BUDDHIST MONASTIC CODE I

Controversial points: Dawn and dawnriseAppendix IThis assumption, however, creates a problem under two rules whose non-offenseclauses contain the phrase purāruṇā, which clearly means "before dawn." Under Pc5, the series of three nights allotted by the rule is broken if one gets up purāruṇā.Under Pc 49, the series is broken if one leaves the army purāruṇā. In the Vibhaṅgato neither rule is the word dawnrise mentioned at all. If we have to assume thatdawn is counted as a period of time separate from dawnrise, this means that forthese two rules the line dividing an offense from a non-offense follows a standarddifferent from that in all the other rules in the Pāṭimokkha where the line between theend of night and the beginning of day is also relevant. If this were the case, thecompilers of the Vibhaṅga would have offered clear definitions to distinguish onestandard from the other. But in fact, the Canon contains no explicit standard fordefining dawn or dawnrise at all. This indicates that the assumption of a separate"dawn" and "dawnrise" must be mistaken.A reading more consistent with the Canon's casual treatment of the issue of dawnwould be to translate anto aruṇe as "before dawn," and to read the term dawn(aruṇa) in both anto aruṇe and purāruṇā as idiomatically equivalent to dawnrise(aruṇuggamana). In other words, in all the rules where the line dividing the end ofnight from the beginning of day is the line between an offense and a non-offense,that line is marked by the onset of civil twilight, whether the Vibhaṅga refers to it as"dawnrise" or "dawn."473