Asivisa, Ashi-visha, Ashivisha, Āśīviṣa, Āsīvisa, Āsiviṣa, Āsivisa: 21 definitions
Introduction:
Asivisa means something in Buddhism, Pali, Hinduism, Sanskrit. 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.
The Sanskrit terms Āśīviṣa and Āsiviṣa can be transliterated into English as Asivisa or Ashivisha or Asivisha, using the IAST transliteration scheme (?).
In Hinduism
Purana and Itihasa (epic history)
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष) refers to a “ruthless serpent”, according to the Śivapurāṇa 2.5.21 (“Description of the Special War”).—Accordingly, as Sanatkumāra narrated to Vyāsa: “[...] Then Gaṇeśa hit Śumbha in his chest with his axe and felled him to the ground. Thereafter he mounted his mouse again. Lord Gaṇeśa of elephantine face got ready for the fight. He hit him mockingly and angrily as if hitting a great elephant with a goad. Kālanemi and Śumbha simultaneously attacked Gaṇeśa furiously with arrows as ruthless as serpents (āśīviṣa). On seeing him afflicted, the powerful Vīrabhadra accompanied by a crore goblins rushed in. [...]”.
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष) is a name mentioned in the Mahābhārata (cf. IX.44.82) and represents one of the many proper names used for people and places. Note: The Mahābhārata (mentioning Āśīviṣa) is a Sanskrit epic poem consisting of 100,000 ślokas (metrical verses) and is over 2000 years old.
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.
Shaktism (Shakta philosophy)
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष) (also, Ahiviṣa) refers to a “venomous snake”, according to Tantric texts such as the Kubjikāmata-tantra, the earliest popular and most authoritative Tantra of the Kubjikā cult.—Accordingly, “Penetrated (samāviṣṭā) by the bliss of the Command and aroused by the joy of the hymn (addressed to her), the great being said: ‘I do not know who is praising me here. To whom should I give a boon? My gaze (dṛṣṭipāta) is hard to behold like a venomous snake (āśīviṣa). How have (you been able to) bear it? Then ask for whatever you please!’”.
Shakta (शाक्त, śākta) or Shaktism (śāktism) represents a tradition of Hinduism where the Goddess (Devi) is revered and worshipped. Shakta literature includes a range of scriptures, including various Agamas and Tantras, although its roots may be traced back to the Vedas.
Ayurveda (science of life)
Toxicology (Study and Treatment of poison)
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष) refers to “one possessing poison which spreads fast”, and represents a synonym of Sarpa (“snake”), according to the Paryāyaratnamāla: a lexicon of Āyurveda composed in the 9th Century by Madhava.
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
Mahayana (major branch of Buddhism)
1) Āsiviṣa (आसिविष, “poisonous snake”) represents an incarnation destination of the tiryaggati (animal realm) according to the “world of transmigration” section in the 2nd century Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (chapter XXVII).—The Bodhisattva sees the animals (tiryak) undergoing all the torments: they are made to gallop by blows of the whip or stick; they are made to make long journeys carrying burdens; their harness is damaged; they are branded with hot iron. If hatred (dveṣa, pratigha) is predominant [in people], they take the form of [for example] poisonous snake (āsiviṣa).
2) Āsīviṣa (आसीविष) refers to a “poisonous snake”, according to Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (chapter 21).—Accordingly, “The immoral person is not respected (satkṛta) by people; his house is like a cemetery into which people do not go; he loses all his virtues like a rotten tree that people despise; [...] he is bad company like a poisonous snake (āsīviṣa); [...] Even though he is called Bhikṣu because he has a shaved head, the yellow robe and presents his ‘ticket’ in the proper order, in reality he is not a Bhikṣu”.
