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The
title of this discourse has sparked some controversy, centered on the word
"ratta." Modern translators in Asian vernaculars are unanimous
in rendering it as "night," a reading seconded by Sanskrit and
Tibetan versions of the discourse. Translators working in English have balked
at this reading, however, on the grounds that the title it yields --
"Auspicious One-Night" -- makes no sense. Thus I.B. Horner drops the
word "ratta" for her translation entirely; Ven Ñanamoli
renders it as "attachment," yielding "One Fortunate
Attachment"; and Ven. Ñanananda, taking his cue from Ven. Ñanamoli,
renders it as "lover," yielding "Ideal Lover of Solitude."
If
we look at idiomatic Pali usage, though, we find that there is good reason to
stick with the traditional reading of "night." There is a tendency in
the Pali Canon to speak of a 24-hour period of day and night as a
"night." This would be natural for a society that used a lunar
calendar -- marking the passage of time by the phases of the moon -- just as it
is natural for us, using a solar calendar, to call the same period of time a
"day." As the verse that forms the summary of this discourse
explicitly mentions one practicing "relentlessly both day and night,"
the "night" in the title of the discourse would seem to be a 24-hour,
rather than a 12-hour, night -- and so I have chosen to render the Pali idiom
into its English equivalent: An Auspicious Day.
Ven.
Ñanamoli is probably right in assuming that "bhaddekaratta"
was a pre-Buddhist term that the Buddha adopted and re-interpreted in light of
his own teaching. The point of the discourse would thus be that -- instead of
the play of cosmic forces, the stars, or the lucky omens -- one's own
development of the mind's attitude to time is what makes a day auspicious.
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