Skip to content

NĀMARŪPA

Ven. Nāṇamoli had translated this compound literally as "name-and-form." In this edition the compound has been changed back to the rendering used in his translation of the Visuddhimagga, "mentality-materiality," though with regret that this cumbersome Latinate expression lacks the concision and punch of "name-and-form." The word nāma originally meant "name," but in the Pali suttas it is used in this compound as a collective term for the mental factors associated with consciousness, as will be seen in the definition at MN 9.54. The commentaries explain nāma here as deriving from the word namati, to bend, and as being applied to the mental factors because they "bend" towards the object in the act of cognizing it. Rūpa is used in two major contexts in the suttas: as the first of the five aggregates and as the specific object of eye-consciousness. The former is a broader category that includes the latter as one among many other species of rūpa. Ven. Nāṇamoli, aiming at consistency in his manuscript translation, had used "form" for rūpa as visible object (in preference to the "visible-datum" used in his earlier translation scheme). But when rūpa is used to signify the first of the five aggregates, it has been changed to "material form." This rendering should indicate more precisely the meaning of rūpa in that context while preserving the connection with rūpa as visible object. Occasionally in the texts the word seems to straddle both meaning without allowing an exclusive delimitation, as in the context of certain meditative attainments such as the first two liberations (MN 77.22).