Old Age

Identity

Segment range snp4.6:1.1–10.4. Sn 804–813 (10 verses). Received title Jarāsutta — "Discourse on Old Age." The first AV sutta outside the diṭṭhi-debate cluster (4.3–4.5 preceding; 4.8–4.9 following), and the first to depart from the Triṣṭubh metre of the titled -aṭṭhaka set. Its theme is old age, impermanence, and the futility of attachment to the dying. Its register is meditative-poetic — image-rich, plain in vocabulary, sharply different from 4.3–4.5's dialectical-philosophical mode. The closing two verses bring back the AV-internal lexicon of the diṭṭhi-debate cluster, linking the sutta's impermanence-meditation core to the collection's broader vocabulary.

Text and form

Vaitālīya metre throughout (Norman 2001 p. 339). The first metrical shift since the titled -aṭṭhaka cluster ended at 4.5. Vaitālīya is a moraic (mātrā-counted) metre rather than a syllable-counted one: pādas are measured in morae (typically 14 in odd pādas and 16 in even, with a fixed cadence) and the metre carries a more lyrical, hymn-like register than Triṣṭubh. The metrical choice correlates with the sutta's theme and imagery — old age and mortality in a meditative-poetic register.

No narrative frame in the Pāli; no speaker-tags. Single-speaker Buddha monologue, with a voice that modulates across three registers: third-person diagnostic in vv. 1–5 (life-is-short → death-erases-possession → dream-simile → name-only-remains); third-person hortatory in v. 6 (Tasmā munayo... "therefore sages..."); third-person paradigmatic in vv. 7–10 (the goal-figure's lifestyle and impassivity).

Architecture. vv. 1–5 give the diagnosis — the short span of life, the impermanence of possessions, the visceral dream-simile for the loss of the loved dead, the reduction of persons to name-only after death. v. 6 is the structural pivot ("therefore sages..."). vv. 7–10 give the prescription: the goal-figure's withdrawn lifestyle (v. 7), the water-on-lotus-leaf simile for impassivity (vv. 8–9), and a closing verse (v. 10) that reuses the diṭṭhi-debate cluster's vocabulary — dhono, nāññena visuddhi, na rajjati no virajjati — to wire the sutta into the AV's broader lexicon.

Content

Short is this life — one dies before a hundred years, and even beyond that, of old age. People grieve over what they take as "mine"; possessions are not permanent; seeing this separation as a fact, one would not live at home. Whatever a person conceives as "mine" is abandoned at death; knowing this, the wise mine-er (māmaka) should not bend toward mineness. Just as on waking one no longer sees what was met in a dream, so one does not see loved ones when they have died and time-done. Those people seen and heard, whose name was such-and-such — only the name remains, to be uttered, of the dead.

The greedy do not give up sorrow, lamentation, stinginess over the mine; therefore sages, seers of safety, have abandoned possessions and wandered. Of a bhikkhu who lives withdrawn, frequenting a secluded seat, they say this is fitting: that he not show himself in any dwelling. Everywhere the muni is independent; he makes nothing dear or undear. On him lamentation and stinginess do not stick — like water on a leaf. As a water-drop on a lotus, as water on a lotus-flower, does not stick, so the muni does not stick to what is seen, heard, or thought.

The cleansed one does not conceive thereby — in regard to the seen, heard, or thought. He does not wish for purity from another; for he neither inflames nor dispassions.

Key passages

v. 4 (Sn 807) — the dream.

Supinena yathāpi saṅgataṁ, / Paṭibuddho puriso na passati; / Evampi piyāyitaṁ janaṁ, / Petaṁ kālaṅkataṁ na passati.

Just as one does not see, on awakening, what one met in a dream; so one does not see those loved ones, dead and time-done.

The AV's most affecting image of bereavement. Peta kālaṅkata ("dead and time-done") is a doublet — the Niddesa (mnd6:53.2–4) glosses peto = mato. The same phrase recurs at Snp 3.8:17.3 Petaṁ kālaṅkataṁ disvā, marking Snp 3.8 Sallasutta and Snp 4.6 Jarāsutta as cross-Snp twins on death.

v. 5 (Sn 808) — the name remains.

Diṭṭhāpi sutāpi te janā, / Yesaṁ nāmamidaṁ pavuccati; / Nāmaṁyevāvasissati, / Akkheyyaṁ petassa jantuno.

