Anatta-Lakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66):

• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Form, monks, is not self. If form were the self, this form would not lend itself to dis-ease (...) But precisely because form is not self, form lends itself to dis-ease (...) Feeling is not self (...) Perception is not self (...) Mental fabrications are not self (...) Consciousness is not self (...) What do you think, monks: Is form constant or inconstant?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘Inconstant, Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘(...) Is feeling constant or inconstant (...)?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘Inconstant Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘(...) Is perception constant or inconstant (...)?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘Inconstant, Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘(...) Are fabrications constant or inconstant(...)?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘Inconstant, Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘(...) Is consciousness constant or inconstant (...)?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘Inconstant, Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘Stressful, Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: ‘This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am’?’
• [Messrs. Monks]: ‘No, Lord’.
• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Thus, monks, any body whatsoever (...) Any feeling whatsoever (...) Any perception whatsoever (...) Any fabrications whatsoever (...) Any consciousness whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near (...) is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: ‘This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am’. Seeing thus, the instructed noble disciple grows disenchanted with the body, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, ‘Fully released’. He discerns that ‘Birth is depleted, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world’. (www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/samyutta/sn22-059.html).

And, just so there be no misapprehension, an alternative translation renders the latter section this manner:

• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘So, bhikkhus any kind of form whatever (...) Any kind of feeling whatever (...) Any kind of perception whatever (...) Any kind of determination whatever (...) Any kind of consciousness whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near must, with right understanding how it is, be regarded thus: ‘This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my self’. Bhikkhus, when a noble follower who has heard (the truth) sees thus, he finds estrangement in form, he finds estrangement in feeling, he finds estrangement in perception, he finds estrangement in determinations, he finds estrangement in consciousness. When he finds estrangement, passion fades out. With the fading of passion, he is liberated. When liberated, there is knowledge that he is liberated. He understands: ‘Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived out, what can be done is done, of this there is no more beyond’. (www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/samyutta/sn22-059a.html).

Form Is Not Self:

• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘Form is not self. If form were the self, this form would not lend itself to dis-ease (...) But precisely because form is not self, form lends itself to dis-ease (...) Feeling is not self (...) Perception is not self (...) Mental fabrications are not self (...) Consciousness is not self. If consciousness were the self, this consciousness would not lend itself to dis-ease (...) any body whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every body is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: ‘This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am’. Any feeling whatsoever (...) Any perception whatsoever (...) Any fabrications whatsoever (...) Any consciousness whatsoever (...) is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: ‘This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am’. (...) Seeing thus, the instructed noble disciple grows disenchanted with the body, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, ‘Fully released’. He discerns that ‘Birth is depleted, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world’. (SN 22.59; PTS: SN iii.66; Anatta-Lakkhana Sutta).

Apramana:

Apramana (Skt.) = Pali: Appamāṇa/Appamāna, (adj.): ‘without measure, immeasurable, endless, boundless, unlimited, unrestricted, all-permeating, incomparable’

Arūpabhava:

arūpabhava=arūpadhātu (PTS-PED: ‘the element or sphere of the incorporeal’); namely: viññāņānancāyatana (the realm of limitless, radiant, unestablished consciousness/unmanifest mind); ākiñcaññāyatana (the boundless state of consciousness without object/self with no other); nevasaññānāsannāyatana (the dimension of neither agnition nor non-agnition/ ‘neither being nor not-being’); saññāvedayitanirodha samāpatti/vimokkha (the cessation of/deliverance from agnition and hedonic-tone) which is an ineffable cataleptic/comatose state; see #7703 and #7712 and #7731 for some detailed reports/descriptions/explanations.

Ariyan:

Obviously, the sammāsambuddha is referring to practitioners colloquially known as the ‘stream enterer’ such as to earn that illustrious title (i.e., the Pāli “ariyan” = French ‘noblesse’; English ‘aristocrat’; Latin ‘patrician’) and the single-most distinguishing characteristic determining entrée into the buddhistic nobility is the faculty of clairvoyance [“dibba-cakkhuka”], known variously as the ‘supernal eye’, ‘deva-eye’, ‘dhamma-vision’, ‘divine eye’, ‘Eye Celestial’, the pure and spotless ‘Eye of the Truth’, and so on [“dibba-cakkhu”].

