SN 4.25, KN Snp 4.9 Māra's 3 daughters: taṇhaṁ aratiṁ ragañca: Sujato claims paḷi error, Why?

 I believe everyone else translates the daughter arati as "dissatisfaction".

Sujato renders it as the opposite 'rati', meaning satisfied, delighted.

Why?

Snp 4.9: Māgaṇḍiyasutta—Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net)

“Disvāna taṇhaṁ aratiṁ ragañca,

“Even when I saw the sirens Craving, Delight, and Lust,

Sujato's note:

Māra’s daughters, the archetypal temptresses. Their failed seduction is told at SN 4.25. | 

Arati seems to be an error in the Pali tradition for rati.

Frankk comment

Sujato doesn't explain his reasoning in detail, so we can only guess.

In SN 4.25, when Buddha is sitting in meditation attaining enlightenment,

Māra sends these 3 daughters to seduce the Buddha.

So I can only guess Sujato thinks the 3 daughters are all seductive temptresses, 

and therefore their names should be related to lust.

However, the first daughter "tanha" (thirst, craving), is not limited to sexual lust.

The third daughter 'ragā', is not the usual spelling of 'rāga' for passion, which can be lust but not necessarily. 

It can be passion or desire for anything. 

The word 'rāga' literally means color,

so we can see how colors make things more alluring, desirable.

Now we look at the second daughter 'arati', which Sujato believes should be 'rati' (opposite of discontent), to better match the lustful context of 3 seductive daughters.

However, rati doesn't have to have a romantic or sexual connotation. 

It can simply be delight, liking, enjoyment of anything, like walking in a nice park. 

One thing Sujato maybe didn't notice, is that in AN 4.25,

at first the 3 daughters seduce him appearing as young virginal maidens,

and then when that doesn't work, they manifest as slightly older women, and eventually old women.

How are very old women sexually attractive?

Some men have weird fetishes, 

but here one of the daughters being 'arati' discontent makes a whole lot of sense.

Remember Māra's purpose in life, is to keeping beings stuck in samsara, in the realm of rebirth after rebirth.

He's tricky, and he has a deep bag of tricks, not limited to lust.

Lust may be public enemy number one for the renunciant, 

but anger, aversion, dissatisfaction, discontent, are a huge part of keeping us deluded, confused, revolving in samsara, working hand in hand with lust, passion, fighting, wars, and all the defilements.

Māra's 3 daughters, as far as I know, are not 3 identical triplets tasked with the redundant duty of inciting lust in beings in samsara.

It would make sense to diversify the duties and cover some of the other major defilements.

 

Now had the daughters been named something like "kāma, rāga, and rati",

then Sujato would have a stronger case they were all related to lust.

But as it stands, 

Tanha, craving is for anything that keeps us bound in samsara, not just sexual desire.

rāga, passion, is also not restricted to sexual desire.

rati, satisfaction, delight, enjoyment,  is also not restricted to sexual desire.

Another point: discontent supports lust in a symbiotic way

For example, you see this all the time with rock stars, top tier celebrities, who marry the most beautiful women.

But many of them are dissatisfied, discontent (arati!) with their wife and

start having multiple affairs, chasing new, different women, new fetishes, in a never ending quest (until the wife rightly divorces them).

In AN 4.25, the 3 daughters manifest themselves as 100 beautiful women, not just 3.

So the plan was to get the Buddha to fall for one, 

he gets discontented after some time,

then goes down the line and searches among the other 100. 

Conclusion

It also doesn't make sense this kind of supposed error can get through the ears and eyes of all the Thera elders charged with memorizing the suttas over the centuries.

Ruling: Sujato is not justified in presuming 'arati' is a pāli mistake and should be 'rati'. 

I will be changing Sujato's translations  of SN 4.25 and Snp 4.9 back to 'arati' (discontent) on lucid24.org.