Vedic Sanskrit words related to 'water---etymology and meanings

Vedic Sanskrit words related to 'water'.

All Sanskrit words written in italics are itrans version. Most of these words are available in Sanskrit English Lexicon by Sir Monier Williams at <http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/>.

(i) ap--Water. Water is the personality of Universal Consciousness who removes 'any obsession or confinement'. This is 'fluidity'. The connected word 'apanayana' means 'to remove'. This is also reflected in the 'flowing rivers'.

(ii) aapa--Water, Obtaining.

(iii) aap----To gain or obtain. The feeling of gaining and the consequent satisfaction is from the 'inner water'. It quenches our desire and thirst.

(vii) aapti--Achievement, gain.

(viii) payasa--Water or more correctly from where water originates.

payasa is from the root word 'pay' meaning 'to move, to flow'. It is the movement of the Consciousness or praaNa that creates the 'life giving' water.

(ix) paya--Milk. Any movement or flow is from 'desire' and whose seat is 'heart'. The secretions of emotions and meanings from words, secretions of milk from mother's breasts , secretion of life from Mother Consciousness is 'paya'. This is also rain from the cloud making earth verdant.

( ya divya apah payasa saMvabhuvaH----the divine water which is created from paya---quoted from the Vedas).

(x) paya and apa. apa is a retro-version of paya.

(xi) jala --- Water---ja (generation, creation) +la (lakShaNa / mark / look)---who is characterized by birth or creation. The divine water in some form or other supports the life everywhere.

(xii) vaari---Water. vaari= vaar + i. vaar= protector or defender; who bars evil; i = to flow. vaari---who flows or rains to stop evils.
(vaaraNa=resistance.)

(xiii) salila--Water. It is from the word 'sala' which means 'water' and 'sal' meaning 'to move or to flow'. The root word 'lI' means to dissolve. So, 'salila' means 'who flows and dissolves everyone in him or her'. Thus in Upanishad , the seer has said, 'salilam aekam, draShTaa advaitam'---there is one water and one observer!
(salila--sal + lI. sal--solve--solution--dissolve--saliva.)
From the liquidity of the Universal Consciousness the physicality or 'solid' is created and also the physicality dissolves in this liquid or 'divine water'.
(Thus 'solid' is from 'salila'.)

(xiv) ambu--Water. ambu = amb +u; amb= to sound; am=teja or radiance. b= vak splitting into many; u = ud=to bathe, to spring as water.
ambu= radiant vak (consciousness as 'expression' or as 'mother of words') is pouring down or dripping on us as life or water.
This is same as the radiant Consciousness in us as expressions or vaak who is revealing as emotions in heart, meaning in mind and then as physical actions in our body and limbs. This is same as rain from the clouds. This is same as mother suckling her child.

{Written following the teaching of the great sage Shri.BijoyKrishna Chattopadhyaya (1875-1945) and his principal disciple Shri.Tridibnath Bandyopadhyaya (1923-1994).}

(debkumar.lahiri@gmail.com)