Those people, seen and heard, whose name was so-and-so — only the name remains, to be uttered, of one dead and gone.

Diṭṭhāpi sutāpi is used here in its plain cognitive sense — "those we have seen and those we have heard of" — a datum that bears on the Lee-vs-consensus reading of diṭṭha-suta-muta elsewhere in the AV (see Choice-points). Norman flags Katre's alternative akkheyya = akṣayya ("indestructible") without endorsing it; the dominant reading is "to-be-uttered."

v. 7 (Sn 810) — the withdrawn bhikkhu.

Patilīnacarassa bhikkhuno, / Bhajamānassa vivittamāsanaṁ; / Sāmaggiyamāhu tassa taṁ, / Yo attānaṁ bhavane na dassaye.

For a bhikkhu who lives withdrawn, frequenting a secluded seat — they say this is fitting for him: not to show himself in any dwelling.

This verse has a direct Jain parallel: Sūyagaḍa 1.2.2.17 (Jacobi 1895 SBE 45 p. 255) preserves a structurally parallel verse on the withdrawn practitioner, in the same Vaitālīya metre. Norman (p. 341) notes the shared metrical line and attributes the surface divergences to metathesis of consonants. See Cross-recensional witnesses below.

v. 9 (Sn 812) — the lotus-leaf.

Udabindu yathāpi pokkhare, / Padume vāri yathā na limpati; / Evaṁ muni nopalimpati, / Yadidaṁ diṭṭhasutaṁ mutesu vā.

Like a water-drop on a lotus, like water on a lotus-flower, does not stick — so the muni does not stick to what is seen, heard, or thought.

The AV's signature impassivity-image. Cross-Snp parallel at Snp 2.14:18.4 Bhikkhu yathā pokkhare vāribindu. The lotus-leaf simile spans the AV and the Cūḷavagga of the Snp.

v. 10 (Sn 813) — the closing diṭṭhi-debate vocabulary return.

Dhono na hi tena maññati, / Yadidaṁ diṭṭhasutaṁ mutesu vā; / Nāññena visuddhimicchati, / Na hi so rajjati no virajjatīti.

The cleansed one does not conceive thereby — in regard to the seen, heard, or thought. He does not wish for purity from another; for he neither inflames nor dispassions.

Four AV-internal phrases concentrate in this single verse: dhono (= Snp 4.3:7.3); yadidaṁ diṭṭhasutaṁ mutesu vā (recurring formula-family); Nāññena visuddhim icchati (echo of Snp 4.4:3.1 Na brāhmaṇo aññato suddhim āha); na rajjati no virajjati (= Snp 4.4:8.3 verbatim — the AV's most radical no-position formulation). Norman (p. 342) flags pāda b as "taken over, perhaps from 812, without proper adaptation" — evidence of compositional unevenness.

Choice-points

v. 7, bhavane. Two readings. The Niddesa (mnd6:70.16) and Pj II read bhavane = bhava, a realm-of-becoming — giving the sense "one who does not show himself in any [of the five] realms [of becoming]" (hell, animal, peta, human, deva). Fronsdal (footnote 4 to ch. 6) argues for the literal "dwelling place" on the basis of the term's seven other occurrences in the suttas, where it clearly means a physical dwelling. The cross-canonical-usage argument is stronger; the verse's prescription aligns with v. 2's nāgāramāvase ("one would not live at home"). Thanissaro keeps the Niddesa's reading ("in any realm"); Norman, Bodhi, Fronsdal, Sujato, and Lee treat it as a physical dwelling.

v. 7, vivittam āsanaṁ (against Ee vivitte-mānasaṁ). Niddesa, Pj II, the Burmese edition, Sinhala edition, and the Chinese translation all read vivittam āsanaṁ ("secluded seat"); the PTS Ee edition alone reads vivitte-mānasaṁ ("secluded mind"). Norman (p. 341) explains the divergence as metathesis of consonants (sona / nasa) and adds the decisive external evidence: the Jain Sūyagaḍa 1.2.2.17 preserves bhayamānassa virikkam āsanaṁ — a metric parallel. The cross-Buddhist-Jain attestation settles the reading.

