Changes in pañca kāmaguṇā in Early Buddhism

Abstract

The term pañca kāmaguṇā is used to analyze kāma through the five sensory organs. In the Buddhist prose scriptures, most cases of kāma are replaced with pañca kāmaguṇā. Moreover, the plural sentences used to define pañca kāmaguṇā become one of the fixed forms of expression used in the prose scriptures. Conversely, one can also observe some sentences providing a definition of pañca kāmaguṇā that corresponds to the six organs in the prose scriptures. We can conclude that this was affected by the saḷāyatana, a fundamental notion in Early Buddhism.