an
elaborate conceptual system derived from and upon the Abhidhamma
Pitaka, form the technical basis of the Commentaries. They,
however, being Commentaries, do not display the method itself, as
the finished building does not show the scaffolding. They must be
taken to have been constructed with full knowledge and use of the
Guide's method; for all the principal commentators were indis-
putably well trained in it. It was so highly regarded that the
Tikas (Sub-Commentaries) to the Digha and Majjhima Nikayas
(composed probably in the 12th century A.C.) both have their
comments to the first Sutta of the Nikdya rounded off with an
exposition of the Guide's method applied to them as presented in its
second chapter. The Commentaries' debt to the Guide can hardly
be overstated.