..续本文上一页the Venerable Ananda, all of whom were skilled in devising striking similes that impress the formal message of the discourse indelibly on the auditor”s mind. The Venerable Maha Kaccana”s discourses, it seems, owe their effectiveness entirely to their content and analytical exactitude rather than to literary embellishment.

　　As an analyst of the Dhamma, the Venerable Maha Kaccana most closely approximates to the Venerable Sariputta, and indeed the discourses of both exhibit similar traits. The difference between them is principally a matter of emphasis rather than of substance. Sariputta”s analytic disquisitions, as seen for example in the Sammaditthi Sutta and the Mahahatthipadopama Sutta,[15] begin with a specified topic and then develop by dissecting that topic into its component strands and exploring each component in turn (often with still finer subpisions). Within his own specialized sphere Maha Kaccana starts, not with a general topic, but with a short utterance of the Buddha, often one that is intuitive, poetic, or exhortatory in character. His exposition then unfolds by reformulating the gnomic or inspirational phrasing of the Buddha”s statement in ways that link it up with established, more familiar frameworks of doctrine, usually with the six spheres of sense and the practice of sense restraint. Yet, despite their differences in emphasis, both these great disciples share a predilection for systematic analysis and both display the same concern for razor-sharp precision in their thinking.

　　For this reason, no doubt, within the Theravada tradition each has come to be regarded as the father of a particular methodology for interpreting the Dhamma, exegetical systems that rose to prominence in the early centuries of Buddhist intellectual history. Sariputta is, of course, viewed as the original systematizer of the Abhidhamma, which (according to tradition) he elaborated in detail based on the outlines that the Buddha taught him during his periodic visits to the human realm while expounding the Abhidhamma to the devas in the Tavatimsa heaven.[16] Maha Kaccana is regarded as the author of a method of exposition embedded in two post-canonical works that exerted an important influence on the early Buddhist commentators. About these two works — the Petakopadesa and the Nettippakarana — we shall have more to say below.

　　(1) The Majjhima Nikaya

　　The first sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya in which the Venerable Maha Kaccana plays a prominent role is the Madhupindika Sutta (MN 18), the Honeyball Discourse, a title assigned to it by the Buddha himself — perhaps a unique instance of the Buddha”s conferring a title upon a sutta spoken by a disciple.

　　The sutta opens on an occasion when the Buddha is dwelling at the city of Kapilavatthu in his native land, the Sakyan republic. One day, while the Buddha is sitting in meditation in Nigrodha”s Park, an arrogant Sakyan named Dandapani approaches him and asks him, in a deliberately discourteous tone: "What does the recluse assert, what does he proclaim

　　" The Buddha replies with an answer intended to underscore his own refusal to be dragged into the type of contention that his questioner wants to provoke:

　　"Friend, I assert and proclaim such (a teaching) that one does not quarrel with anyone in the world with its gods, its Maras and its Brahmas, in this generation with its recluses and brahmans, its princes and its people; such (a teaching) that perceptions no more underlie that brahman who abides detached from sensual pleasures, without perplexity, shorn of worry, free from craving for any kind of being."

　　The reply is utterly incomprehensible to Dandapani, who raises his eyebrows in bewilderment and departs. Later, in the evening, the Buddha informs the bhikkhus what had transpired. One monk inquir…

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