Sanskrit of Pāli Names

The Watercooler
1

Hello.

I’m looking for the Sanskrit form of Pāli names. More specifically, I would like the Sanskrit for the 16 brahmins who visited the Buddha at Snp 5.
If possible, it would be nice to have references to those names as found in Sanskrit texts.

The names in Pāli with some ideas for Sanskrit equivalents are:
Ajita (Skt. Ajita?)

Tissametteyya (Skt. Tiṣya-Maitreyaḥ?)

Puṇṇaka (Skt. Pūrṇaka?)

Mettagū (Skt. ?)

Dhotaka (Skt. Dhāvaka?)

Upasīva (Skt. Upaśiva?)

Nanda (Skt. Nanda?)

Hemaka (Skt. Hemaka?)

Todeyya (Skt. Taudeya?)

Kappa (Skt. Kalpa?)

Jatukaṇṇī (Skt. Jātūkarṇa / Jātūkarṇya?)

Bhadrāvudha (Skt. Bhadrāyudha?)

Udaya (Skt. Udaya)

Posāla (Skt. Paulastya?)

Mogharājā (Skt. Mogharājā?)

Pingiya (Skt. P[a]iṅgika?)

Thank you!

2 Likes
2

DPD gives Maitragu

DPD gives Jatūkarṇa (the first a is short)

etc…

2 Likes
3

Wonderful! Thank you for sharing that resource.

Yeah, I noticed on WisdomLib that there were variations in the vowel length for this name.

Based off of DPD, ‘Posāla’ is actually ‘Pauṣya,’ not ‘Paulastya.’ For ‘Dhotaka’ it gives ‘Dhautaka.’

Another one I noticed researching before is Sanskrit ‘Pūrṇa’ does not have the -ka suffix generally, as given at DPD as well.

‘Maitragu’ doesn’t seem to be a normal Sanskrit name. I wonder if anyone has info on this one.

2 Likes
4

Jātukaṇṇi is phonetically closer to Jātukarṇya (a descendent of Jātukarṇa) than to the word Jātukarṇa itself.

Pāli Piṅgiya correlates to Paiṅgya in Vedic/Sanskrit.

The nominal stem form of Tiṣya-Maitreyaḥ should be Tiṣya-Maitreya (the visarga i.e. ḥ ending is the nominative).

Mitragu could likely be Mitraka (or Mitra).

Pūrṇa is more likely than Pūrṇaka to be the name for Puṇṇaka . Similarly Mitra above. The -ka suffix in Sanskrit is normally used as a term of endearment or dimunitiveness (for example a mother may call her son putraka in maternal affection), but in Pali the -ka suffix is added also to consonant ending nouns to make them vowel ending (to simplify the sandhi).

Posāla sounds like it is not Pauṣya as the ending is quite different so it wouldnt normally be a close match.

Ther rest seem OK.

1 Like
5

Thank you. I was hoping you would respond here.

It seems there is a Paiṅgya who is referenced in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad, as well as the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and mostly in the Kauṣītaki/Sāṅkhyāyana Brāhmaṇa.

Do you know where I can find the Sanskrit text for the Sāṅkhyāyana Brāhmaṇa to reference it?

Any suggestions on what the Sanskrit equivalent for ‘Posāla’ would be?

Makes sense. I was thinking maybe ‘Maitra[ka].’ This would better explain ‘metta-,’ but also there is the Maitrāyanīya-Śākha of the Kṛṣna Yajurveda, attributed by some to the sage ‘Maitra,’ no?

I wonder if ‘Bhadrāyudha’ should be ’ Vajryāyudha’? It’s an epithet for Śakra; would it be/is it a name for a person, in particular a brahmin?

Also, ‘Bāvari.’ Any ideas? Neumann suggested a connection to ‘Bādari’ who is referenced for his opinion as a teacher in the Yajurveda. There seem to be separate Bādaris, one for the White and the other the Black Yajurvedic tradition.

In the Srauta Sutra of Katyāyana, it lists both ‘Bādari’ and ‘Jātukarṇya’ as teachers in that lineage/tradition. If you have more information on this and these figures, I would also greatly appreciate that.

