Lzh Mi Bu Vb Ss 9Making an Accusation Out of Anger on an Irrelevant Pretext
Pāli / Sanskrit:Aññabhāgiya
Save your scripture progress
Create a free account to save scriptures, track progress, and continue your daily learning path.
The Aññabhāgiya Sutta: Making an Offensive Accusation on an Irrelevant Ground
Background
The Aññabhāgiya Sutta lies in the Vinaya Piṭaka, specifically in the Suttavibhaṅga of the Bhikkhunī Vibhaṅga, the rules for nuns. It is one of the detailed Vinaya texts concerning wrong conduct and complex ethical situations that members of the monastic community face in collective practice.
The background of the sutta concerns mental afflictions, especially dosa, anger and aversion, when they become the motivation for insulting or accusing another person. The Theravāda tradition clearly recognizes that offences lie not only in outward actions, but also in the intention and deeper ethical context behind them.
Main Content
This sutta examines the situation in which a nun, in a troubled state of mind, especially out of anger, accuses another nun of faults that are not actually related to the conduct being charged. In other words, the accuser uses a “covering” reason (aññabhāgiya, literally “belonging to a different category”) to express her underlying anger.
A typical example might be this: a nun is angry with another for a personal reason, but instead of admitting it, she accuses that person of an entirely different violation, using the community’s disciplinary system for revenge or to satisfy her anger. The offence here is not only making a false accusation, but also using an “irrelevant” reason with a hidden purpose, namely the nature of anger.
Pāli Vinaya pays special attention to intention. If this accusation is made with aversive intention and on an untruthful ground (aññabhāgiya), it is regarded as a wrongful act requiring examination and correction. This is an important step in protecting the integrity of the practice community from accusations used as weapons of greed, hatred, and delusion.
🌏 The Buddhist canon is vast — some sūtras (such as comparative Vinaya across schools, or untranslated Tibetan-canon texts) have to this day NEVER been translated into Vietnamese or English by anyone, scholars included. Rather than leave it blank, Inti AI offers a FAITHFUL summary grounded in the tradition — from the sūtra's title, origin and essence — so you can still reach this rare part of the treasury. Whenever an original translation exists, the app shows the original first.
Translations belong to the translator/source credited above. The bilingual compilation, presentation, and AI translations compiled by Inti are © Inti Foundation. Please attribute when quoting; do not bulk-copy or use commercially without permission.