Asama, Asamā, Ashama: 24 definitions
Introduction:
Asama means something in Buddhism, Pali, Hinduism, Sanskrit, Jainism, Prakrit, Hindi. 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.
Alternative spellings of this word include Aasam.
Images (photo gallery)
In Hinduism
Purana and Itihasa (epic history)
Asama (असम).—An Ajita deva.*
- * Brahmāṇḍa-purāṇa II. 13. 93.
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.
Ayurveda (science of life)
Veterinary Medicine (The study and treatment of Animals)
Asama (असम) refers to “(those elephants) having a uneven (penis)”, according to the 15th century Mātaṅgalīlā composed by Nīlakaṇṭha in 263 Sanskrit verses, dealing with elephantology in ancient India, focusing on the science of management and treatment of elephants.—[Cf. chapter 3, “on unfavorable marks”]: “2. If his tusks have streaks or lumps, and are very rough, blotched, or coarse; if his penis is leprous spotted, not smooth and even (asama), has white spots, is very short, is covered over with veins and thin if his tail is very crooked, enormous, distorted, knotty, or short ; if his tail root, hold, and back are small ; that elephant is inferior”.
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.
In Buddhism
Theravada (major branch of Buddhism)
1. Asama - The chief disciple of Sobhita Buddha (Bu.vii.21; J.i.35). He was the Buddhas step brother, and it was to him and to his brother Sunetta that the Buddha preached his first sermon. BuA.137.
2. Asama - Father of Paduma Buddha and King of Campa. Bu.ix.9; BuA.146.
3. Asama - Chief lay supporter of Paduma Buddha (Bu.ix.23); probably the same as his father. See Asama (2).
4. Asama - A devaputta who once visited the Buddha at Veluvana, in the company of Sahali, Ninka, Akotaka, Vetambari and Manava Gamiya.
They were disciples of different teachers and, standing before the Buddha, each uttered the praises of his own teacher.
Asama eulogised Purana Kassapa (S.i.65). Perhaps Asama is the name of a class; See Asama (1).
-- or --
1. Asama - A class of devas, present at the preaching of the Maha Samaya Sutta. They are mentioned together with the Yama twins. D.ii.259.
2. Asama - Mother of Paduma Buddha and wife of King Asama. Bu.ix.16; J.i.36.
3. Asama - Chief woman disciple of Padumuttara Buddha. Bu.xi.25; DA.ii.489; J.i.37.
Theravāda is a major branch of Buddhism having the the Pali canon (tipitaka) as their canonical literature, which includes the vinaya-pitaka (monastic rules), the sutta-pitaka (Buddhist sermons) and the abhidhamma-pitaka (philosophy and psychology).
Mahayana (major branch of Buddhism)
Asama (असम) is a synonym for the Buddha according to the 2nd century Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (chapter IV). A so mo (Asama) in the language of the Ts’in means “without equal”.
Asama (असम) refers to “irregular (behaviour)”, according to the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā: the eighth chapter of the Mahāsaṃnipāta (a collection of Mahāyāna Buddhist Sūtras).—Accordingly, “[...] If he is in the state of concentration, but ends up inan unpleasant situation, he is not irritated. Even thought he always manifests peacefulness to noble beings, he makes flaming efforts in order to bring ordinary people to maturity. Being in the state of sameness in concentration, he still teaches those with irregular behaviour (asama-caryā) by means of various kinds of teachings. He does not see the irregular (asama) in terms of sameness (samatā), and he does not obstruct the irregular with sameness. Since he is unobstructed, he is called the meditator whose thought is just like open space, without any obstruction, he is called a meditator with great insight, and he is called the meditator who is not dependent on consciousness. When meditation is understood in this way, then the meditation of the Bodhisattva is like the expanse of open space, which is not dependent on anything”.
Mahayana (महायान, mahāyāna) is a major branch of Buddhism focusing on the path of a Bodhisattva (spiritual aspirants/ enlightened beings). Extant literature is vast and primarely composed in the Sanskrit language. There are many sūtras of which some of the earliest are the various Prajñāpāramitā sūtras.
Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana or tantric Buddhism)
Asamā (असमा) is the name of Vidyārājñī (i.e., “wisdom queen”) mentioned as attending the teachings in the 6th century Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa: one of the largest Kriyā Tantras devoted to Mañjuśrī (the Bodhisattva of wisdom) representing an encyclopedia of knowledge primarily concerned with ritualistic elements in Buddhism. The teachings in this text originate from Mañjuśrī and were taught to and by Buddha Śākyamuni in the presence of a large audience (including Asamā).
Tibetan Buddhism includes schools such as Nyingma, Kadampa, Kagyu and Gelug. Their primary canon of literature is divided in two broad categories: The Kangyur, which consists of Buddha’s words, and the Tengyur, which includes commentaries from various sources. Esotericism and tantra techniques (vajrayāna) are collected indepently.
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
asama : (adj.) unequal; matchless.
