Evam maya srutam

Thus I have heard...

--By Sramanerika Heng

Hsien

Mastering this Sanskrit lesson will enable you to pick up

any Buddhist sutra and begin to read. Why? Every sutra spoken by
the Buddha begins with the words Thus I have heard.
Fine, you think, but isnt there a contradiction in
those words? The last lesson explained the Sutras
invocation.
Namah Sarvajnaya, Homage to (the
Buddha) the one who knows all. If the Buddha is all-knowing,
how can he say; Ive heard?
Quite right. The Buddha indeed:
Is omniscient (sarvajna) and self-taught,
Follows no one elses system, plans or path
Speaks Dharma never having heard it spoken.
Only the Buddha is beyond instruction, because there is not one
thing he doesnt know. Therefore the Buddha would not begin a
sutra by saying, So Ive heard.
But its not the Buddha who says the words
,
its Ananda,
the Buddhas cousin and disciple, who
speaks them. After the Buddha entered Nirvana, the disciples met
to assemble the Buddhas teachings, and because Ananda could
remember every word the Buddha had said, it was he who recited
the sutras for the assembly. At the beginning of each sutra
Ananda said, Thus I have heard.
The Sanskrit, which says this somewhat differently from
English, reads literally, Thus by me it was heard.
Evam means thus, in this manner, in this way,
so, such. In translating Sanskrit dont think
theres just one English word to match each single
Sanskrit word.
The meaning of the Sanskrit can often be conveyed by several
different English words or phrases. Moreover its frequently the
case that one single Sanskrit word is more loaded with meanings

than any one corresponding English word. Giving several English

translations suggests the range of meaning of the Sanskrit word.
Maya stands for by me. In English we need two
words to say by someone or by me. In Sanskrit
the by is represented by the a in maya.
The ending a is a function marker; the word in a functions as
the person or thing by which the main action of the phrase is
done. The hearing was done by me, and me refers to Ananda.
Srutam translates 'it was heard'. The
syllable sru is written
. Although the
letter r written in full has the form , in
combination with another consonant it takes one of
two shortened forms:
(1)

(2)

written above a consonant which follows

it, as
in
sarvajna, and
attached below a consonant which comes
before it, as in
srutam.

When r and another consonant come together to form a cluster

with no vowel in between, use form (1) if the r comes first; and
if the r is second, use form (2). Notice that in figuring out
how to pronounce consonant clusters, the order is :
left before right,
above before below.
The letter written first, either because it's on the left or
because it's placed above, is the one that's pronounced
first.4
srutam, a single word, gives all the information
of the English, 'it was heard', much of which is contained in
the ending. We'll learn more about the mysteries of Sanskrit
word endings as we go along.
What Ananda heard and now recites is the Buddha Speaks of
Amitabha Sutra, the Sutra which tells of Amitabha Buddha's
Western Paradise, the Land of Ultimate Bliss. Can you write its
name in Sanskrit?
____________________________________________

Words to figure out:

_________________________________________

NOTES:
1 C.F. L. de la Vallee Poussin's translation into French of the
Mahaprajnaparamitasatra, by the Bodhisattva Nagarjuna,
called Le
Traite de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse, Louvain (1944), vol.I,
p.80 ff.
2 "Thus I have heard" will be discussed in Vajra Bodhi Sea in
Dharma Master Heng Ching's translation of the Earth Sore
Bodhisattva Sutra and commentary by the Venerable Tripitaka
Master Hsuan Hua.
3 Don't get attached: not every final -a is this ending, nor is
every 'instrumental' market with -1. If Sanskrit were easy,
everyone would know it!
4 In the case of
evam, the . which represents m does not
mean
the nasalization comes before
va; rather, the whole sound
va is given a nasal flavor by the m, so m doesn't really
come
either before or after
. Originally m was the full letter
m, and the word was
evam. But when you say
evam +maya, you really don't fully pronounce the
first m before the second one, in Sanskrit or in any language.
Sanskrit therefore has a separate letter for the shortened m
you end up saying, and writes it as this dot.