Atavi, Āṭavī, Aṭavī, Aṭavi: 30 definitions
Introduction:
Atavi means something in Buddhism, Pali, Hinduism, Sanskrit, Jainism, Prakrit, the history of ancient India, Marathi, Tamil. 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
Purana and Itihasa (epic history)
Āṭavī (आटवी).—A Vāyu.*
- * Vāyu-purāṇa 61. 25.
Aṭavī (अटवी) is a name mentioned in the Mahābhārata (cf. VI.10.46, VIII.30.45) and represents one of the many proper names used for people and places. Note: The Mahābhārata (mentioning Aṭavī) 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.
Ayurveda (science of life)
Nighantu (Synonyms and Characteristics of Drugs and technical terms)
Aṭavī (अटवी) refers to “forest” according to the second chapter (dharaṇyādi-varga) of the 13th-century Raj Nighantu or Rājanighaṇṭu (an Ayurvedic encyclopedia). The Dharaṇyādi-varga covers the lands, soil, mountains, jungles [viz., Aṭavī] and vegetation’s relations between trees and plants and substances, with their various kinds.
Veterinary Medicine (The study and treatment of Animals)
Aṭavī (अटवी) refers to the “jungle” (representing a desirable habitat of wild elephants), 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 11, “On the keeping of elephants and their daily and seasonal regimen”]: “2. On mountain ridges, in the water of mountain torrents, in lotus pools and rivers, ever remembering how he played freely with elephant cows in the midst of the jungle (aṭavī-madhya) [svacchandena kareṇukābhiraṭavīmadhyeṣu vikrīḍitam], an elephant, dejected and beset with manifold troubles, is unwilling to eat stalks of white sugar cane, etc., though repeatedly placed before him”.
Unclassified Ayurveda definitions
Aṭavī (अटवी) refers to a “forest”, and is mentioned in verse 2.38 of the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā (Sūtrasthāna) by Vāgbhaṭa.—Accordingly, “[...] one shall not lie down (too) long with raised knees, nor shall one stay at [...] (and) at an execution site, a forest [viz., aṭavī], an empty house, and a cremation ground not even in the day-time. By no means shall one look into the sun or carry a burden on one’s head”.
Note: Aṭavī (“forest”) has been translated by ’brog stoṅ (“barren wilderness”) as woods are not known in Tibet; Mahāvyutpatti 5266 equates the word to ’brog alone. Similarly, śmaśāna (“cremation ground”) has been replaced by dur-khrod (“funeral place”) because of the different customs in India and Tibet of disposing of the dead: while the Indians cremated the bodies, the Tibetans either buried, embalmed, burned, or cut them into pieces as food for animals (cf. Koeppen, Religion II p. 322 sq.). On material changes like this see Introduction § 27.

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.
Shaktism (Shakta philosophy)
Aṭavi (अटवि) [=aṭavika?] refers to “forests”, according to the Manthānabhairavatantra, a vast sprawling work that belongs to a corpus of Tantric texts concerned with the worship of the goddess Kubjikā.—Accordingly, “[...] Prabhu, Yogin, Ānanda, Āvalī, Ātīta, Pāda, and the rest called Kulas (are) all (like) rivers that fall into the root transmission. They, the princes and the gods, bodies, forests (aṭavika), villages, houses and others that are born from the root (transmission) are like rivers (that flow) from the mountain of Kula”.

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.
Sports, Arts and Entertainment (wordly enjoyments)
Aṭavi (अटवि) refers to the “forests” (which were inspected by hunters), according to the Śyainika-śāstra: a Sanskrit treatise dealing with the divisions and benefits of Hunting and Hawking, written by Rājā Rudradeva (or Candradeva) in possibly the 13th century.—Accordingly, “Hunting on horseback (āśvina) represents one of the eight subdivisions of Hunting (mṛgayā). [...] It leads to the acquisition of religious merit, by killing ferocious animals such as wolves and tigers, by the protection of standing crop, by the slaughter of stags and other animals, by an inspection of the forest (aṭavi), which serves so many useful purposes, by frightening the thieves, and by conciliating forest tribes. [...]”.

