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Pot Balls

Перевод: Бхиккху Суджато

sn / sn19

Linked Discourses 19.10 · Chapter One

“Just now, reverend, as I was descending from Vulture’s Peak Mountain I saw a man with testicles big as pots flying through the air. ^[1]

When he was walking he had to lift his testicles on to his shoulder. ^[2]

And when he sat down, he sat right on them.

Vultures, crows, and hawks kept chasing him, pecking and clawing

as he screamed in pain. …” …

“That being used to be a corrupt village head right here in Rājagaha. …” ^[3]

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[1] The “gnomes” (kumbhaṇḍa, Sanskrit kuṣmāṇḍa, “pumpkin-belly”) were a race of lesser deities often depicted as pot-bellied, ugly and misshapen, though reckoned as subjects of the four great kings (DN 20:9.13). Kumbha also means “pot” and aṇḍa “testicle” (MN 56:25.4). Compare the fiendish kumbhamuṣka (“pot-scrotum”) of Atharva Veda 8.6.15, 11.9.17. Perhaps conflated with kuṣumbha, an insect’s venom-sack (Atharva Veda 2.32.6).

[2] While the humorously painful imagery here is clear, it is less clear that the literal sense “pot-balls” was meant in general for the kumbhaṇḍa as a deity. Here it is used adjectivally of a man.

[3] A gāmakūṭa is a “village head” , so kūṭa here means “summit” rather than its other sense of “fraud”, though the senses might be conflated. The commentary explains it as “an official who makes judgements”. The suffix -ka in the form here (gāmakūṭaka) must have its belittling sense like muṇḍakā samaṇakā (“shavelings, fake ascetics”). Kauṭilya depicts the grāmakūṭa as acting on the whispers of an informant (Arthaśāstra 4.4.9). Perhaps his testicles are the size of the pots of gold he made through extortion and blackmail.