Journal | Bhasha
Journal issue | 3 | 2 | 2024
Research Article | Mortal Combat and the Hereafter: saṃparāya and sāṃparāya in Sanskrit Literature
Mortal Combat and the Hereafter: saṃparāya and sāṃparāya in Sanskrit Literature
Abstract
Sāṃparāya is a comparatively rare word in Sanskrit literature that has been translated in various ways, among them ‘battle’, ‘the next world’, and ‘transit to the next world’. It is a nominalized adjective derived from saṃparāya, which is in turn derived from the rarely used verb sam+parā+i (to pass away, to decease). The aim of the present paper is to establish the basic meanings of sāṃparāya as well as of its base, saṃparāya, and to investigate how they are used in Sanskrit literature. To this end, text passages from a range of sources are discussed. It is shown that in pre-medieval literature, saṃparāya and sāṃparāya are generally used as variants of one and the same noun, and that this noun has two basic meanings: ‘mortal combat, battle’ and ‘the postmortal, the hereafter’. The plethora of meanings recorded in modern dictionaries were mostly derived from later, highly context-specific commentaries.
Submitted: May 8, 2024 | Accepted: July 12, 2024 | Published Dec. 18, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords sam+parā+i • Death • Prakrit • Battle • Afterlife
Copyright © 2024 Dominik A. Haas. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/bhasha/2785-5953/2024/02/004
