Amarakoṣa
By Swami Harshananda
Amarakoṣa literally means ‘immortal lexicon’ or ‘Lexicon of Amarasimha’.
Lexicography is one of the important branches of technical literature in Sanskrit. The Nighantu, a vocabulary of Vedic words, is the oldest lexicon so far known. The Nirukta of Yāska (800 B. C.) is a commentary on it.
But among the extant lexicons of Sanskrit, the Amarakoṣa of Amarasiṃha (A. D. 500), a Buddhist scholar, who might have adorned the court of Vikramāditya, is the best known and the most widely used.
Popularly known as the Nāma-liñgānuśāsanam[1] and Trikānda [2], it is divided into three ‘kāṇḍas’ or books.
- The first called Svargakānda deals with heavenly matters.
- The second called Bhumikānda deals with earthly things.
- The third called Sāmānyakānda is concerned with general matters.
The whole work is written in the anuṣṭubh metre. A major part of the work deals with synonyms and only a small section called Nānārthavarga is devoted to homonyms.
Being the most popular of such lexicons, the Amarakosa has sixty commentaries. Out of them the Amarakosod-ghātana by Kṣīrasvāmin (11th cent A. D.) seems to be the earliest. Tikāsarvasva of Sarvānanda (12th cent. A. D.) are more scholarly works.
References[edit]
- The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore