Alabu, Alābu, Alābū, Ālābu, Ālābū: 24 definitions
Introduction:
Alabu means something in Hinduism, Sanskrit, Buddhism, Pali, Marathi, Jainism, Prakrit, biology. If you want to know the exact meaning, history, etymology or English translation of this term then check out the descriptions on this page. Add your comment or reference to a book if you want to contribute to this summary article.
In Hinduism
Ayurveda (science of life)
Dietetics and Culinary Art (such as household cooking)
1) Alabu (अलबु) refers to the “bottle gourd”, representing a type of vegetable according to the Atharvaveda IV.34.5, and is commonly found in literature dealing with the topics of dietetics and culinary art, also known as Pākaśāstra or Pākakalā.—Among vegetables cucumber (urvāruka) and lotus stalks (bisa) were referred to in Ṛgveda. Atharvaveda refers to the usage of lotus roots (śāluka), bottle gourd (alabu) and Trapa bispinosa (śaphaka) in food articles.
2) Ālābu (आलाबु) refers to the “pumpkin gourd” and is mentioned in a list of potential causes for indigestion in the 17th century Bhojanakutūhala (dravyaguṇāguṇa-kathana).—A complete section in Bhojanakutūhala is devoted for the description of agents that cause indigestion [viz., ālābu (pumpkin gourd) or brahmataru kṣārodaka]. These agents consumed on a large scale can cause indigestion for certain people. The remedies [viz., siddhārthaka (mustard)] for these types of indigestions are also explained therewith.
Kalpa (Formulas, Drug prescriptions and other Medicinal preparations)
Ālābu (आलाबु) refers to the medicinal plant known as “Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standley” and is dealt with in the 15th-century Yogasārasaṅgraha (Yogasara-saṅgraha) by Vāsudeva: an unpublished Keralite work representing an Ayurvedic compendium of medicinal recipes. The Yogasārasaṃgraha [mentioning ālābu] deals with entire recipes in the route of administration, and thus deals with the knowledge of pharmacy (bhaiṣajya-kalpanā) which is a branch of pharmacology (dravyaguṇa).
Unclassified Ayurveda definitions
1) Alābu (अलाबु) is a Sanskrit word referring to Lagenaria siceraria (calabash), a plant species in the Cucurbitaceae family. Certain plant parts of Alābu are eaten as a vegetable (śāka), according to Caraka in his Carakasaṃhitā sūtrasthāna (chapter 27), a classical Ayurvedic work. The plant is therefore part of the Śākavarga group of medicinal plants, referring to the “group of vegetables/pot-herbs”. Caraka defined such groups (vargas) based on the dietic value of the plant.
According to the Rājanighaṇṭu (verse 3.56), the same plant (Lagenaria siceraria) is identified with Kaṭutumbī.
2) Alābu can also refer to a vessel made from the calabash gourd (Lagenaria siceraria).
Āyurveda (आयुर्वेद, ayurveda) is a branch of Indian science dealing with medicine, herbalism, taxology, anatomy, surgery, alchemy and related topics. Traditional practice of Āyurveda in ancient India dates back to at least the first millenium BC. Literature is commonly written in Sanskrit using various poetic metres.
Purana and Itihasa (epic history)
Alābu (अलाबु).—Gourds unfit for śrāddha.*
- * Viṣṇu-purāṇa III. 16. 8.
The Purana (पुराण, purāṇas) refers to Sanskrit literature preserving ancient India’s vast cultural history, including historical legends, religious ceremonies, various arts and sciences. The eighteen mahapuranas total over 400,000 shlokas (metrical couplets) and date to at least several centuries BCE.
Pancaratra (worship of Nārāyaṇa)
Alābu (अलाबु) refers to “bottle-gourd” and represents a type of vegetables fit for use in oblation offerings, according to verse 25.121b-125 of the Īśvarasaṃhitā.
