Gay pervert or eunuch? What's a pandaka?

As is well known, the Pali term pandaka has two different meanings. The first is "eunuch." This meaning is not in doubt.

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  Italian militant, Second Italo-Ethiopian War

  [Though what most individuals in the West imagine a eunuch is may well be in doubt since it has more to do with testicles and testosterone production than the presence or absence of a penis after castration, which most think means "penis removal." Removal of the male gonads or testes, such as in the case of Italian Catholic castratos, will produce a "eunuch" with an intact penis but not a means of producing adequate male hormones.]
• [What are testosterone, steroid hormones, and synthetic steroids? They are androgenic or masculinizing compounds, present and important in the development and of both males and females, is what makes a person "virile" (Pali viriya "energetic, effortful, industrious, heroic"). Although androgens are commonly thought of only as male sex hormones, females also have them, but at lower levels: They function in libido and sexual arousal. Androgens are the precursors to estrogens in all humans.]
• [My Old Man's a Fatso: Hey, Dad, get TestoGreens Max! But it's his aromatase. Where's his saw palmetto extract?]

Castration as punishment, 16th century

Indeed, related terms are found in several Indo-Aryan languages (cf. Turner 1966;435, no. 7717, panda- [m.] "a eunuch, weakling"; Monier-Williams 1899:580; Childers 1875;328):

Sanskrit: panda-h (m.) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandaka-h (m.) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandaga-h (m.) (probably) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandra-h (m.) "a eunuch, impotent man"; pandraka-h (m.) "a eunuch, impotent man."

Pali: pandaka- (m.) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandika (f.).

Prakrit: pamda-, pamdaga-, pamdaya (m.) "a eunuch, weakling."

The Indo-Aryan terms are usually taken to be loanwords from Dravidian (cf. Mayrhofer 1956-1980.II:196; Burrow 1973:384):

Tamil pen "woman," pentu "woman, wife," pentan, pentakan, pentakam, "hermaphrodite, eunuch," pennan "effeminate man," peti "hermaphrodite";

Malayalam pen "a female, especially a female child, girl," pennan "effeminate'';

Kannada pen, pennu, penda "female, woman," pentana "state of being a female, feminine character or behavior";

Telugu penti "woman," pedi "eunuch"; etc. (cf. Burrow-Emeneau 1984:388, no. 4395).

Second definition

That there is a second meaning is also not in dispute. However, what, exactly, that meaning is has been the source of controversy.

According to one interpretation, the second meaning of pandak is "male homosexual." This cannot possibly be correct and is based upon a critical misinterpretation of a key [Theravada Buddhist] text, namely, the story about a pandaka who was ordained as a [Buddhist monk or] Bhikkhu [1] and who, overcome by sexual desire, went around trying to persuade other Bhikkhus and lay persons to sodomize him.

• [Indonesian Orang Pendek means "short person" or "little man," a kind of cryptid Bigfoot creature or bipedal primate from the remote, forested mountains of the island of Sumatra.]

After several lay persons did so, the Sangha [2] was criticized for allowing such a person to be ordained as a Bhikkhu.

When this came to the Buddha's attention, He forbade pandakas from being ordained and ordered the pandaka in question to be expelled from the Sangha. [He also set up a rule not to ordain pandakas in the future and that if someone had already been ordained and was found to be a pandaka, that person was to be immediately expelled. See Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender edited by UCSB Prof. José Ignacio Cabezón for more details on this incident.]

As noted by Kelvin Wong (2005), it is clear from the Pali Tipitaka [3] that the Buddha was aware of the difference between eunuchs, hermaphrodites, and homosexuals.

More: The Two Meanings of the Pali Term "Pandaka" | PDF | Pali | Indian Religions by Allan R. Bomhard

FOOTNOTES

1. A Buddhist Monk. A Buddhist Nun is called "Bhikkhuni."

2. The Buddhist Monastic Order.

3. The canonical scriptures of Theravadin Buddhism, preserved in the Middle Indo-Aryan language now known as "Pali," the original meaning of which was simply "text." These scriptures are divided into three-"baskets" (ti-pitaka): (1) the disciplinary rules for Monks and Nuns (Vinaya Pitaka); (2) the discourses of the Buddha and several of His chief disciples (Sutta Pitaka); and (3) the "higher doctrine" (Abhidhamma Pitaka) [or the Dharma explained in ultimate terms].

• Open-access under the terms of creativecommons.org/license/by/4.0)
• Allan R. Bomhard, 2021 (scribd.com); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly