Pravrajita
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pravrajita [alt. pravrajyā] (P. pabbajjā; T. rab tu byung ba; C. chujia 出家). Literally, “going forth,” with the sense of renouncing the settled life of a householder to live as a wandering ascetic.[1][2]
The 84000 glossary states:
- The Sanskrit pravrajyā literally means “going forth,” with the sense of leaving the life of a householder and embracing the life of a renunciant. When the term is applied more technically, it refers to the act of becoming a novice monk (śrāmaṇera; dge tshul) or nun (śrāmaṇerikā; dge tshul ma), this being a first stage leading to full ordination.[3]
Robert Miller states:
- One of the difficulties in translating vinaya texts lies in finding appropriate English equivalents for the language of Buddhist monasticism. In several instances we have borrowed terms from Christianity such as “ordination” and “monk,” even though they may only bear a superficial similarity to their Buddhist analogs. Another difficulty lies in the historical fact that the language of Buddhist renunciation was adapted from a body of terms and ideas common among Greater Magadhan ascetic communities in the sixth and fifth centuries ʙᴄᴇ. As is to be expected when different religious communities employ the same words, they come to have unique connotations, the most relevant of which we might now consider.
- First and foremost is the term pravrajyā, which in its widest application referred to the act of “going forth,” that is, renouncing the settled life of a householder to live as a wandering ascetic. In pre-Buddhist India, the act of going forth often took a ritual form and was made dramatically visible “by shaving off the hair and beard and laying aside the layman’s dress, to cover oneself with rags, with bark or hemp, or to wander in the nude.”[4] In the present translation, we render pravrajyā (Tib. rab tu ’byung ba) as “to go forth” (or, in a small number of cases, “to join the renunciant order”) while one who goes forth (Tib. rab byung) is a “renunciant.”[1]
Variations of the term pravrajita include pravrajyā (rab tu byung; rab byung; mngon par byung[3]).[2]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1
Robert Miller (2024), The Chapter on Going Forth, "Introduction", 84000 Collection
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Buswell & Lopez 2014, s.v. pravrajita.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "become a renunciant", 84000 Glossary of Terms
- ↑ Kloppenborg (1983, 159).
Sources
Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University- Kloppenborg, Rita. “The Earliest Buddhist Ritual of Ordination.” In Selected Studies on Ritual in the Indian Religions: Essays to D.J. Hoens, edited by Dirk Jan Hoens and Rita Kloppenborg, 158–68. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 1983.
- Miller, Robert (2024), The Chapter on Going Forth, "Introduction", 84000 Collection