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष) refers to “serpent-venom”, according to the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā: the eighth chapter of the Mahāsaṃnipāta (a collection of Mahāyāna Buddhist Sūtras).—Accordingly: “[...] (177) The Lord, the protector, ascending to the height of eighty palm trees (tāla) in the open space, said to the king (Puṇyālaṃkāra): ‘[...] (179) Living beings are never satisfied because of desire, and thus again and again the thirst of desire is the cause. The fool who remain in the realm of objects do not know how to be satisfied, and only those who are satisfied with insight are really satisfied. (180) Just as an illusion is deceptive and essenceless, it is taught that the five parts of the personality are as an illusion, these spheres are as a serpent-venom (āśīviṣa), the six sense organs are as an empty city. [...]’”.
Āśīviṣā (आशीविषा) refers to “venomous snakes” (responsible for crop-destruction, etc.), according to the Vajratuṇḍasamayakalparāja, an ancient Buddhist ritual manual on agriculture from the 5th-century (or earlier), containing various instructions for the Sangha to provide agriculture-related services to laypeople including rain-making, weather control and crop protection.—Accordingly, [As the Bhagavān teaches an offering manual]: “Having enchanted sand twenty-one times it should be scattered on all crops, flowers, fruits, leaves and trees. All pests fall down and perish. All snails, horse flies, venomous snakes (āśīviṣā), centipedes and other pests of various kinds will be destroyed. Until the stake is drawn out they will not appear”.
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.
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
āsīvisa : (m.) a snake; whose poison is in the fangs.
Āsīvisa, Derivation uncertain. The BSk. āsīviṣa (e.g. Jtm 3161) is a Sanskritisation of the Pali. To suppose this to come from ahi + visa (snake’s poison) would give a wrong meaning, and leave unexplained the change from ahi to āsi) a snake Vin. IV, 108; S. IV, 172; A. II, 110; III, 69; J. I, 245; II, 274; IV, 30, 496; V, 82, 267; Pug. 48; Vism. 470 (in comp.); DhA. I, 139; II, 8, 38; SnA 334, 458, 465; VvA. 308. (Page 116)
[Pali to Burmese]
1) āsivisa—
(Burmese text): [(၁) အာသု+ဝိသ။အာသု သီဃံ ဧတဿ ဝိသံ အာဂစ္ဆတီတိ အာသီ (သိ) ဝိသော။ ဝိ၊ဋ္ဌ၊၁။၁၈၄။ ဥဿီဗျဉ္ဇနေ။ အာသီဝိသော။ နီတိ၊သုတ္တ။ ၁၇၇။ (၂) အာသိတ္တ+ဝိသ။ (၃) အသိတ+ဝိသ။ (၄) အသိသဒိသ+ဝိသ။ သံ၊ဋ္ဌ၊၃။၅၄။ သာရတ္ထ၊၂။၂၂။ (၅) အာသီ+ဝိသ။ အာသီတိ ဝါ ဒါဌာ ဝုစ္စတိ။ တတ္ထ သန္နိဟိတဝိသောတိ အာသီဝိသော။ သာရတ္ထ၊၂။၂၂။ အာသိယံဝိသံ ဧတဿာတိ အာသီဝိသော၊ အာသီသပ္ပဒါဌာ။ ဓာန်၊ဋီ၊၆၅၃။ (အာဂီဝိပ-သံ)]
လျင်မြန်စွာတက်လာသော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-သွန်းလောင်းအပ်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-စားလိုက်သမျှ အစာအားလုံး အဆိပ်ချည်းသာ ဖြစ်သွားသောကြောင့် စားမျိုအပ်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသည်ဟု ဆိုရလောက်သော-သန်လျှက်ဓားကဲ့သို့ ထက်မြက်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-အစွယ်၌ စုဆောင်းထားအပ်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-သတ္တဝါ၊ မြွေ။
(Auto-Translation): (1) Atha + Wisdom. Atha to that which is pure wisdom, becoming free from all attachments, it is said. Wisdom, detailed, 1.184. Proclamation of wisdom. Atha, wisdom. Niti, truth. 177. (2) Athat + Wisdom. (3) Knowledge + Wisdom. (4) Knowledge of the Truth + Wisdom. Sound, detail, 3.54. Taratha, 2.22. (5) Atha + Wisdom. Athat as the means of self-awareness leading to liberation. Concerning that, it is said, striving for wisdom does elevate one's understanding, ultimately leading one to states of realization. Therefore, birds of prey, poisonous, when swiftly arising, all food is tainted with poison, leading to the idea that all that should be consumed is poisonous-thus akin to a knife that is sharper than the thirst for life, accumulating poisons in the imperfections of existence-creatures, snakes.