This section covers the skills and profiencies of the Kalas (“performing arts”) and Shastras (“sciences”) involving ancient Indian traditions of sports, games, arts, entertainment, love-making and other means of wordly enjoyments. Traditionally these topics were dealt with in Sanskrit treatises explaing the philosophy and the justification of enjoying the pleasures of the senses.
In Buddhism
Mahayana (major branch of Buddhism)
Aṭavī (अटवी) refers to a “forest”, 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, “Then the Bhagavān reached the vicinity of the residence of Vaiśravaṇa. In that region there was a choicest forest (aṭavī-vara) called Viṣavaka. There was a lotus lake in the middle of an opening of the forest. By the power of that lotus lake the fields, gardens, forests, groves, flowers and fruits in the capital of Aḍakavatī became refreshed [...]”.

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.
In Jainism
General definition (in Jainism)
Aṭavi (अटवि) refers to the “forest (of life)”, according to the 11th century Jñānārṇava, a treatise on Jain Yoga in roughly 2200 Sanskrit verses composed by Śubhacandra.—Accordingly, “Sentient beings, inflamed by very intense pleasure [and] unsteady from affliction by wrong faith, wander about in a five-fold life that is difficult to be traversed [com.—janman-aṭavi—‘the forest of life’]. It has been stated at length that the cycle of rebirth which is full of suffering is five-fold on account of combining substance, place, right time, life and intention”.

Jainism is an Indian religion of Dharma whose doctrine revolves around harmlessness (ahimsa) towards every living being. The two major branches (Digambara and Svetambara) of Jainism stimulate self-control (or, shramana, ‘self-reliance’) and spiritual development through a path of peace for the soul to progess to the ultimate goal.
India history and geography
Aṭavī (अटवी) is a synonym for Vana (forest): a name-ending for place-names mentioned in the Gupta inscriptions (reigned from 3rd century CE). We find some place-names with the suffix denoting forest, for example Vindhyāṭavī, and Vṛndāvana. In our inscriptions we come across only three such names, Tumbavana and Vindhāṭavī, and Mahākāntāra. The suffixes vana, aṭavī and kāntāra are synonyms.
Aṭavī.—(CII 1), the forest-folk. (SITI), troops. Note: aṭavī is defined in the “Indian epigraphical glossary” as it can be found on ancient inscriptions commonly written in Sanskrit, Prakrit or Dravidian languages.

