Is India literary whitewashing a venerable term?

Is India literary whitewashing a venerable term?

A Story by neurostar burns

Nisprapanca:

This term has been in use since ancient times over 3,000 years ago around India:

Pali: ( one of the oldest known languages and not scribed) nippapancha/nippapanca.
Sanskrit: nisprapancha/ nisprapanca.
Tibetan: spros bral.

Which illustrates the term occurs in early India Buddhism, Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan treatises, among many languages. It is utilized with many authors of the above mentioned societies old and recent. It is widely known in Indian literature and scholastic treatments.

Nisprapanca means "non-conceptuality", concepts, language fabrication (prapanca) are not to arise in nisprapanca. This is one of the many stages toward purification of the mind. It means freeing the mind of distractions of arising concepts, i.e. concepts and any conceptualizations intrude no more.

Nisprapanca has had sustained treatment for many hundreds of years including recent decades, at least. It is a meditation stage whereupon the mind is freed of conceptualizing. Conceptualizing is considered an obstructive habit which distracts one from purity of mind, which can be overcome.

One can find in the Indian literature other equivalent synonyms, e.g. aprapanca, nirvikalpa, avikalpa

But there seems not to be found any reason to reduce use of the term nisprapanca. Perhaps its utilization implies a
non-sequiter in at least a description toward what the term serves?  At its stage-nothing more can be beyond that as there will not be concepts to be found developing when that stage is reached.

However, it is notable recently at least in academic treatment of the texts that the term nisprapanca is seen less and less despite its apparent efficacy in analytic literature and meditative history. It is not directly mentioned or found in many recent treatments despite it being so in past works. It seems to be an occluded term but not yet effaced.

Searching in modern treatments of texts, it is difficult to locate the term with its proper usage.
One may find it used in a 1988 book published by Indian Books Centre, "The Framework of Nagarjuna's Philosophy" by
A.M. Padhye. The word is found in Ramachandra Pandey's "Indian Studies in Philosophy", p. 74, 1977 and "Philosophy of No Identity". It was also found in Thomas E. Wood's " Nagarjunian disputations".

Another example on omission may be found in Priestley's 1999 book on Pudgalavadins. He several times talks about the
cessation of conceptualization but despite using those phrases, he does not accompany those with the term nisprapanca or nippapanca while analyzing the early Buddhist movement.

© 2022 neurostar burns


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Added on May 5, 2021
Last Updated on February 14, 2022

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neurostar burns
neurostar burns

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