Australian Dharma?

[daksina]

Maybe someone is familiar with this aspect of Dharma and could give comments. An Australian University's approach to education is the Aboriginal phrase Yindyamarra winhanganha which means 'the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in.'  Yindyamarra as an ancient spiritual location is a hill-top within that U campus. Yindyamarra is also Indyamarra.   'It is all about pronunciation the y sound is not a hard sound.  when it was documented by white linguists it may sounded like indyamarra to their ears.  It is not a prefix'. _ from a teacher of that language, at that U. Aboriginal softening of hard vowels is seen in other Aboriginal words.  When applied to winhanganha, the Javanese /winahya/ (from Sanskrit winaya with no rounded A) may be softened to /winha/.  The y is not the hard /y/- and seems abbreviated, which often occurs. Dharma vinaya is the standard form.
By comparison with indyamarra:
Malay Indah :'rare, precious, valuable, admirable'.
Indahkan. 'to esteem, to appreciate, to prize, to value, to mind, to respect, to heed'.
kan  Malay / Java. kAna  'to reach, to attain, to be affected, to be acted on'.
Malay kanan. 'to like, to approve'.
kanang. 'to consider, to ponder, to remember.'
Indalas 'a mythic name sometimes given to the island of Sumatra'. Sumatra was a Buddhist Tantric teaching centre during the 7th-14th centuries for Chinese students going on to Tibet. 
Old Java language (800-1300CE). iṇḍa* aṅiṇḍa  'to change condition, become incarnated'.
indah 'hear! listen! (in addressing gods and persons of high rank).  extraordinary beauty'.
endah  'out of the ordinary, extraordinary, astounding, extraordinarily beautiful (etc); it is amazing!'
indu (Sanskrit) 'moon' .
induṅ  'mother; familiar or affectionate address to a woman (beloved, daughter): my good woman, my dear girl'. Malay/ Java mara 'to advance, to go forward, firm, resolute'. M. mâ- verb prefix. Aboriginal -marra 'verb suffix of action'.
Old Java  mār  'moving, affecting deeply, deeply moved, deeply affected by emotions of fear, compassion.'
mara  emphatic particle.

Winha[nganha/i]: 'to know, to think, to remember'. Old Java winaya (Skt vinaya) 'training (esp. moral), education, discipline. (Buddhist) rule of discipline for monks, good breeding, modesty, mildness, controlled behaviour'.  
  -ṅ the definite article. -ne possessive , suffix to noun.        
Old Java gaṇa '(Skt class, body of followers or attendants). group (as final element of compounds)'
Aboriginal  nganha 'there, association'.

In 1835, a clergyman recorded a ceremony in that Aboriginal country. It was a waganna dance, with a song given by the deity. 'Wacana' is a journal of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. Skt vacana  'causing to recite', Old Java wacana 'instruction', Malay 'discourse'.
https://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/acc ... y/uon:1448
p 851.The various religious terms in the ceremony suggest that Tantric Buddhism was practiced: 'Thank you for the interesting message. I can only say that if those are true etymologies, then certainly mudrā (hand gesture) is a tantric practice although gāthas (songs) are pan-Indic, and vacana, sentence, sound, is a term used in tantric traditions, which talk a lot about mantras and the power of the word. Tantric traditions were all pervasive in medieval South-East Asia so I suppose some influence on Australian traditions is possible.
Professor Gavin Flood FBA
Senior Research Fellow, Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion, Oxford University'.

Then such a Buddhist tradition may be the origin of the local University's approach to modern education. The uni is in Wiradjuri country at Wagga Wagga NSW. Wagga may be from the sound of the crows or may be a ceremonial dance with songs. Skt vaca means both 'parrot' and 'speak', Old Java waca 'speak'.

[JamesTheGiant]

Interesting. Certainly Buddhism made its way to southern Indonesia during the 8th century CE, so people could have spread it further south without being recorded or leaving a lasting group of Buddhists.

[thomaslaw]

What is Australian Dharma?

Do you refer to Buddha dharma/Buddhist traditions presented in Australian universities?

[daksina]

Hi JamesThe Giant,
Probably after 600 years the teachings had become normalised tradition. In one country with a history of a boat arriving there are the words:
budjar morning. budjarahm, sacred, taboo.  ‘spirit, ghost’  dreamtime story, story, tale. budjaram   tell a story, myth, legend, sacred thing. budjarahm traditional story, particularly any story of the Dream Time.  
In Wiradjuri language:
budha sandalwood. budhu  stars budhin  sunbeams.

