Research is never without problems. One of the many reasons why I hardly get my research results published is that one problem leads to another. Solving my initial problem presupposes that I have got at the root of the problem and solved it first at least tentatively. Finding pragmatic solutions seems like a kind of scientific compromise or complacency. Here is one example. I am trying to study the strategies employed in a multi-layered Buddhist apology. I will relinquish here the details. Apologies in general seem to be responses to polemics. Polemics are by nature conflicts. Why do conflicts at all exist? Trying to answer this question would lead one to Buddhist “conflictology.” One can think of all sorts of reasons and factors for conflicts and all sorts of motives for creation and resolution of conflicts. It turns out that external conflicts are manifestations of one’s inner and inherent conflicts. Let us say we are born with our own angelic and demonic forces. This idea may be found in many cultures. This is even more evident in Sinitic and Tibetic cultures. In the Tibetic sources, our inherent angelic and demonic forces are called lhan cig skyes pa’i lha and lhan cig skyes pa’i ’dre, respectively. In some later Tibetan sources, these are called lha dkar po and ’dre nag po. I do not want to give away everything here prematurely but in Indic sources, we only find the idea of one lhan cig skyes pa’i lha, who keeps a record of one’s positive and negative karmic scores. This deity (not a demon) constantly accompanies one, and thus also during the postmortem day of judgement. According to the Sinitic and Tibetic sources, one will be accompanied by one’s angelic and a demonic spirit. One Indic source for the idea of an inherent deity is the various versions of the story of Śroṇakoṭīkarṇa (Gro-bzhin-skyes rNa-ba-bye-ba) or Śroṇaḥ Koṭīkarṇaḥ (Gro-bzhin-skyes rNa-ba-bye-ba-ri or Bye-ba’i-ze-ba) as found, for example, in the Avadāna and Vinaya sources. Sanskritists may immediately understand what the name means. For someone like me who mainly only read Tibetan, what, for example, does ri in rna ba bye ba ri mean? Suddenly I realize how little I know of the Tibetan language. It is a very humbling experience. It turns out that ri is for “value/worth” (mūlya) added to help us understand the expression koṭīkarṇa (“ten million eared/chaffed-grains”). So, it seems that we are supposed to understand the name as meaning something like “Śroṇa, who is worth ten million eared/chaffed-grains (i.e., valuables/gems).” In other words, “Śroṇa, the Priceless.” The heteronomous and intransitive verb ri ba (“to be worthy of,” “to have the value/worth of”) is well attested in Tibetan lexicons. Now my question is if the Tibetan rin (as in rin po che) is derived from ri, just as the noun skyin is derived from the verb skyi. I think it is.
Pratisaṃvid 