Setu, ‘bridge’, a Connection between Places and States in Brahmanical and Early Buddhist Sources: An Attempt at a Semantic Reconstruction

This research is part of a broader project of comparative study between the Vedic and Pali sources, which we have been committed to from 2013 onward. The shared aim has mainly been to single out matching phrases (sentences, compounds, and formulas) which sometimes seem to be explained as partially independent developments of the same archetypal utterance tracing back to the same ancient Indo-Āryan speculative background. Focusing on the lexicon involved in the imagery of real or figurative travels, namely on the analysis of a special kind of path, we have in the research presented in this paper concentrated on the Old and Middle Indian noun setu, which seems to hover in meaning in brahmanical and Pali sources between its function of connecting as a bridge (see e.g. TS 3.2.1.2; M I.134-135) and its undeniable outcome, consisting in keeping apart two neighbouring entities as an effective dam (see e.g. BAU 4.4.22; ChUp 8.4). However, there are also several occurrences of setu used metaphorically (e.g. ṚV 7.65.3; Th 63 v. 615). In some Pali compounds, such as setughāta “the destruction of the bridge” (cf. e.g. A I 220; A I 261), the meaning is particularly obscure and difficult to interpret, although the meaning given in commentarial texts (e.g. Mp II 332) is particularly interesting since this meaning is also well connected to Vedic texts (e.g. ṚV 10.67.4 = AVŚ 20.91.4).