v. 5 vs. vv. 9–10, diṭṭha-suta / diṭṭhasuta-muta. Within Snp 4.6 itself, the diṭṭha-suta doublet is used in two different senses. At v. 5, clearly cognitive: "those we have seen, those we have heard of" — the Niddesa glosses plainly as cakkhu/sota-viññāṇa-experience. At vv. 9–10, in the AV's signature diṭṭhasutaṁ mutesu vā formulaic position. Lee's argument for reading the triplet as "beliefs-traditions-rationales" across the AV has to contend with this internal asymmetry: one sutta uses the doublet cognitively in one verse and ambiguously in another. A cautious reading is that the sense is context-dependent — cognitive in the meditative-register suttas (4.6, plausibly elsewhere), claim-bases in the diṭṭhi-debate register (4.4, 4.5, 4.12).

v. 10, na rajjati no virajjati. The Niddesa's (mnd6:91.4) exegetical resolution is the most economical reading of this AV radicalism anywhere in the commentarial corpus: "all ordinary fools are inflamed (rajjati); the wholesome ordinary person and the seven sekhas are dispassioning (virajjanti); the arahant neither inflames nor dispassions, because the causes of passion are already gone." The negation is of the active practice of dispassion, not of the dispassioned state — preserving the AV's polemic against attachment to virāga as a goal-claim while not contradicting the canonical virāga = nibbāna soteriology. Compared with the Niddesa's folk-etymology of visenibhūta (see Part II 4.4), this gloss is interpretively much stronger.

Vocabulary and commentary

Lexical profile. The diṭṭhi-debate lexicon of 4.3–4.5 is mostly absent from Snp 4.6; the vocabulary is plain and death-themed (jīvitaṁ, miyyati, jarā, socanti, mamāyita, peta, kālaṅkata, nāmaṁ, supina, paṇṇa, vāri, padume). An archaism sits at v. 1: jarasā (instrumental of a neuter -as-stem jaras) — Norman (p. 340) notes this is the only occurrence of jaras as a neuter -as stem in the Pāli canon, a Vedic preservation surviving here as a small antiquity-marker.

Fronsdal (intro to ch. 6) makes a broader observation: "nowhere does the Book of Eights explicitly discuss the Buddhist teaching of 'not-self,' or anatta. In this discourse, the comparable teaching is 'not-mine,' or amama." The AV operates with the mama / mamāyita / māmaka / mamatta family rather than with atta / anatta. This is consistent with the atta < ātta ("taken-up") reading of attaṁ pahāya etc. at 4.3–4.5 — the AV is concerned with what is taken-up and can be put-down, not with the metaphysical question of self-vs-non-self.

Compositional unevenness shows at two points that Norman flags (p. 341–42): v. 7 pāda d (yo attānaṁ bhavane na dassaye) has a metric irregularity correctable only by scribal-patching reconstructions (yāttānaṁ, yvattānaṁ, yvāttānaṁ); and v. 10 pāda b "looks as though it has been taken over, perhaps from 812, without proper adaptation." Combined with the concentrated return of AV-internal vocabulary in vv. 9–10 after seven verses of plainer death-meditation language, the evidence points weakly toward vv. 8–10 being a later compositional extension of an earlier stand-alone death-meditation core (vv. 1–7). The hypothesis is tentative — Vaitālīya's moraic structure is more forgiving of irregularity than Triṣṭubh, and unevenness may not always mean patchwork — but worth flagging.

Mahāniddesa (Mnd 6). The commentary's most visible feature for this sutta is recycled material from earlier Niddesa chapters. The nine-verse momentariness cluster at mnd6:4–12 is verbatim with mnd2:64–72 (applied there to Snp 4.2:4 appañhi jīvitam); the dhono etymology at mnd6:86–88 is verbatim with mnd3:50 (applied there to Snp 4.3:7). The Niddesa evidently operates with a modular doctrine-bank of standard expansion-blocks keyed to specific AV vocabulary triggers, inserted wherever the trigger-word recurs. This has methodological implications for reading Niddesa content as evidence for the AV: the doctrine-blocks reflect the Niddesa-period framework, not AV-period content.