Pancaratra (पाञ्चरात्र, pāñcarātra) represents a tradition of Hinduism where Narayana is revered and worshipped. Closeley related to Vaishnavism, the Pancaratra literature includes various Agamas and tantras incorporating many Vaishnava philosophies.
Shaivism (Shaiva philosophy)
Ālābu (आलाबु) refers to a “bottle-gourd” (representing a suitable material for an ascetics’ vessel), according to the Pātravidhi—a manual of the Lakulīśa Pāśupata school of Śaivism dealing with purification of the initiate’s vessel (pātra) and other concerned issues.—Accordingly, “He should possess non-metallic vessels with no cuts. Their cleaning is prescribed with water like that of the Camasa-vessel in the [Vedic] sacrifice. (42) Vessels made of bottle-gourd (ālābu), wood, [baked] clay and bamboo: these are the vessels [prescribed] for an ascetic; thus Svāyambhuva Manu has said. (43)”.
Note: For detailed recommendations for cleaning vessels made of different materials, see Baudhāyanadharmasūtra I.5.27–46, Manusmṛti V.110–122.
Shaiva (शैव, śaiva) or Shaivism (śaivism) represents a tradition of Hinduism worshiping Shiva as the supreme being. Closely related to Shaktism, Shaiva literature includes a range of scriptures, including Tantras, while the root of this tradition may be traced back to the ancient Vedas.
Biology (plants and animals)
Alabu in India is the name of a plant defined with Lagenaria siceraria in various botanical sources. This page contains potential references in Ayurveda, modern medicine, and other folk traditions or local practices It has the synonym Cucurbita idolatrica Willd. (among others).
Example references for further research on medicinal uses or toxicity (see latin names for full list):
· Florula belgica (1827)
· Saggio sulla Storia Naturale del Chili (1782)
· J. Cytol. Genet. (1996)
· Publications of the Field Columbian Museum, Botanical Series (1930)
· Species Plantarum
· FBI (1879)
If you are looking for specific details regarding Alabu, for example side effects, pregnancy safety, chemical composition, extract dosage, diet and recipes, health benefits, have a look at these references.
This sections includes definitions from the five kingdoms of living things: Animals, Plants, Fungi, Protists and Monera. It will include both the official binomial nomenclature (scientific names usually in Latin) as well as regional spellings and variants.
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
alābu : (nt.) long white gourd.
Alābu, (Sk. alābū f.) a long white gourd, Cucurbita Lagenaris M.I, 80 (tittaka°), 315 (id.); PvA.47 (id.); DhsA.405. — See also alāpu. (Page 79)
1) alābu (အလာဗု) [(na,thī) (န၊ထီ)]—
[ā+lamba+uī. lambaavasaṃsaneç āpubbo,saṃyogādilopadīgharassā,ālambati avasaṃsatīti alābū. ṇvādi.4.pāṇinī-charāa ]]na+lamba+u]]ma- khyeç na- a-pruyuea ]]alābu]]hu ¤ç kātantacharāç charā a ā-rhiso lamba ]]ālābu]]hu ¤,,ṭī-charā amū ā- rassapruyuea alābu-hu ¤,,ṭī.596-nitea praeiea. nīti,sutta.nhā-419-nitea alābuç ālābu-hu 2-praeiea.]