2) āsīvisa—
(Burmese text): [(၁) အာသု+ဝိသ။အာသု သီဃံ ဧတဿ ဝိသံ အာဂစ္ဆတီတိ အာသီ (သိ) ဝိသော။ ဝိ၊ဋ္ဌ၊၁။၁၈၄။ ဥဿီဗျဉ္ဇနေ။ အာသီဝိသော။ နီတိ၊သုတ္တ။ ၁၇၇။ (၂) အာသိတ္တ+ဝိသ။ (၃) အသိတ+ဝိသ။ (၄) အသိသဒိသ+ဝိသ။ သံ၊ဋ္ဌ၊၃။၅၄။ သာရတ္ထ၊၂။၂၂။ (၅) အာသီ+ဝိသ။ အာသီတိ ဝါ ဒါဌာ ဝုစ္စတိ။ တတ္ထ သန္နိဟိတဝိသောတိ အာသီဝိသော။ သာရတ္ထ၊၂။၂၂။ အာသိယံဝိသံ ဧတဿာတိ အာသီဝိသော၊ အာသီသပ္ပဒါဌာ။ ဓာန်၊ဋီ၊၆၅၃။ (အာဂီဝိပ-သံ)]
လျင်မြန်စွာတက်လာသော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-သွန်းလောင်းအပ်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-စားလိုက်သမျှ အစာအားလုံး အဆိပ်ချည်းသာ ဖြစ်သွားသောကြောင့် စားမျိုအပ်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသည်ဟု ဆိုရလောက်သော-သန်လျှက်ဓားကဲ့သို့ ထက်မြက်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-အစွယ်၌ စုဆောင်းထားအပ်သော အဆိပ်ရှိသော-သတ္တဝါ၊ မြွေ။
(Auto-Translation): (1) Aathuwitha. Aathuwitha, the way, it means strength, its essence is known. Vi, ttha, 1.184. Uthibhyanna. Aathuwitha. Niti, sutta. 177. (2) Aathitta+Witha. (3) Athita+Witha. (4) Athithadhittha+Witha. Sanda, ttha, 3.54. Tharatta, 2.22. (5) Aothi+Witha. Aathitthi and Datha are prominent. Tatta Thanihitta Witha Aathuwitha. Tharatta, 2.22. Aathiyam Witha for explanation about Aathuwitha, Aathithabhagadatha. Dhan, ti, 653. (Agabhi- sanda) Rapidly emerging, poisonous- those toxic dishes consumed become thoroughly toxic, indicating one should eat with caution, like a knife with strength, gathering poison as if collected, creatures, snakes.
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
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष).—[āśyāṃ viṣamasya]
1) a snake; गरुत्मदाशीविषभीमदर्शनैः (garutmadāśīviṣabhīmadarśanaiḥ) R.3.57.
2) a particular kind of snake; कर्णाशीविषभोगिनि प्रशमिते (karṇāśīviṣabhogini praśamite) Ve.6.1.
Derivable forms: āśīviṣaḥ (आशीविषः).
Āśīviṣa is a Sanskrit compound consisting of the terms āśī and viṣa (विष).
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष).—m. (in Sanskrit, and Pali-Prakrit āsīvisa, only serpent; so also here, even in Lalitavistara, e.g. 317.9; 339.2), serpent-venom, repeatedly in Lalitavistara: °ṣān vamanti sma 305.13, °ṣān…bhakṣayanti sma 14; °ṣān niścārayanti sma 306.13,…vamanto 21. In 306.18 āśīviṣapariveṣṭitaśarīrāḥ is taken by Foucaux in this sense, le corps enduit de venin de serpent; but surely it is rather having bodies entwined by serpents, despite neighboring passages showing the other meaning See sumbhalikā.
--- OR ---
Āśīviṣā (आशीविषा).—name of a river: °ṣāyāṃ, loc., Divyāvadāna 451.6, 10; 456.24, 28. See under prec.
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष).—m.
(-ṣaḥ) A snake. E. āśī a fang, and viṣa poison; in whose fang is venom.
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष).—[āśī-viṣa] (āśī, according to the grammarians, a serpent’s fang), m. A snake, Mahābhārata 3, 544.
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष).—[masculine] a venomous serpent.
1) Āśīviṣa (आशीविष):—[=āśī-viṣa] [from āśī > āśis] m. a kind of venomous snake, [Atharva-veda; Bhāgavata-purāṇa]
2) Āśīviṣā (आशीविषा):—[from āśī-viṣa > āśī > āśis] f. Name of a mythical river, ibidem
Āśīviṣa (आशीविष):—(ṣaḥ) 1. m. A snake.
[Sanskrit to German]
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.
Kannada-English dictionary
Āśīviṣa (ಆಶೀವಿಷ):—[noun] = ಆಶೀರ್ವಿಷ [ashirvisha].
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: Visha, Asi, Acci.
Starts with: Ashivishanadi, Ashivishaparvata, Asivisa Sutta, Asivisa Vagga, Asivisabharita, Asivisadattha, Asivisadatthupama, Asivisalayasama, Asivisapotaka, Asivisapuritavammika, Asivisopamasutta, Asivisupama.
Full-text (+19): Ashivishanadi, Ashivishaparvata, Phanakataasivisa, Bilapaticchannaasivisa, Asivisadattha, Asivisalayasama, Upasenaasivisasutta, Asivisa Sutta, Acivisham, Ghattitaasivisa, Asivisapotaka, Udakasivisa, Asivisopamasutta, Mahabhutasivisa, Ashirvisha, Asivisupama, Pakkhittaasivisa, Acci, Asivisa Vagga, Shvasavisha.
Relevant text
Search found 12 books and stories containing Asivisa, Ashi-visha, Ashivisha, Āśī-viṣa, Asi-visa, Āśīviṣa, Āsīvisa, Āsiviṣa, Āśīviṣā, Āsivisa; (plurals include: Asivisas, vishas, Ashivishas, viṣas, visas, Āśīviṣas, Āsīvisas, Āsiviṣas, Āśīviṣās, Āsivisas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
List of Mahabharata people and places (by Laxman Burdak)
Maha Prajnaparamita Sastra (by Gelongma Karma Migme Chödrön)
The beings of the threefold world (traidhātuka) < [The world of transmigration]
Various utsada annexed to the Avīci < [The world of transmigration]
V.3 Abandonment of the afflicting emotions (kleśa-tyaga) < [V. Recollection of abandonment (tyāgānusmṛti)]
Dictionaries of Indian languages (Kosha)
Page 270 < [Bengali-Hindi-English, Volume 1]
Mahavastu (great story) (by J. J. Jones)
Chapter XXXI - The final defeat of Māra < [Volume II]
Chapter XIV - The Jātaka of Nalinī (the king’s daughter) < [Volume III]
Traces of Mysticism in Jainism (Study) (by Sadhvi Madhystha Prabha)
5.3. Physical Labdhi (attainments) < [Chapter 5 - Mysticism at the level of Body and Mind]
6. Labdhi: Obstacle or Supportive < [Chapter 5 - Mysticism at the level of Body and Mind]