1) Asama, 2 (nt.) (the diaeretic form of Sk. aśman hurling stone, of whieh the contracted form is amha (q. v.); connected with Lat. ocris “mons confragosus”; Gr. a)/kmwn anvil; Lith. akmů̃ stone, see also asana1 (Sk. aśan stone for throwing) and asani) stone, rock DA. I, 270, 271 (°muṭṭhika having a hammer of stone; v. l. BB. ayamuṭṭhika); SnA 392 (Instr. asmanā). (Page 88)
2) Asama, 1 (adj.) (a + sama) unequal, incomparable J. I, 40 (+ appaṭipuggala); Sdhp. 578 (+ atula). Esp. frequent in cpd. °dhura lit. carrying more than an equal burden, of incomparable strength, very steadfast or resolute Sn. 694 (= asama-viriya SnA 489); J. I, 193; VI, 259, 330. (Page 88)
1) asama (အသမ) [(ti) (တိ)]—
[yādicchaka]
[ယာဒိစ္ဆကနာမ်]
2) asama (အသမ) [(ti) (တိ)]—
[na+sama]
[န+သမ]
3) asamā (အသမာ) [(thī) (ထီ)]—
[yādicchaka]
[ယာဒိစ္ဆကနာမ်]
[Pali to Burmese]
1) asama—
(Burmese text): (၁) အတူမရှိသော၊ မတူသော၊ မြတ်သော၊ သူ။ (၂) မညီမျှ-မညီညွတ်-သော။
(Auto-Translation): (1) Unique, different, precious, friend. (2) Unequal - inconsistent - .
2) asama—
(Burmese text): အသမမည်သော၊ သူ။ (၁) သောဘိတမြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ အဂ္ဂသာဝကဖြစ်သော အသမထေရ်။ (၂) ပဒုမမြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ ခမည်းတော်အသမမင်း။ (၃) ပဒုမမြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ အမြတ်ဆုံးအလုပ်အကျွေးဖြစ်သော အသမ။ (၄) သုဝဏ္ဏဗိမ္ဗောဟနိယ-ထေရ်ဖြစ်လာမည့် အသမမည်သော စကြဝတေးမင်း။ (၅) အသမမည်သော နတ်။ (၆) ပဒုမမြတ်စွာဘုရားဘုရား၏ မယ်တော် အသမာမည်သော မိဖုရား။ (၇) ပဒုမုတ္တရ မြတ်စွာဘုရား၏ အမြတ်ဆုံး တပည့်မဖြစ်သော အသမာ။
(Auto-Translation): The Almighty, He. (1) The Almighty is the supreme deity known as the Adhamater. (2) The Almighty's consort, Adhamamin. (3) The venerable one who is the highest achievement of the Almighty. (4) A being who will become the Adhamater, the king of the universe. (5) The Adhamater, a deity. (6) The consort of the Almighty, known as the Mother of Adhamater. (7) The supreme disciple who is not the highest, known as Adhamater of the Buddha.
3) asamā—
(Burmese text): အသမာ-မည်သောသူ။ အသမာ-(၂,၆,၇)-တို့ကြည့်။
(Auto-Translation): Who is a sinner? Look at the sinners (2, 6, 7).
Asama (in Pali) can be associated with the following Chinese terms:
1) 瑪瑙 [mǎ nǎo]: “cornelian”.
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.
Sanskrit dictionary
Asama (असम).—a.
1) Uneven, odd (as a number); असमशीलाः खलु मृगाः (asamaśīlāḥ khalu mṛgāḥ) Bv.1.2; mean, contemptible.
2) Unequal (in space, number or dignity); असमैः समीयमानः (asamaiḥ samīyamānaḥ) Pañcatantra (Bombay) 1.74.
3) Unequalled, matchless, unsurpassed; समवतारसमै- रसमैस्तटैः (samavatārasamai- rasamaistaṭaiḥ) Kirātārjunīya 5.7; वाद्यविशेषाणामसमः श्रोता (vādyaviśeṣāṇāmasamaḥ śrotā) K.12; Ms. 1.73.
4) Uneven, not level (as ground).
-maḥ Name of Buddha.
Asama (असम).—mfn.
(-maḥ-mā-maṃ) 1. Unequalled, individual, without a fellow or equal. 2. Uneven, unequal either in surface or number. m.
(-maḥ) A name of Budd'ha or a Budd'ha. E. a neg. and sama like, same.
Asama (असम).—1. uneven, [Kirātārjunīya] 5, 7. 2. unequal, [Mānavadharmaśāstra] 10, 73. 3. incomparable, [Kathāsaritsāgara, (ed. Brockhaus.)] 23, 32. Catuḥsama, i. e.
Asama is a Sanskrit compound consisting of the terms a and sama (सम).
Aśama (अशम).—[masculine] restlessness.
--- OR ---
Asama (असम).—1. [adjective] unlike, uneven.
--- OR ---
Asama (असम).—2. [adjective] having no equal, incomparable.
1) Aśama (अशम):—[=a-śama] m. disquietude, uneasiness, [cf. Lexicographers, esp. such as amarasiṃha, halāyudha, hemacandra, etc.]