Āsīt:

āsīt (Skt.) = the Pāli word āsi [aor. 3rd pers. sg., ‘to be, to exist’] as in, for instance, ‘he was’ or ‘she was’ or ‘it was’ (whereas, for example, the Skt. word āsaṃ = the Pāli word āsiṃ [aor. 1st pers. sg., ‘to be, to exist’] as in, ‘I was’).
(Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary; first published in 1899 by Oxford University Press).

Attan/Atta:

• attan (m.) & atta: 1. the soul (...). 2. oneself, himself, yourself; *nom. attā, very rare*. (...). anattā (n. and predicative adj.): not a soul, without a soul (...); attavāda: theory of (a persistent) soul (...). [emphasis added]. ~ (Pāli Text Society Pāli-English Dictionary).

• attan (m.) & atta (the latter is the form used in comp‹n.›) [Vedic ātman]: 1. The soul as postulated in the animistic theories held in N India in the 6‹th› and 7‹th› cent. B. C. (...). A “soul” according to general belief was some thing permanent, unchangeable, not affected by sorrow (...). 2. Oneself, himself, yourself. Nom. attā, very rare. (...). anattā (n. and predicative adj.) not a soul, without a soul. Most freq. in comb‹n› with dukkha & anicca (...). attavāda: theory of (a persistent) soul (...). ~ (Pāli Text Society Pāli-English Dictionary).

Bahuvrihi:

bahuvrihi‌ (n.): a class of compound words consisting of two elements the first of which is a specific feature of the second. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

Bhikkhu:

Brahmavihāra: 

The Pāli “brahmavihāra” refers collectively to the radiative quartet of all-permeating boundless affections known as ‘mettā’ (i.e., ‘Love Agapé’), ‘karuṇā’ (i.e., ‘Sublime Compassion’), ‘muditā’ (i.e., ‘Empathetic Rejoicement’), and ‘upekkhā’ (i.e., ‘Imperturbable Grace’).

Buddhavacana:

buddhavacana: the word (teaching) of the Buddha. ~ (Pāli Text Society Pāli-English Dictionary).

Diṭṭhi:

diṭṭhi: view, belief, dogma, theory, speculation, esp. false theory, groundless or unfounded opinion. ~ (Pāli Text Society Pāli-English Dictionary).

Dukkha: 

A brief note of clarification on this dukkha-sukha terminology: the Pāli word “dukkha” is a compound word [“du + kha”] where, etymologically, the ‘du’ prefix (an antithetic affix, generally opposed to the ‘su’ prefix, such as in “sukha”) has connotations of “asunder, apart, away from”, and the ‘-kha’ syllable/ ending, which functions also as root [“√kha”], has the meaning “ākāsa” which, effectively, refers to the same as what the Greek word ‘aether’ refers to—for the Ancient Greeks the aether was “above the sky” (i.e., the archaic ‘firmament’ or ‘empyrean’; the realm of pure fire or light)—as is also evidenced by common-use English phrases such as “the akashic realm” and “the aetheric realm” (as in ‘ethereal’, for instance, and ‘empyreal’) being interchangeable.

Moreover, as the Pāli ākāsa is often translated as “space”, dependent upon context, this bivalent word also serves as a reference to the *non-sectarian* luminiferous ethereal/ empyreal realm [“ākāsānañcāyatana”]—which is the mystical interface betwixt the physical (the phenomenal world) and the metaphysical (the noumenal world)—accessed via the 8th-stage ‘sammā-samadhi’ of the octonary patrician way: those introversive and/or mystical self-absorption states [“rūpa-jhāna” and “arūpa-samāpatti”] as gradually ascending abodes [“anupubbavihārā”]. And, even more to that latter point, above the luminiferous ethereal/ empyreal realm of ākāsa is the next mystical trance-state, the radiant realm of the unmanifest mind [“viññāṇāñcāyatana”], which is quite obviously from whence ‘viññāṇa’ descends/ enters into the womb, establishes itself/ founds itself, in utero, via four nutriments...&c., in that contingent geniture (i.e., “paṭicca-samuppāda”) sequence already mentioned much further above.