Three substantial canonical Buddha-quotations are imported:

• The Mahāparinibbāna-sutta passage (DN II 144) on vinābhāva — the Buddha's farewell to Ānanda, glossing v. 2's bare vinābhāva.
• AN II 26 on māmaka (v. 3) — "those bhikkhus who are deceitful, hard-headed... are not my māmaka."
• The maññita doctrine passage (close variant of MN 113 Sappurisasutta or MN 1 Mūlapariyāya) — "conceiving is a disease, a boil, a dart, a calamity" — glossing v. 10's tena maññati.

A fourth cross-canonical move: Niddesa at mnd6:23–24 embeds Snp 3.8:3–4 verses (Phalānamiva pakkānaṁ... yathāpi kumbhakārassa) to gloss Snp 4.6 v. 1. Snp 3.8 Sallasutta and Snp 4.6 Jarāsutta are thematic twin compositions on death-meditation; the Niddesa reads them together.

Cross-recensional witnesses

Pāli: full; 10 verses.

Chinese Yizujing YZJ-6 老少俱死經 ("Old and Young All Die Sūtra"): 12 verses = 10 parallel + 2 added (Lee 2024 Table 2). The Chinese title shifts the register from the Pāli's Jarā ("old age") to a universal-mortality frame — both young and old die. The Yizujing's frame narrative involves two funerals passing — a 120-year-old brahmin's and a 7-year-old householder's son's — with the Buddha teaching the sutta on seeing them. The two added verses include material paralleling SN 2.22 Khemasutta's broken-axle simile (Lee's identification), a cross-canonical wrapping consistent with the Yizujing's editorial pattern observed at 4.3 (Dhp-tradition verses around Sundarī) and 4.4 (Mojie frame).

Pj II's Pāli framing story is completely different from the Yizujing's — no convergence on a shared occasion, unlike the patterns at 4.3 (Sundarī, three-witness convergence) and 4.4 (Candābha / Mojie, cross-recensional convergence on darśan-critique). Pj II frames 4.6 as the Buddha's address at the cremation of a wealthy Sāketa brahmin couple who had embraced the Buddha as parents (the couple claimed to have been his parents in 500 past lives). The Yizujing's "old and young both die" double-funeral and Pj II's Sāketa-elderly-couple funeral are independently-composed narratives, both death-themed but sharing no specific details. This divergence is itself a datum: unlike the diṭṭhi-debate suttas 4.3–4.5, where Pāli commentary and Chinese recension tended to wire verses to shared narrative occasions, the meditative-register suttas seem to have attracted different framings in different traditions.

Sanskrit: not attested. Hoernle 1916 covers Snp 4.7–4.10.

Gāndhārī: not attested.

Jain Sūyagaḍa 1.2.2 — unique primary-text cross-religion attestation. Two parallels verified via Jacobi 1895 SBE 45 (sources/jacobi-1895-jaina-sutras-sbe45):

• Sūyagaḍa 1.2.2.17 ↔ Snp 4.6:7 (Sn 810) — full parallel. Jacobi's English (p. 255): "They say that he who is very well disciplined, who protects others, who lives in a place removed from other people, who is not frightened by dangers, possesses right conduct." Three structural matches with the Pāli: withdrawn-practitioner subject, "they say this is fitting for him" predicate, praise of solitude. Norman's observation that the Jain bhayamānassa virikkam āsanaṁ shares the Pāli's metric line (with consonant metathesis) settles the v. 7 vivittam āsanaṁ reading (see Choice-points).
• Sūyagaḍa 1.2.2.9 ↔ Snp 4.6:2 (Sn 805) — partial parallel. Jacobi p. 254: "A sage has completely mastered the Law, and has ceased to do actions; but the selfish grieve, they will not (thereby) recover their (lost) property." Shares selfish grief over property with the Pāli's Socanti janā mamāyite.

The metre match is decisive. The Jain Sūyagaḍa 1.2 is in the Vaitāliya metre (Jacobi's footnote p. 249: veyāliya in Prakrit, with the secondary sense Destruction of Karman); the Pāli Snp 4.6 is in the same metre. Both the Jain and Buddhist traditions preserve a shared old-age-and-property renunciation verse-genre in Vaitāliya metre. This is primary-text evidence of a pre-sectarian or cross-sectarian śramaṇic verse-pool — either drawn from common pre-sectarian sources or cross-fertilised between the traditions before either canon crystallised. Snp 4.6 is the AV's clearest case of participation in a wider śramaṇic verse-tradition, not an exclusively Buddhist one.