2) [v.s. ...] ‘not resting’, in [compound] with
3) Asama (असम):—[=a-sama] mfn. uneven, unequal (either by birth or in surface or number), [Manu-smṛti x, 73; Kirātārjunīya v, 7, etc.]
4) [v.s. ...] odd
5) [v.s. ...] mf(ā)n. unequalled, without a fellow or equal, [Ṛg-veda; Atharva-veda etc.]
Asama (असम):—[a-sama] (maḥ) 1. m. Buddha. a. Unequal, unparalleled.
Asama (असम):—1. (3. a + sama) adj. ungleich: na samau nāsamau [Manu’s Gesetzbuch 10, 73.] ungerade (von einer Zahl) in asamavāṇa, asamasāyaka und asameṣu .
--- OR ---
Asama (असम):—
--- OR ---
Asama (असम):—1. ungleich [Kirātārjunīya 5, 7.]
--- OR ---
Asama (असम):—2.
1) [Spr. 1365.]
Asama (असम):—1. —
1) Adj. — a) ungleich , unebenbürtig [Gautama's Dharmaśāstra 17,20.] [Indische sprüche 761.fg.] — b) unpaar. —
2) m. ein best. Tact [Saṃgitasārasaṃgraha 233.]
--- OR ---
Asama (असम):—2. Adj. (f. ā) ohne Gleichen , unvergleichlich , einzig.
Asama (असम) in the Sanskrit language is related to the Prakrit word: Asama.
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.
Hindi dictionary
1) Asama (असम) [Also spelled asam]:—(a) uneven; unequal; dissimilar; unmatching; (nm) the north-eastern Indian state of Assam.
2) Āsāma (आसाम) [Also spelled aasam]:—(nm) see [asama].
...
Prakrit-English dictionary
1) Asama (असम) in the Prakrit language is related to the Sanskrit word: Asama.
2) Āsama (आसम) also relates to the Sanskrit word: Āśrama.
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
Asama (ಅಸಮ):—
1) [adjective] not equal; unequal.
2) [adjective] excellent; unparalleled; matchless.
3) [adjective] (said of numbers) not divisible by the number two completely; having a remainder of one when divided by two; not even; odd.
4) [adjective] not of uniform level; of or having irregular surface; uneven.
Kannada is a Dravidian language (as opposed to the Indo-European language family) mainly spoken in the southwestern region of India.
Nepali dictionary
1) Asama (असम):—adj. 1. uneven; odd; 2. unequal; 3. mismatching; unequalled; matchless; 4. uneven; not level;
2) Āsāma (आसाम):—n. the state of India name Assam;
Nepali is the primary language of the Nepalese people counting almost 20 million native speakers. The country of Nepal is situated in the Himalaya mountain range to the north of India.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Partial matches (+0): Sama, A, Na.
Starts with (+23): Acamacaman, Acamanam, Acamarutam, Acamatakam, Asama-tsuge, Asamaapak, Asamabala, Asamabalate, Asamabana, Asamabhava, Asamabijanu, Asamabiji, Asamacarana, Asamacaranta, Asamacarya, Asamacchada, Asamad, Asamada, Asamadam, Asamadana.
Full-text (+58): Asamata, Asamasama, Asameshu, Asamasayaka, Asamabana, Asamaratha, Acamam, Atyasama, Asamashara, Asamanayana, Asamatva, Asamadhana, Asham, Asamabhava, Asamakarunika, Asamadevata, Asamaviriya, Asamappatipuggala, Asamakumara, Asamavana.
Relevant text
Search found 60 books and stories containing Asama, A-sama, A-śama, A-shama, Asamā, Aśama, Āsāma, Āsama, Ashama, Na-sama; (plurals include: Asamas, samas, śamas, shamas, Asamās, Aśamas, Āsāmas, Āsamas, Ashamas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Rig Veda (translation and commentary) (by H. H. Wilson)
Bhagavad-gita (with Vaishnava commentaries) (by Narayana Gosvami)
Verse 14.12 < [Chapter 14 - Guṇa-traya-vibhāga-yoga]
Maha Buddhavamsa—The Great Chronicle of Buddhas (by Ven. Mingun Sayadaw)
Buddha Chronicle 8: Paduma Buddhavaṃsa < [Chapter 9 - The chronicle of twenty-four Buddhas]
Buddha Chronicle 6: Sobhita Buddhavaṃsa < [Chapter 9 - The chronicle of twenty-four Buddhas]
Buddha Chronicle 10: Padumuttara Buddhavaṃsa < [Chapter 9 - The chronicle of twenty-four Buddhas]
Apadana commentary (Atthakatha) (by U Lu Pe Win)
Various other 22 Buddhas < [Part 1 - Remote preface (dūre-nidāna)]
Sahitya-kaumudi by Baladeva Vidyabhushana (by Gaurapada Dāsa)
Text 10.162 < [Chapter 10 - Ornaments of Meaning]
Text 10.147 < [Chapter 10 - Ornaments of Meaning]
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts, Madras (by M. Seshagiri Sastri)