3 anuśaya
vigata-kleśa-paryavasthānam api kleśa-sānubandhaṃ sānuśayam api kleśa-nir-anubandhaṃ nir-anuśayam api mithyā-praṇihitam api cittaṃ jānāti / [bodhisattvabhūmi 49] He or she also knows the minds [of other beings] that have been freed of the perturbation caused by the mental afflictions, as well as those [minds] that have a connection with the mental afflictions and are associated with the latencies, those [minds] that have no connection with the mental afflictions and are free of the latencies, as well as those [minds] that possess an aspiration that is directed improperly—. [Engle]
3.0.1 overview
The lemma anuśaya functions exclusively within the semantic domain of Will, where it manifests two closely related senses: the general sense of proclivity/disposition, typically of the undesirable variety (e.g. disposition to craving), and the narrower senses of an espacially bad disposition: hatred. The former sense, by far the most represented across the different textual traditions and genres in our corpus, is part of the Buddhist psychological vocabulary. It denotes to the idea of underlying, latent tendencies that characterize and influence the thoughts and behavior of sentient being. Thus, in Yogācāra and other contexts it is common to find references to the need of knowing these tendencies of sentient beings in order to offer them an appropriate instruction (bodhisattvabhūmi 272; abhidharmasamuccaya 37). The sense hatred is much less frequent in our corpus, and appears mosty as a narrowing of the previous sense determined mainly by the context (kāśyapaparivarta 8v).1
3.0.2 frequency
In our corpus anuśaya is a mid-frequency word, with an uneven distribution across various genres, having a predominant presence in śāstra literature, reflecting the term’s specialised usage. However, it also present in narrative and scriptural sources, indicating that while anuśaya found specialized application in scholastic literature it maintained a presence across diverse textual traditions.
3.0.3 context
In our corpus, several significant multi-word expressions featuring anuśaya can be found. The compound “āśay-ānuśaya” (“dispositions and proclivities”) constitutes an especially salient collocation in buddhist psychology, where it is used to sum up a being’s mental tendencies. Typically this collocation occurs in contexts describing the Buddha’s knowledge of beings’ mental states, as in the Avadānaśataka: “atha bhagavān preta-pūrviṇāṃ deva-putrāṇām āśay-ānuśayaṃ dhātuṃ prakṛtiṃ ca jñātvā” [Vaidya, 124] (“Alors Bhagavat, connaissant à fond les dispositions, les tendances morales, les éléments et la nature intime de ces fils de dieux autrefois Prêtas, …” [Feer 177]).
Another notable collocational pattern sees anuśaya compounded with words that denote specific temperaments’ afflictions, such as “rāg-ānuśaya” (a proclivity to attachment) and “tṛṣṇ-ānuśaya” (a proclivity to cravig), and thus participating in the classification of different types of latent tendencies according to their emotional or cognitive content.
3.0.4 connotation
The semantic prosody analysis reveals a predominantly negative evaluation of anuśaya, based mainly on the Buddhist understanding of anuśaya as representing unwholesome mental tendencies that require elimination or transformation.
The negative connotation is particularly evident in contexts discussing spiritual purification, e.g. Udānavarga 315: “evaṃ hi tṛṣṇ-ānuśayair anuddhṛtair nirvartate duhkham idaṃ punaḥ punaḥ” (“… so it is that if even the smallest atom of lust has not been eradicated, one will not leave behind this ever-recurring suffering (i.e., existence).” [Rockhill]). The neutral instances typically occur in descriptive or analytical contexts where the term functions as a technical psychological category.
This entry is based on version 6 of of the Visual Dictionary of Buddhist Sanskrit, see data at zenodo.org/records/13985112
karma-vipāka-pratisaraṇo na pareṣāṃ kupyati n ^ānuśayaṃ vahati / kāśyapaparivarta 8v
“… accepting them as the result of previous actions and thus not being angry with others, nor bearing them any grudge.”↩︎