Ná:

ná (ind.): not, no, nor, neither (=nā); as well in simple negation as in wishing, requesting and commanding, except in prohibition before an impv. or an augmentless aor. [...].
(Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary; first published in 1899 by Oxford University Press).

Nasad:

The Sanskrit word ‘nāsad’ is a compound word (na + asad) and the word ‘asad’, itself, is a compound word (a + sad), where the prefix ‘a-’ negates the word ‘sad’.
Therefore the word ‘nāsad’ is double negation (as in ‘not non-existing’ or ‘not non-being’).

Nó:  

nó (ind.), (fr. 2. ná, + u,): and not (in later language also = na, ‘not’, for which it is generally used to suit the verse; nō cēd, under cēd; nō vā, ‘or not’).
(Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary; first published in 1899 by Oxford University Press).

Pudgala:

• pudgala (m.): the body; the soul, personal entity; man; the Ego or individual (in a disparaging sense); pudgalī (f.): a woman, female. ~ (Monier Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary).

Puggala:

• puggala: 1. an individual, as opposed to a group (saṅgha or parisā), person, man {NB.: itthi = woman, female}; in later philosophical (Abhidhamma) literature = character, soul (=attan); pl. puggalā, people; para-puggala, another man; purisa-puggala, individual man, being, person; 2. (in general): being, creature (including Petas & animals); puggalika (adj.): belonging to a single person, individual, separate. ~ (Pāli Text Society Pāli-English Dictionary).

Panc’upādāna-kkhandhā:

The Panc’upādāna-kkhandhā Personage:

Just for the record, those panc’upādāna-kkhandhā (those five fuelled components⁽⁰¹⁾ which constitute an unawakened/ unenlightened personage) are as follows:

1. rūpupādānakkhandha;

2. vedanupādānakkhandha;

3. saññupādānakkhandha;

4. saṅkhārupādānakkhandha;

5. viññāṇupādānakkhandha. (from the Saṅgīti Sutta (DN 33; PTS: D. iii. 207) with emphases added because “upādāna”, which means ‘fuelled’, distinguishes their stark difference to the panc’anupādāna-kkhandhā, of the awakened/ enlightened being, where “anupādāna” means “without fuel” (PTS-PED).

Here is what those five words refer to:

1. rūpa—or, rather, rūpūpadāna-kkhandha when spelled-out in full—as in, any carnate/ bodily phenomena whatsoever (i.e., the ‘soma’ of the common English word psychosomatic for instance);

2. vedanā, the (affective) hedonic-tone facility; an instinctual and thus affective hedonic attraction/ aversion discrimination⁽⁰²⁾ underpins each and every feeling-thought-action which all feeling-beings manifest whenever ‘being’ itself is present-to-itself as an affective/ psychic ‘presence’ within;

3. saññā, in buddhistic terms, the agnitive facility (agnise = “to acknowledge; own; recognise” and agnition = “acknowledgement”, according to the Century Dictionary), as in the (instinctually thus automatic) acknowledgement-recognition, per favour hedonic-tone, of ‘being’ itself—‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself—being present-to-itself, in its current-time intuitive field, and thus viscerally (i.e., instinctually; non-cognitively) felt as an affective/ psychic ‘presence’ within.
By way of illustration: Mr. Renée Descartes acknowledged that ‘cogito ergo sum’ was not a deductive axiom; he said that the statement “I am” (‘sum’) expresses an immediate intuition—and was not the conclusion of reasoning from “I think” (‘cogito’)—and is thus indubitable because it is intuitive: “Whatever I know”, he stated, “I know intuitively that I am” (it is in his ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642) that Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of “I am” is based upon intuition);

4. sankhāra: in buddhistic terms, the conative facility (conation‌ = “the element in psychological processes that tends towards activity or change and appears as desire, volition, and striving”, according to the Collins English Dictionary, or conation = “the aspect of mental processes or behaviour directed toward action or change and including impulse, desire, volition, and striving”, as per the American Heritage Dictionary) primarily stems from, and manifests as, a particular form of determinism called kamma (i.e., the fruit of all ones past-lives’, and the present-life’s, feelings-thoughts-actions). Viz.:

• determinism (n.): the philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs; (n.): determinist; (adj.): deterministic; (adv.): deterministically. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

• determinism (n.): (also called necessitarianism) the philosophical doctrine that all events including human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and states of affairs, and so that freedom of choice is illusory. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

5. viññāṇa, the sixfold worldly (‘intoxicated with life’) percipience process (namely: 1. the component of cakkhuviññāṇa, or visual-percipience; 2. the component of sotaviññāṇa, or audile-percipience; 3. the component of ghaṇaviññāṇa, or olfactorial-percipience; 4. the component of jivhāviññāṇa, or gustatorial-percipience; 5. the component of kāyaviññāṇa, or tactile-percipience; and 6. the component of manoviññāṇa, or mentational-percipience).

⁽⁰¹⁾the five fuelled components:
It is the Pāli word upādāna which refers to ‘fuel’. Viz.:

• upādāna (nt.): (lit. that (material) substratum by means of which an active process is kept alive or going), fuel, supply, provision; (adj., ‘-upādāna’): supported by, drawing one’s existence from (e.g.: ‘aggikkhandho upādāna-assa pariyādānā’ [S I.69; II.85] = “by means of taking up fuel”); sa-upādāna (adj.): provided with fuel; anupādāna: without fuel. ~ (PTS Pāli-English Dictionary).

Similar to that definition of anupādāna (i.e., “without fuel” ~ PTS-PED) is anupādā/ anupādāya. Viz.:

• anupādā (for anupādāya) in meaning “not taking up any more (fuel, so as to keep the fire of rebirth alive)”, not clinging to love of the world, or the kilesas q.v., having no more tendency to becoming; in phrases anupādā parinibbānaṃ, “unsupported emancipation”; anupādā vimokkho, “mental release”; anupādā vimutto. ~ (PTS Pāli-English Dictionary).

Thus the five anupādāna (i.e., unfuelled) components which constitute a spiritually enlightened/ mystically awakened being—a being in whom all āsavā, or worldly intoxications (‘intoxicated with life’), are extinguished—are known as panc’anupādāna-kkhandhā (as distinct from panc’upādāna-kkhandhā).

In other words, what a metempirically awakened/ enlightened feeling-being experiences is:

1. (dissociated) bodily phenomena;

2. hedonic-tone;

3. agnition;

4. (non-kamma-generating) connation;

5. (unworldly/ other-worldly) percipience.

(It is only whilst abiding in the highest of the gradually ascending abodes [“anupubbavihārā”]—known in Pāli as saññāvedayitanirodha—that hedonic-tone⁽⁰²⁾ and agnition cease).

⁽⁰²⁾Hedonic Tone: an instinctual and thus affective hedonic attraction-aversion discrimination—stemming from primeval feelings of delect⁽*⁾ or disgust bestowed hereditarily—underpins each and every feeling-thought-action which all feeling-beings manifest whenever ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being) is present-to-itself as an affective/ psychic ‘presence’ within. Viz.:

⁽*⁾delect (v.; rare): to delight or take pleasure in something; also, to be a source of pleasure or delight; in later use also with object (reflexive): to gratify oneself. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary).

• hedonic (adj.): of, pertaining to, or involving pleasurable or painful sensations or feelings, considered as affects (viz.: ‘emotions, moods’); spec. hedonic tone, the degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness associated with an experience or state, esp. considered as a single quantity that can range from extreme pleasure to extreme pain. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary; 1999, 2nd. Ed.; CD-ROM Vers. 2.0).

Put succinctly: every feeling-being’s experience or state of being—including that feeling-being’s emotions, passions, calentures, mood, sentiment, temper/ humour, and, thusly, affectively-tainted (e.g., passionally-driven and/or emotionally-fed and/or calenturally-inspirited) thoughts—has hedonic tone (a degree of affective pleasantness or unpleasantness a.k.a. affective pleasure or displeasure).