[အာ+လမ္ဗ+ဦ။ လမ္ဗအဝသံသနေ,အာပုဗ္ဗော၊ သံယောဂါဒိလောပဒီဃရဿာ၊ အာလမ္ဗတိ အဝသံသတီတိ အလာဗူ။ ဏွာဒိ။၄။ပါဏိနီ-ဆရာအလို ＇န+လမ္ဗ+ဥ＇မ-ကို ချေ,န-ကို အ-ပြု၍ ＇အလာဗု＇ဟု ၎င်း,ကာတန္တဆရာ,စန်းကျမ်းဆရာတို့ အလို အာ-ရှေးရှိသော လမ္ဗဓာတ်ဖြင့် ＇အာလာဗု＇ဟု ပြီးကြောင်းကို၎င်း၊ ဓာန်၊ဋီ-ဆရာ အလိုမူ အာ-ကို ရဿပြု၍ အလာဗု-ဟု ပြီးကြောင်းကို၎င်း၊ ဓာန်၊ဋီ။၅၉၆-၌ ပြဆိုထား၏။ နီတိ၊သုတ္တ။နှာ-၄၁၉-၌လည်း အလာဗု,အာလာဗု-ဟု ပါဌ် ၂-မျိုးပြ၏။]
2) alābū (အလာဗူ) [(na,thī) (န၊ထီ)]—
[ā+lamba+uī. lambaavasaṃsaneç āpubbo,saṃyogādilopadīgharassā,ālambati avasaṃsatīti alābū. ṇvādi.4.pāṇinī-charāa ]]na+lamba+u]]ma- khyeç na- a-pruyuea ]]alābu]]hu ¤ç kātantacharāç charā a ā-rhiso lamba ]]ālābu]]hu ¤,,ṭī-charā amū ā- rassapruyuea alābu-hu ¤,,ṭī.596-nitea praeiea. nīti,sutta.nhā-419-nitea alābuç ālābu-hu 2-praeiea.]
[အာ+လမ္ဗ+ဦ။ လမ္ဗအဝသံသနေ,အာပုဗ္ဗော၊ သံယောဂါဒိလောပဒီဃရဿာ၊ အာလမ္ဗတိ အဝသံသတီတိ အလာဗူ။ ဏွာဒိ။၄။ပါဏိနီ-ဆရာအလို ＇န+လမ္ဗ+ဥ＇မ-ကို ချေ,န-ကို အ-ပြု၍ ＇အလာဗု＇ဟု ၎င်း,ကာတန္တဆရာ,စန်းကျမ်းဆရာတို့ အလို အာ-ရှေးရှိသော လမ္ဗဓာတ်ဖြင့် ＇အာလာဗု＇ဟု ပြီးကြောင်းကို၎င်း၊ ဓာန်၊ဋီ-ဆရာ အလိုမူ အာ-ကို ရဿပြု၍ အလာဗု-ဟု ပြီးကြောင်းကို၎င်း၊ ဓာန်၊ဋီ။၅၉၆-၌ ပြဆိုထား၏။ နီတိ၊သုတ္တ။နှာ-၄၁၉-၌လည်း အလာဗု,အာလာဗု-ဟု ပါဌ် ၂-မျိုးပြ၏။]
3) ālābu (အာလာဗု) [(na,thī) (န၊ထီ)]—
[ā+lamba+uī]
[အာ+လမ္ဗ+ဦ]
4) ālābū (အာလာဗူ) [(na,thī) (န၊ထီ)]—
[ā+lamba+uī]
[အာ+လမ္ဗ+ဦ]
[Pali to Burmese]
1) alābu—
(Burmese text): ဗူး၊ ဗူးသီး၊ ဗူးပင်။
(Auto-Translation): Bottle, bottle gourd, bottle plant.
2) alābū—
(Burmese text): ဗူး၊ ဗူးသီး၊ ဗူးပင်။
(Auto-Translation): Bottle, bottle gourd, bottle tree.
3) ālābu—
(Burmese text): အလာဗု-ကြည့်။
(Auto-Translation): Alabu - look.
4) ālābū—
(Burmese text): အလာဗု-ကြည့်။
(Auto-Translation): "Look at the news."
Pali is the language of the Tipiṭaka, which is the sacred canon of Theravāda Buddhism and contains much of the Buddha’s speech. Closeley related to Sanskrit, both languages are used interchangeably between religions.
Marathi-English dictionary
alābu (अलाबु).—m S A long white gourd, Cucurbita lagenaria.
Marathi is an Indo-European language having over 70 million native speakers people in (predominantly) Maharashtra India. Marathi, like many other Indo-Aryan languages, evolved from early forms of Prakrit, which itself is a subset of Sanskrit, one of the most ancient languages of the world.