Peṭakopadesa: two verbatim citations of Snp 4.6 in Pe chapter 1 (the Mahākaccāna-attributed scholastic manual).

• Sn 804 (v. 1) = pe1:74.1 — the opening Appaṁ vata jīvitaṁ idaṁ verse.
• Sn 807 (v. 4) = pe1:67.1 — the dream-and-dead-loved-one verse.

Combined with the Peṭakopadesa citations of Snp 4.2 (Sn 774, Sn 777), Snp 4.7 (Sn 817), and the Pe's colophon attribution to Mahākaccāna at pe9:65.1, this extends the Mahākaccāna–AV scholastic citation web to five verses across three AV suttas — the densest paracanonical anchoring of any AV sutta-cluster in the Pāli stream. Chapter 8 treats this extended web in detail.

Coverage note. Snp 4.6 has the richest cross-traditional attestation of any AV sutta so far — Pāli + Chinese + Jain + Peṭakopadesa. The Jain parallel is unique in the AV corpus (the only other Jain link is the Isibhāsiyāiṁ 38.6 parallel to Sn 974, which remains source-of-acquisition).

Internal cross-references

Within the AV. Two verbatim bonds with 4.4 and 4.3 concentrate in v. 10:

• dhono (v. 10a) = Snp 4.3:7.3 verbatim. Two-AV-sutta formula, and across the AV only here and at 4.3:7.3 (outside the AV, MN 56:29.29 in Upāli's verses).
• na rajjati no virajjati (v. 10d) = Snp 4.4:8.3 verbatim. Carries the AV's most radical no-position formulation.

Thematic echo: Nāññena visuddhim icchati (v. 10c) against Snp 4.4:3.1 Na brāhmaṇo aññato suddhim āha. Mamāyita (v. 2, v. 6) recurs at 4.2:6.1 and 4.10:8.1. The concentrated return of diṭṭhi-debate vocabulary in vv. 9–10 contrasts with the plainer meditative register of vv. 1–7, suggesting a compositional seam between the sutta's death-meditation core and its AV-integrating closure.

Within the Khuddaka. The cross-Snp twin pair with Snp 3.8 Sallasutta is the tightest external bond. Petaṁ kālaṅkataṁ (v. 4d) is verbatim with Snp 3.8:17.3; the Niddesa for 4.6 directly embeds Snp 3.8:3–4 verses to gloss the sutta's v. 1. Both are death-and-impermanence compositions; both appear to share source-vocabulary. Snp 3.8's title-image salla ("dart") also recurs in the AV at 4.1 (sallaviddhova ruppati) and 4.2 (abbūḷhasallo), marking the cross-Snp salla-vocabulary as a productive early-verse-stock formula.

Further cross-Snp: the lotus-leaf simile at v. 9 parallels Snp 2.14:18.4; dhono at v. 10 parallels MN 56:29.29 (Upāli's praise of the Buddha).

Prose-nikāya uptake. No named-citation of Snp 4.6. The sutta's vocabulary travels: the maññita doctrine of MN 113 / MN 1 is the Niddesa's canonical intertext for v. 10's tena maññati; the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta's farewell-passage glosses v. 2's vinābhāva. The Niddesa's canonical intertexts are themselves cross-canonical evidence that 4.6's vocabulary was being read across the prose and verse corpora.

Reception and external attestation

Mahāniddesa: Mnd 6 covers all ten verses. See Vocabulary and commentary.

Paramatthajotikā II: Sāketa-elderly-couple funeral frame (Bodhi 2017 apparatus). The couple recognised the Buddha as their son from 500 past lives; both attained arahantship and final nibbāna; the Buddha attended their cremation, recited Dhp 225, and delivered Snp 4.6 as the funeral discourse. The frame is independent of the Yizujing's double-funeral narrative — both death-themed, no shared details.

Aśoka Bhabru edict: not identified.

Peṭakopadesa: Sn 804 and Sn 807 cited (see Cross-recensional witnesses). Most verse-dense AV sutta in Pe chapter 1 after Snp 4.2 and 4.7.