If Bāvari, Jatukaṇṇi, and Mettagū have some connection to the Yajurveda (Kṛṣna, specifically), I wonder too if Taudeya could also be connected to a branch of the Taittiriya Śakha. According to Wikipedia, their Brāhmaṇa was prevalent around the Godavari. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad clearly references ‘nothingness’ as a goal it has for liberation, a theme which recurs in the questions of the 16 disciples. At AN 4.187, the brahmin Todeyya defends Rāmaputta (Udaka Rāmaputta? The teacher of advanced meditation).

I’m looking for connections, even if vague.

All the best.

6

I’ve heard of an Aupamanyava (descendant of Upamanyu) called Prācīnaśāla Aupamanyava - who was possibly related to Pauṣkarasādi (who was also an Aupamanyava) - but Posāla does not ring any bells.

It looks like the -sāla ending is similar to the śāla in Prācīnaśāla (or in the name of Maskarin Gośāla) but the beginning (Po-) is unrecognizable to me. Maybe it is a phonetic corruption of Gośāla itself (i.e. a member of Maskarin Gośāla’s family?).

See this

Vajrāyudha is the name of an āyudha (weapon) used by Śakra/Indra i.e. a lightning-bolt / thunderbolt, not sure if it was used as a personal name. Bhadrāyudha is meaningful by itself (“one having a good weapon” or “one whose weapon is goodness”).

The name Bādari is well attested in the literature of that time, although there could have possibly been two people with the same name living decades or even a century apart from each other. I prefer this name as it sounds the closest. I dont regard however Bāvari and his story as authentic. It is a mythology superimposed on the Pārāyaṇavagga possibly from the time of the Pāli commentaries as the tradition may not have been able to locate its provenance, nor the backgrounds of the speakers. Therefore tracing their vedic backgrounds may be a wild goose chase.

I dont know much about which Veda the Taudeyas were followers of. The Taudeyas lived somewhere in a village in the North-West of India called ‘Tūdī’ - the 4th century BCE grammarian Pāṇini mentions how the name Taudeya is formed from their place of origin Tūdī - in the rule tūdīśalāturavarmatīkūcavārāḍḍhakchaṇḍhañyakaḥ (Aṣṭādhyāyī 4.3.94). To find a Taudeya who lived close to the Godāvarī river (more than 1000 miles south of their homeland) may be unlikely.

1 Like
7

Sanskrit attestations of proper names are not always direct conversions from Pali. It’s best to stick to actual attestations. Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary is often a good source for such things, too. Which exists as a PDF that’s searchable. I have a copy of it here: edgerton_bhs_skt_eng_dic.pdf - Google Drive

1 Like
8

Unless you prefer searchable PDFs for some reason, it also exists as unicode online version (along with about 40 other Sanskrit dictionaries) at Edgerton Sanskrit Dictionary 1953 Advanced

1 Like
9

I do actually, I can see what the book actually looked like. :man_shrugging:

3 Likes
10

The fact that it is mythology does not mean the names or people aren’t meaningful. Whether or not we believe if George Washington cut down a cherry tree, the fact that the person in the story is ‘George Washington’ is significant.

I would argue that the myth would be much less meaningful if it were just a series of random names. Rather, Bāvari is said to be from Kosala and to be 120 years old. This means that it could even be a Bāvari/Bādari of a century before the Buddha. Whether or not such a person ever actually sent disciples to see the Buddha is a question of history; but a question of mythology, fitting and appropriate to investigate, is “what is the significance of Bāvari in this story?”

Pingiya is said to also be very old, and in fact in his question he speaks of suffering from old age. He is also called a “mahāisi.” So it is possible that the story intends to portray him as the famous Vedic teacher ‘Paingya’ found in the Upanisads, for example.

I agree, though, that we should not expect to find Vedic correspondences, especially not 1-1 or for each name. But if we can find some general ideas, then those vague ideas might just be a broad enough spectrum of color for the imagination of generations to paint a myth out of them.