Sanskrit dictionary
Alābu (अलाबु) or Alābū (अलाबू).—f. [na-lambate; na-lamb-u-ṇit nalopaśca vṛddhiḥ Tv] The bottle-gourd.
-bu (n.)
1) A vessel made of gourd.
2) A fruit of the gourd which is very light and floats in water; किं हि नामैतत् अम्बुनि मज्जन्त्यलाबूनि ग्रावाणः प्लवन्त इति (kiṃ hi nāmaitat ambuni majjantyalābūni grāvāṇaḥ plavanta iti) Mv.1; Manusmṛti 6.54.
Derivable forms: alābuḥ (अलाबुः), alābūḥ (अलाबूः).
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Ālābu (आलाबु) or Ālābū (आलाबू).—f. A pumpkin gourd; see अलाबु (alābu).
Derivable forms: ālābuḥ (आलाबुः), ālābūḥ (आलाबूः).
Alābu (अलाबु).—f.
(-buḥ) A long gourd. See the next word.
--- OR ---
Alābū (अलाबू).—f.
(-būḥ) The bottle gourd, (Cucurbita lagenaris.) E. a neg. laba to sink, ū Unadi affix, m is dropped, and the preceding vowel lengthened: what does not sink in water; floats, &c. are made of this gourd, especially when hollowed: also alabu and ālābu.
--- OR ---
Ālābu (आलाबु).—f.
(-buḥ) A pumpkin gourd: also ālābū, alābu and alābū, q. v.
Alābu (अलाबु).—f. A long gourd, a gourd-bottle, [Mānavadharmaśāstra] 6, 54.
Alābu (अलाबु).—(alābū) [feminine] the bottle gourd; [masculine] [neuter] a vessel made of the b. [grammar]
1) Alābu (अलाबु):—f. the bottle-gourd (Lagenaria Vulgaris Ser), [Suśruta] etc.
2) mn. a vessel made of the bottle-gourd, [Atharva-veda] etc.
3) (used by Brāhmanical ascetics), [Manu-smṛti vi, 54; Jaina literature]
4) n. the fruit of the bottle-gourd, [Mahābhārata ii, 2196, etc.]
5) Alābū (अलाबू):—[from alābu] f. (= alābu above) the bottle-gourd, [Pāṇini 4-1, 66] [commentator or commentary] [Uṇādi-sūtra]
6) Ālābu (आलाबु):—f. the pumpkin gourd, Cucurbita Pepo, [cf. Lexicographers, esp. such as amarasiṃha, halāyudha, hemacandra, etc.]
1) Alābu (अलाबु):—(buḥ) 2. f. A long gourd.
2) Alābū (अलाबू):—(būḥ) 3. f. Idem.
3) Ālābu (आलाबु):—(buḥ) 2. f. A pumpkin gourd.
Alābu (अलाबु):—
--- OR ---
Ālābu (आलाबु):—f. = alābu [1.] [Śabdaratnāvalī im Śabdakalpadruma]
--- OR ---
Alābu (अलाबु):—
1) n. die Frucht: majjantyalābūni śilāḥ plavante [Mahābhārata 2, 2196.] vīṇā [ŚIKṢĀ 28] in [Weber’s Indische Studien 4, 355.]
Alābu (अलाबु):—f. (auch bū) Flaschengurke ; m. n. die Frucht und ein daraus verfertigtes Gefäss (auch zum Schröpfen gebraucht).
--- OR ---
Ālābu (आलाबु):—f. = alābu Flaschengurke.
Alābu (अलाबु) in the Sanskrit language is related to the Prakrit words: Alāu, Alāū, Alābū.
Sanskrit, also spelled संस्कृतम् (saṃskṛtam), is an ancient language of India commonly seen as the grandmother of the Indo-European language family (even English!). Closely allied with Prakrit and Pali, Sanskrit is more exhaustive in both grammar and terms and has the most extensive collection of literature in the world, greatly surpassing its sister-languages Greek and Latin.