For instance:

• [Prof. George Stout]: ‘When we wish to say that pleasure or displeasure belongs to this or that mental process, we may say that the process is pleasantly or unpleasantly toned. Hedonic-tone is a generic term for pleasure and the reverse, considered as belonging to this or that mental process. (...elided...). The hedonic tone of perception is determined by varying conditions. We may distinguish broadly the pleasure or displeasure which is directly due in the first instance to the perceptual process at the time of its occurrence, and that which arises from preformed associations. Whatever obstructs or disables perceptual process at the time of its occurrence is disagreeable; whatever favours or furthers it is agreeable. (...elided...). It is difficult to bring emotions, such as anger and fear, and sentiments, such as love and hate, completely under any other head [besides pleasure and displeasure]. Certainly, an emotion, like anger, involves some kind of cognition; but it cannot be said that the specific experience of being angry directly qualifies the nature of the presented object; in other words, this experience is not a presentation. So, too, anger has hedonic-tone, mostly of an unpleasant kind’. ~ (from “A Manual of Psychology” by Professor George Stout, first published 1899 by W. B. Clive, The University Tutorial Press, London).

As a matter of historical interest: the earliest record on the topic of hedonic tone, which predates that 1899 publication by millennia, is none other than what is known in the buddhavacana (as per the Theravādan Pali Canon) as ‘vedanā’ (approx. pron.: vay-duh-nar) or ‘vedanā-khandha’. According to Prof. James Baldwin (‘Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology’, 1905) it was Prof. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) who first coined the term hedonic-tone (translated from German, ‘Gefühlston’; approx. pron.: gar-fools-torn).

*****************

Here is what those five words refer to:

1. rūpa—or, rather, rūpūpadāna-kkhandha when spelled-out in full—as in, any carnate/ bodily phenomena whatsoever (i.e., the ‘soma’ of the common English word psychosomatic for instance);

2. vedanā, the (affective) hedonic-tone facility; an instinctual and thus affective hedonic attraction/ aversion discrimination⁽⁰²⁾ underpins each and every feeling-thought-action which all feeling-beings manifest whenever ‘being’ itself is present-to-itself as an affective/ psychic ‘presence’ within;

3. saññā, in buddhistic terms, the agnitive facility (agnise = “to acknowledge; own; recognise” and agnition = “acknowledgement”, according to the Century Dictionary), as in the (instinctually thus automatic) acknowledgement-recognition, per favour hedonic-tone, of ‘being’ itself—‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself—being present-to-itself, in its current-time intuitive field, and thus viscerally (i.e., instinctually; non-cognitively) felt as an affective/ psychic ‘presence’ within.
By way of illustration: Mr. Renée Descartes acknowledged that ‘cogito ergo sum’ was not a deductive axiom; he said that the statement “I am” (‘sum’) expresses an immediate intuition—and was not the conclusion of reasoning from “I think” (‘cogito’)—and is thus indubitable because it is intuitive: “Whatever I know”, he stated, “I know intuitively that I am” (it is in his ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642) that Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of “I am” is based upon intuition);

4. sankhāra: in buddhistic terms, the conative facility (conation‌ = “the element in psychological processes that tends towards activity or change and appears as desire, volition, and striving”, according to the Collins English Dictionary, or conation = “the aspect of mental processes or behaviour directed toward action or change and including impulse, desire, volition, and striving”, as per the American Heritage Dictionary) primarily stems from, and manifests as, a particular form of determinism called kamma (i.e., the fruit of all ones past-lives’, and the present-life’s, feelings-thoughts-actions). Viz.:

• determinism (n.): the philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs; (n.): determinist; (adj.): deterministic; (adv.): deterministically. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

• determinism (n.): (also called necessitarianism) the philosophical doctrine that all events including human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and states of affairs, and so that freedom of choice is illusory. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

5. viññāṇa, the sixfold worldly (‘intoxicated with life’) percipience process (namely: 1. the component of cakkhuviññāṇa, or visual-percipience; 2. the component of sotaviññāṇa, or audile-percipience; 3. the component of ghaṇaviññāṇa, or olfactorial-percipience; 4. the component of jivhāviññāṇa, or gustatorial-percipience; 5. the component of kāyaviññāṇa, or tactile-percipience; and 6. the component of manoviññāṇa, or mentational-percipience).