Maybe Kuller Kullup is from Kala Kalapa, a Vedic title and Buddhist quality.

https://nrg.org.au/index_files/gawa0.ht ... 80%20years.
nrg.org.au/index_files/gawa0.html'On Saturday, the 22nd March 1845, at an encampment east of Melbourne, near 200 strangers arrived. 
The sight was imposing and affecting, especially their attendance upon that old chief Kuller Kullup, the oldest man I have ever seen among them;.' [scroll down to near the end]. 'Kuller Kullup in 1839  lived in a stone house in Snowy Mountains , built before British settlement.  '..the man who dreamed corroborree  (dance music)  for the whole of south-eastern Australia . .all south eastern Aboriginal people knew him as a great philosopher.'  

 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=pz ... falseMusic as History in Tamilnadu - Page 138 
T. K. Venkatasubramanian - 2010 - ‎
  .... Sri Kanchi Acharya (' Hindu teaching temple') conferred the title Sakala Kala Kalapa for his versatility.[The long web-address is to ensure the site is found correctly].
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2s ... ra&f=false
Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval ...Referring to the construction of a Buddhist temple by a Kadaram king (north Malaysia)  ... of Rajaraja I (c.1006).Sanskrit Section [first sentence, line 73] ( kala kalapa ). 'He, this Rajakecarivarman Rajaraja, who had seen the other shore of the ocean of the collection of all sciences,'.

In the absence of temples, saffron robes and carvings, the practices would be invisible to the European invaders. Sacred knowledge was exclusively held by initiated men. There are hints in names such as Lake Eyre being 'Kuti Thanda' , Old Java kuti 'Buddhist hermitage'. tanda 'headman'. (Tamil thandha 'given', deivam-thandha). 'When the lake is full, a notable phenomenon is that around midday the surface can often become very flat. The surface then reflects the sky in a way that leaves both the horizon and water surface virtually impossible to see. The commodore of the Lake Eyre Yacht Club has stated that sailing during this time has the appearance of sailing in the sky'.
A local country in the desert is Adnyamathanha , Skt 'not wealthy. no. grain'. Maybe Buddhism came easily to them...

Hi Thomaslaw,

My question is whether Dhamma came to the Indigenous people. If the expression about vinaya is from a Buddhist source, and is held by that uni as its teaching style, then possibly the uni has a Buddhist nature in general. The Indyamarra hill-top there was evidently a teaching place in Aboriginal practice.

[daksina]

The first post mentions the waganna ceremony using vajra-style twigs, at Dubbo. It seems that winaya was the teaching at Wagga Wagga. These two branches are described in Javanese texts:
p 229 location of winaya observing Buddhists. 
p235 canto to Tantric thunderbolt bearing Buddhist clergy. Winaya celibacy texts not known to author.  Tantric King Kertanegara. 
p 491 two groups, winaya and thunderbolt Tantric.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=cH ... ya&f=false

[sunnat]

This is just hearsay: many years ago I lived in inland nsw. A friend who was the son of a local king told me that a long time before white people came there were travellers from china who regularly came to the area. If so, it is reasonable to think there may be a Buddhist influence. On the other hand when I lived in the Northern Territory, Darwin, I was told by a Buddhist who had many aboriginal friends, elders, whom he had told about things like Vipassana and he had been told that the indigenous practice was to do insight meditation on everything, like the land, trees people etc. Otherwise there was little interest in what non aboriginal people had to say about anything, particularly religion.

[daksina]

Hi sunnat,

That's interesting. Before the British arrived the geography of Asia was not well known. Bundjalung people of Brisbane say a boat came from Ngareenbeil which may be Old Java nagara ne bela 'your beloved countryman'. Dharawal people remember that boat came from Ngarawan, perhaps OJ nagara wana 'forest country'. Skt 'town foreign'. Chinese later became familiar across Australia and perhaps matched the description handed down of overseas visitors.

Ngurampaa in western NSW Ngiyampa country, ( which looks a bit like Nyingmapa), is the area mental map with locations of places. That suggests the mandala layout which is studied by Geshe students for the Ngarampa degree. Possibly there were Chinese students and teachers in Indonesian Sumatra as there was intense contact between Buddhist Bengal in India and Indonesia. Mandala in SE Asia is linked with nagara and political rule.