Prakrit-English dictionary
Alābū (अलाबू) in the Prakrit language is related to the Sanskrit word: Alābū.
Alābū has the following synonyms: Alāū.
Prakrit is an ancient language closely associated with both Pali and Sanskrit. Jain literature is often composed in this language or sub-dialects, such as the Agamas and their commentaries which are written in Ardhamagadhi and Maharashtri Prakrit. The earliest extant texts can be dated to as early as the 4th century BCE although core portions might be older.
Kannada-English dictionary
Alabu (ಅಲಬು):—
1) [noun] any of the weeds, of Poaceae (grass) family.
2) [noun] a small plant Alysicalpus buplepurifolius of Papilionaceae family.
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Alābu (ಅಲಾಬು):—[noun] the plant Lagenaria vulgaris ( = Cucurbita lagenaria) of Cucurbitaceae family and its gourd; bottle gourd.
--- OR ---
Aḷabu (ಅಳಬು):—
1) [noun] the extent, dimensions, capacity, etc. of anything, esp. as determined by a standard; a measure.
2) [noun] the act of measuring; measurement.
--- OR ---
Ālābu (ಆಲಾಬು):—
1) [noun] the creeper Lagenaria vulgaris of Cucurbitaceae family.
2) [noun] its gourd like fruit; bottle gourd; calabash.
Kannada is a Dravidian language (as opposed to the Indo-European language family) mainly spoken in the southwestern region of India.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Partial matches: Ui, Lamba, A.
Starts with (+1): Alabugandhi, Alabuka, Alabukata, Alabukataha, Alabukeshvara, Alabukkudu, Alabuloma, Alabulomasa, Alabulomasadisasutta, Alabumatta, Alabumaya, Alabuni, Alabupatra, Alabupatta, Alabupushpasankasha, Alabusa, Alabustana, Alabusuhrid, Alabuvallaki, Alabuvalli.
Full-text (+31): Alabukata, Alabupatra, Alabuvina, Alabumaya, Alabuka, Alabusuhrid, Alabupatta, Vippakinnaalabu, Alabugandhi, Alabukataha, Alabumatta, Alabuloma, Tittakarasaalabu, Alabuvalli, Tittakalabuvalli, Ambu, Tittakalabu, Alau, Labuki, Alapu.
Relevant text
Search found 42 books and stories containing Alabu, A-lamba-ui, Ā-lamba-uī, A-lamba-ui, Ā-lamba-uī, A-lamba-ui, Ā-lamba-uī, A-lamba-ui, Ā-lamba-uī, Alābu, Alābū, Ālābu, Ālābū, Aḷabu; (plurals include: Alabus, uis, uīs, Alābus, Alābūs, Ālābus, Ālābūs, Aḷabus). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Mahavastu (great story) (by J. J. Jones)
Chapter XXI - Jātaka of Śiriprabha (the deer) < [Volume II]
Chapter IX(a) - The Five Hundred Merchants (prose) < [Volume III]
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Vanaspati (Plants) used in Veda < [Chapter 2 - The nature of treatment for diseases in the Ancient era]
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Verse 6.54 < [Section VI - Procedure of going forth as a Wandering Mendicant]
Chaitanya Bhagavata (by Bhumipati Dāsa)
Verse 3.2.401 < [Chapter 2 - Description of the Lord’s Travel Through Bhuvaneśvara and Other Placesto Jagannātha Purī]
Verse 2.5.67 < [Chapter 5 - Lord Nityānanda’s Vyāsa-pūjā Ceremony and His Darśana of the Lord’s Six-armed Form]
Harshacharita (socio-cultural Study) (by Mrs. Nandita Sarmah)
5. Agriculture and Agricultural Products < [Chapter 6 - Other Socio-Cultural Aspects]
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