पिण्ड

Pali

Alternative forms

Noun

पिण्ड m

1. Devanagari script form of piṇḍa (“lump”)

Declension

Sanskrit

Alternative scripts

Etymology

Due to the diverse phonetic variation in the word's relatives in modern Indo-Aryan, Turner considers the word to be borrowed from Dravidian (compare Tamil பிழி (piḻi, “squeeze”), Tamil பிண்டம் (piṇṭam, “what is squeezed”) from past *piẓi-nt- ‘squeeze’).

Noun

पिण्ड • (píṇḍa) stem, m or n

1. any round or roundish mass or heap, ball, lump, piece (RV., TS., ŚBr., etc.)
2. a roundish lump of food, a bite (of food), morsel, mouthful
   1. (esp.) a ball of rice or flour offered to ancestors (GṛŚṛS., Mn., MBh., etc.)
3. food, daily bread, livelihood, subsistence, sustenance (MBh., Kāv., etc.)
4. any solid mass or material object, the body, bodily frame (Ragh., Śaṃk., Vajracch.)
5. the calf of the leg (Mālatīm.)
6. the flower of a china rose (L.)
7. a portico (L.)
8. force, power, army (L.)
9. (in the dual) fleshy parts of the shoulder above the clavicle (MBh.)
10. (in the dual) protrusion on the upper forehead of an elephant (L.)
11. embryo at an early stage of development (L.)
12. a kind of incense (Var.
13. myrrh, olibanum (L.)
14. meat, flesh (L.)
15. alms (Mālatīm.)
16. Meyna laxiflora (L.)
17. quantity, collection (L.)
18. (arithmetic) sum, total amount
19. (astronomy) a sine expressed in a series of numbers
20. (music) sound, tone
21. name of a man
22. iron (L.)
23. steel
24. fresh butter

Declension

Descendants

• Romani: punro, pinro, pirro
• → Khotanese: piṇḍaa- (“lump”)
• → Iranian:
  • → Old Armenian: պինդ (pind, “firm, dense, tight, strong”)

References

• Monier Williams (1899) “पिण्ड”, in A Sanskrit–English Dictionary, , new edition, Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 0625/2.
• Witzel, Michael (2003) Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia (Sino-Platonic Papers; 129)‎, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, page 33
• Mayrhofer, Manfred (1996) Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen [Etymological Dictionary of Old Indo-Aryan]‎ (in German), volume 2, Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, page 128
• Turner, Ralph Lilley (1969–1985) “píṇḍa”, in A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages, London: Oxford University Press