Sāvajjasutta — Bālavagga — the first chapter of the Threes
Setting
None stated; the discourse continues from AN 3.1, whose setting at Sāvatthī is understood to hold
Speakers
The Buddha alone, addressing the mendicants
Form
The standing template, abbreviated to a single sentence with both halves folded into it
Length
under a minute to read
Northern parallel
Comparable material appears in the Chinese Madhyama-āgama (T26); this reading guide does not assert a specific matching sutra number
Difficulty
★☆☆☆☆ — thirty-five words, and one point about how the canon is written
Why this discourse
This is the shortest discourse in the chapter and one of the shortest in the Threes: a single sentence, with the astute person’s half folded into the same line as the fool’s and two ellipses doing the rest of the work. There is nothing in it that AN 3.6 has not already established. It is worth a page because it shows, more clearly than a long discourse can, what the canon looks like at the point where abbreviation takes over completely.
Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A fool is known by blameworthy deeds of body, speech, and mind; an astute person by blameless ones.
Sāvajja: with fault
The word is sa- plus vajja, with-fault; its opposite anavajja is without-fault. Vajja is the same word that opened this nipāta’s neighbor at AN 2.1, where two kinds of fault were distinguished by whether their consequences fall in this life or the next.
What the predicate adds to akusala is the dimension of judgment. An unskillful act fails on its own terms; a blameworthy act is one that can be held against you. Those are different, and the canon elsewhere is careful about the difference — AN 3.65 lists blameworthy and criticized by sensible people as separate marks in the test it gives the Kālāmas, alongside unskillful and leads to harm. Four marks, four distinct questions.
Reading this one-line discourse against that four-part test is the most useful thing to do with it. The Kālāma test asks all four at once. This chapter asks them one at a time, in three consecutive discourses, and gets the same answer each time.
What the abbreviation looks like
The Pāli writes: a fool is known by three things — what three? — blameworthy deeds by way of body, speech, and mind … an astute person is known by blameless deeds by way of body, speech, and mind …. Two ellipses, and the discourse is over.
What has been elided is the closing formula of each half (these are the three things by which…) and the training instruction. A reciter restores them from the pattern; a reader without the pattern is looking at a fragment.
This series prints the abbreviation as the canon transmits it rather than silently unrolling it, which is the same decision made throughout the Ones and Twos. The cost is that a discourse like this reads as incomplete. The benefit is that the reader can see how much of this literature is stored rather than written, and can count the discourses the way the tradition did.
Key terms
sāvajja / anavajja — “blameworthy” and “blameless” — literally with-fault and without-fault, from vajja.
vajja — “fault” — the same word AN 2.1 divided into the fault apparent in this life and the fault to do with lives to come.
viññugarahita — “criticized by sensible people” — a separate mark from sāvajja in the four-part test AN 3.65 gives the Kālāmas.
peyyāla — the abbreviation convention. Here it removes the closing formula of each half and the training instruction, leaving a single sentence.
kāya-, vacī-, manokamma — deeds by way of body, speech, and mind — unchanged from the discourses on either side.
The text
The Pāli abbreviates this discourse against the ones before it, writing out only the term that changes and marking the rest with an ellipsis, which Sujato preserves. Every word is present; what is compressed is the repetition. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
Blameworthy deeds
§1“A fool is known by three things. What three? Blameworthy deeds by way of body, speech, and mind. … An astute person is known by blameless deeds by way of body, speech, and mind. …”
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Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.
Question 1 of 10
What does sāvajja literally mean?
Correct: A. The same vajja that AN 2.1 divided into two kinds of fault.
Question 2 of 10
What does the predicate add to akusala?
Correct: B. Different questions, and the canon is careful about the difference.
Question 3 of 10
Which four marks does AN 3.65 give the Kālāmas?
Correct: A. Four marks, four distinct questions — asked all at once there, one at a time here.
Question 4 of 10
How does this chapter differ from the Kālāma test in method?
Correct: A. Reading the one-line discourse against the four-part test is the most useful thing to do with it.
Question 5 of 10
What has been elided in this discourse?
Correct: B. A reciter restores them from the pattern; a reader without the pattern is looking at a fragment.
Question 6 of 10
How many ellipses does the Pāli use here?
Correct: C. The shortest discourse in the chapter.
Question 7 of 10
Why does this series print the abbreviation rather than unrolling it?
Correct: B. The cost is that a discourse like this reads as incomplete.
Question 8 of 10
What is viññugarahita?
Correct: A. Being at fault and being criticized are two different questions.
Question 9 of 10
What stays unchanged from the discourses on either side?
Correct: B. Only the predicate moves across AN 3.6–3.8.
Question 10 of 10
Is there anything in AN 3.7 that AN 3.6 has not established?
Correct: B. It shows what the canon looks like where abbreviation takes over completely.