Púruṣa:

• púruṣa (m.): a man, male, human being (pl. people, mankind); a person; an officer, functionary, attendant, servant; a friend; (also with nārāyaṇa) the primeval man as the soul and original source of the universe (described in the Purusba-sūkta, q.v.); the personal and animating principle in men and other beings, the soul or spirit; the Supreme Being or Soul of the universe (sometimes with para, parama, or uttama; also identified with Brahmā, Vishṇu, Śiva and Durgā); (in Sāṃkhya) the Spirit as passive and a spectator of the Prakṛiti or creative force; the ‘spirit’ or fragrant exhalation of plants; (with sapta) name of the divine or active principles from the minute portions of which the universe was formed; (pl.): men, people (cf. above). ~ (Monier Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary).

Sad:

• sad, in comp. for sat
Viz.:
• sát, mf (satī), (n., pr. p. of √1. as): being, existing, occurring, happening, being present (sato me, ‘when I was present’);
......▪ often connected with other participles or with an adverb, e.g. nāmni kṛte sati, ‘when the name has been given’;
......▪ tathā sati, ‘if it be so’;
......▪ also ibc., where sometimes = ‘possessed of’, cf. sat-kalpavṛkṣa);
......▪ (loc.): abiding in;
......▪ (gen.): belonging to;
......▪ living;
......▪ lasting, enduring;
......▪ real, actual, as any one or anything ought to be, true, good, right (tan na sat, ‘that is not right’), beautiful, wise, venerable, honest (often in comp., see below);
......▪ (m.): a being, (pl.): beings, creatures;
......▪ a good or wise man, a sage;
......▪ good or honest or wise or respectable people;
......▪ (ī,), (f.): see satí, below;
......▪ (sat,), (n.): that which really is, entity or existence, essence, the true
........being or really existent (in the Vedānta, ‘the self-existent or Universal
........Spirit, Brahma’); [emphasis added].
......▪ that which is good or real or true, good, advantage, reality, truth;
......▪ water;
......▪ (in gram.): the terminations of the present participle;
......▪ (sat,), (ind., cf. sat-√kṛ, &c.): well, right, fitly. (Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary; first published in 1899 by Oxford University Press).

Inscribed slabs and statues found at and near Sāvatthī show it to have been a prosperous area and an active buddhistic site from the time of Gotama the Sakyan (circa two and a half thousand years ago) through to at least the twelfth-century of the modern era. It was destroyed and covered with mounds sometime in or after the thirteenth-century, chronologically marking the arrival and establishment of an Islamic empire based in Delhi (the Delhi Sultanate) which stretched over large parts of South Asia for over three-hundred years (1206-1526) until it was conquered and succeeded by the Mughal Empire, which controlled much of the subcontinent between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. For some two hundred years, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus river basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India. The empire’s loss of control was catalysed by their losses to the Maratha Empire in the Mughal-Maratha Wars. Reduced subsequently to the region in and around Old Delhi by 1760, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, through the Government of India Act 1858. In 1876 the British Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shravasti].

• tama-t-agge: “Buddhaghosa says tamatagge is tamagge, the ‘t’ in the middle being euphonic {=‘altered for ease of pronunciation; pleasing to the ear’}, and renders it ‘the most pre-eminent, the very chief’. Prof. Rhys Davids, in his translation of this Sutta, has adopted the explanation of the commentator, and translates “the very topmost height”. Tamas here means ‘darkness’, i.e. mental darkness, one of the five avijjâs in the Sâṅkhya philosophy; tama-t-agge must therefore mean ‘at the extremity of the darkness, beyond the region of darkness’, i.e. in ‘the light’, in Nirvâna, cf. bhavagge: ‘at the end of existence, in Nirvâna’. [...]. We find in Sanskrit tamaḥ pâre, answering to tama-t-agge: “Sa hi devaḥ paraṃ jyotis tamaḥ pare”, (Kumâra Sambhava, ii. 58). “For that deity is the supreme luminary existing at the extremity of darkness (beyond the region of tamas), i.e. in the region of light”. ~ (Rev. Dr. Richard Morris; 1st reading 5th December, 1884; from page 32 ‘Transactions of the Philological Society’ for 1885-7; Publ. Trübner & Co., London).