[daksina]

One of four Vinaya pārājikas for monks forbids stealing (and sexuality, murder, lying about degree of spirituality). Maybe that is connected with the virtue of burning and preventing stealing. A king burned his own body.
Sad-dharma Puṇḍárīka Sūtra. The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law.
Chapter 23 - The Story of the Bodhisattva Medicine King :
https://e-thesis.mcu.ac.th/storage/rsyZ ... 9cRrXJ.pdf p62
The Buddha then addressed the Bodhisattva Star Constellation King Flower: ‘In your opinion what say you, was the Bodhisattva Loveliness some other person? It was indeed the present Medicine King Bodhisattva. His self-sacrifice and gifts were of such countless hundred thousand myriad kotis of nayutas in number as these. Star Constellation King Flower! If anyone with his mind set on and aiming at Perfect Enlightenment is able to burn the fingers of his hand or even a toe of his foot in homage to a buddha's stupa he will surpass him who pays homage with domains, cities, wives, children, and his three-thousand-great thousand-fold land with its mountains, forests, rivers, pools, and all its precious things.’

In Sydney, buduwai may be buddha vanaya, wanaya in Old Javanese. The Sydney language is Dharug-Dharawal.
https://www.academia.edu/26882939/DHARA ... o=download p6
Ritual for preventing children from becoming thieves by scorching their fingers buduwai.

https://www.williamdawes.org/docs/troy_ ... cation.pdf

Language, Mythology and Ceremony.

'ceremony to prevent people becoming thieves—the parent of a child would scorch its fingers so that it will not steal. buduway 'scorch'. putuwi.'

https://www.williamdawes.org/docs/steele_thesis.pdf
Putuwidyánga wiangáta putuwi 'My mother scorched my fingers (that I should not steal)' .
Then putuwi was the spelling by the early British settlers and is corrected by Dharug speakers to buduway.The expression can be explained as:
ganadyanga 'burning. aches', gana 'burn'. dyánga 'aches', Old Java dhyāna 'concentrate'. Dharug. Skt ga 'come' . Dharug wiangáta 'my mother'.
None of these are words for 'finger, fingernail, hand', so the concept seems to be putuwi / buduway and not just 'burning a finger'.
So a word for 'snatch' yaramadyawiniya seems to contain wanaya. The first part yaramadya appears to mean 'fighting / crab. damage' suggesting stealing and an offence against wanaya. Then hopefully the child will become budyari 'good; well; right; proper'. So then, the children in Sydney were Budyari.

[thomaslaw]

Hi Thomaslaw,

My question is whether Dhamma came to the Indigenous people. If the expression about vinaya is from a Buddhist source, and is held by that uni as its teaching style, then possibly the uni has a Buddhist nature in general. The Indyamarra hill-top there was evidently a teaching place in Aboriginal practice.

It will be very good if the Indigenous people have the opportunities to know about the Dhamma, mainly "the four noble truths".

[daksina]

Dharug language has: wanya lie
ngalawa-   lie (down).
https://dharug.dalang.com.au/language/d ... pe=English

So wanya means 'to be lying'. That's two of the four vinaya pārājikas, winaya (stealing, lying). Adultery and murder of course are instinctively wrong.  https://austhrutime.com/law_and_order.htm
Indigenous people insist their culture is extremely old with no foreign inputs. There is resistance, which extends to academic policy, against altering that tradition. But comments by Buddhists about the examples here would be useful in discussing possible contacts which produced embedded cultures that were influenced by Damma.

[thomaslaw]

If the indigenous people want to know Buddhism, they need to study, in any languages they prefer, the 'four noble truths', which are just the very basic teachings of the Buddha (in any Buddhist traditions, such as Pali, Thai, Chinese, or Japanese Buddhism).

[daksina]

Absolutely true, thomaslaw. They use Old Javanese language.
'Ngurra – appears in many different Aboriginal languages around Australia and is a word for ‘home’, ‘camp’, ‘a place of belonging’, ‘a place of inclusion’. https://aiatsis.gov.au/ngurra
Dharawal ngura 'Place/Country'.
Malay nagara 'city, a country, a region'.
OJ nagara (Skt town, city) palace, court, residence, capital, state or realm.

[thomaslaw]

Absolutely true, thomaslaw. They use Old Javanese language.

It is very good to know that!