Reading

Snp 4.6 is the AV's meditative-impermanence set-piece, positioned between the diṭṭhi-debate cluster of 4.3–4.5 and the dispute-polemic of 4.8–4.9. The metre shifts to Vaitāliya, the register shifts to image-driven poetry, and the theme shifts from diṭṭhi to jarā. Three images anchor the sutta: the dream-encountered-friend gone on waking (v. 4), the name-left-after-the-dead (v. 5), and the water-not-sticking-to-lotus-leaf (vv. 8–9). These are not arguments; they are meditations rendered poetically.

The sutta's clearest doctrinal finding for the book is Fronsdal's observation about the AV's de-clinging vocabulary. Snp 4.6 operates with amama / mamatta — "not-mine" / "mineness" — rather than with anatta / atta "not-self" / "self." The AV is concerned with what is taken-up and could be put-down, not with the metaphysical status of self-vs-non-self. This is continuous with the atta < ātta reading of the AV's attaṁ pahāya formula-family at 4.3–4.5 (Norman and six-out-of-six published translators against the Niddesa's ātman/nirātman reading). The AV's concern is psychological-and-practical rather than ontological; it targets clinging, not the existence of a self. This is one of the load-bearing findings Chapter 3 will rely on.

The closing v. 10 is doing AV-integration work. After seven verses of plainer death-meditation vocabulary, vv. 8–10 pull in muni, dhono, diṭṭhasuta-muta, nāññena visuddhi, na rajjati no virajjati — five AV-internal phrases in three verses, with two verbatim bonds to 4.3 and 4.4. Norman's observation that v. 10 pāda b looks copied from v. 9 pāda b supports a compositional-seam reading: the sutta's death-meditation core (vv. 1–7) may have circulated as a stand-alone discourse, possibly paired with Snp 3.8 Sallasutta, and was later extended with goal-portrait verses (vv. 8–10) to integrate it into the AV's broader diṭṭhi-debate vocabulary. The hypothesis is tentative — Vaitāliya's moraic structure is more forgiving of surface-level irregularity than Triṣṭubh, and compositional unevenness may have other explanations — but it is consistent with the concentrated vocabulary-return of the closing verses.

The Jain Sūyagaḍa parallel is the most important external finding. Snp 4.6 is the only AV sutta with a primary-text-verifiable Jain canonical parallel. Both Sūyagaḍa 1.2.2.9 and 1.2.2.17 match Pāli verses at both thematic and metric level: Sūyagaḍa 1.2 is in Vaitāliya metre, as is Snp 4.6; the two traditions share an old-age-and-property renunciation genre with specific verse-parallels. Norman's identification of vivittam āsanaṁ through the Jain metric parallel settles a Pāli reading-question via a Jain text — cross-traditional primary-text evidence doing philological work. The finding points toward a shared śramaṇic verse-pool preceding or cross-fertilising both canonical traditions. The AV's participation in this wider verse-tradition is evidence the book can use when treating the AV's dating and cultural context in Chapters 6 and 9 — the Pāli AV is not a sealed-off Buddhist corpus but a localisation of a broader renunciate verse-genre with demonstrable cross-sectarian continuities.

The cross-Snp twin-pairing with Snp 3.8 Sallasutta is a further piece of the same picture. Snp 3.8 treats death and impermanence in the Mahāvagga; Snp 4.6 treats the same themes in the Aṭṭhakavagga; the Niddesa explicitly reads them together. The salla vocabulary linking both (plus Snp 4.1, 4.2, 4.16) points to a stock of early-verse imagery that crosses the Snp's internal division into vaggas. Chapter 1 treats the Snp's five-vagga structure as editorial-imposed on originally-looser verse-material; the AV's cross-Snp bonds are concrete evidence of that origin.

Finally: the Peṭakopadesa's citation of Sn 804 and Sn 807 extends the Mahākaccāna–AV scholastic web to five verses across three suttas (4.2, 4.6, 4.7). The Pe reads the AV as a source-pool of doctrinally-classifiable verses, and Snp 4.6 contributes disproportionately to that pool. Snp 4.6 is thus anchored at three distinct paracanonical layers — the Peṭakopadesa scholastic manual, the Niddesa's cross-canonical reading against Snp 3.8 and the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, and the Jain cross-religious pool — each of which illuminates a different facet of how the AV was read, used, and transmitted in the period shortly after the verses themselves reached their received form.