The history of India traces the identification of countries, villages, towns and other regions of India, as well as mythology, zoology, royal dynasties, rulers, tribes, local festivities and traditions and regional languages. Ancient India enjoyed religious freedom and encourages the path of Dharma, a concept common to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism.
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
aṭavi : (f.) forest.
Aṭavī, (f.) (Sk. aṭavī: Non-Aryan, prob. Dravidian) 1. forest, woods J. I, 306; II, 117; III, 220; DhA. I, 13; PvA. 277. ‹-› 2. inhabitant of the forest, man of the woods, wild tribe J. VI, 55 (= aṭavicorā C.).
1) aṭavi (အဋဝိ) [(thī) (ထီ)]—
[aṭa+ava+ī.aṭe (kha) avati rakkhatīti aṭavī.aṭa+vi+ī (thījotaka).aṭā (pyaṃso) vayo=pakkhino atreti aṭavī.ī 2- cintāmaṇiṭī.aṭa+avi+ī (thījotaka).aṭanti gacchanti atreti aṭavī.byākhyāsudhāṭī.,ṭī.536-nitea netū.aṭanti carime vayasi yatra.thoma.rū-nitea aṭavi-hu ikāranta-thīnitea pra.]
[အဋ+အဝ+ဤ။ အဋေ (ခရီးသွားတို့ကို) အဝတိ ရက္ခတီတိ အဋဝီ။ အဋ+ဝိ+ဤ (ထီဇောတက)။ အဋာ (ပျံထွက်ကုန်သော) ဝယော=ပက္ခိနော အတြေတိ အဋဝီ။ ဤ ၂-နည်း စိန္တာမဏိဋီ။ အဋ+အဝိ+ဤ (ထီဇောတက)။ အဋန္တိ ဂစ္ဆန္တိ အတြေတိ အဋဝီ။ ဗျာချာသုဓာဋီ။ ဓာန်၊ဋီ။၅၃၆-၌ကား ပါဌ်ပျက်နေဟန်တူသည်။ အဋန္တိ စရိမေ ဝယသိ ယတြ။ ထောမ။ ရူ-၌ အဋဝိ-ဟု ဣကာရန္တ-ထီ၌ ပြသည်။]
2) aṭavī (အဋဝီ) [(thī) (ထီ)]—
[aṭa+ava+ī.aṭe (kha) avati rakkhatīti aṭavī.aṭa+vi+ī (thījotaka).aṭā (pyaṃso) vayo=pakkhino atreti aṭavī.ī 2- cintāmaṇiṭī.aṭa+avi+ī (thījotaka).aṭanti gacchanti atreti aṭavī.byākhyāsudhāṭī.,ṭī.536-nitea netū.aṭanti carime vayasi yatra.thoma.rū-nitea aṭavi-hu ikāranta-thīnitea pra.]
[အဋ+အဝ+ဤ။ အဋေ (ခရီးသွားတို့ကို) အဝတိ ရက္ခတီတိ အဋဝီ။ အဋ+ဝိ+ဤ (ထီဇောတက)။ အဋာ (ပျံထွက်ကုန်သော) ဝယော=ပက္ခိနော အတြေတိ အဋဝီ။ ဤ ၂-နည်း စိန္တာမဏိဋီ။ အဋ+အဝိ+ဤ (ထီဇောတက)။ အဋန္တိ ဂစ္ဆန္တိ အတြေတိ အဋဝီ။ ဗျာချာသုဓာဋီ။ ဓာန်၊ဋီ။၅၃၆-၌ကား ပါဌ်ပျက်နေဟန်တူသည်။ အဋန္တိ စရိမေ ဝယသိ ယတြ။ ထောမ။ ရူ-၌ အဋဝိ-ဟု ဣကာရန္တ-ထီ၌ ပြသည်။]
[Pali to Burmese]
1) aṭavi—
(Burmese text): (၁) တောအုပ်၊ တောကြီး။ (၂) တောပုန်း-သူခိုး-ဓားပြ။ အဋဝိသင်္ကောပ-လည်းကြည့်။
(Auto-Translation): (1) Forest, woods. (2) Forest guard - bandit - armed robbery. Refer to Atthakatha as well.
2) aṭavī—
(Burmese text): (၁) တောအုပ်၊ တောကြီး။ (၂) တောပုန်း-သူခိုး-ဓားပြ။ အဋဝိသင်္ကောပ-လည်းကြည့်။
(Auto-Translation): (1) Forest, jungle. (2) Wild animal - thief - armed. Also look at the characteristics of atrocities.

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
aṭavī (अटवी).—f (S) A forest, wood, grove. Ex. padmāṭavīnta gaja ikṣumisēṃ nighālā || 2 In popular misapprehension. A wilderness or desert.
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āṭavī (आटवी).—f A shrub. It bears a white berry of intoxicating quality.
aṭavī (अटवी).—f A forest. A wilderness.
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
Aṭavi (अटवि) or Aṭavī (अटवी).—f. [aṭanti carame vayasi mṛgayāvihārādyarthe vā yatra; aṭ ani, vā ṅīp] A forest, wood; अटवीतोऽटवीमाहीण्डमान (aṭavīto'ṭavīmāhīṇḍamāna); Ś.2. विघ्नध्वान्तनिवारणैकसरणिर्विघ्नाटवीहव्यवाट् (vighnadhvāntanivāraṇaikasaraṇirvighnāṭavīhavyavāṭ) |
Derivable forms: aṭaviḥ (अटविः).
--- OR ---
Āṭavī (आटवी).—[aṭavyāḥ sannikṛṣṭā pūḥ aṇ] Name of a city of the Yavanas in the south.
Aṭavī (अटवी).—(= Pali Āḷavī), name of a town: Mahā-Māyūrī 15, 90. Lévi identifies the first with the Pali city-name but thinks the second a different locality.
Aṭavi (अटवि).—f.
(-viḥ) A forest, or wood. E. aṭa to go, and aṭi affix, or ṅīṣ being added aṭavī ut infra; birds, &c. resting there.
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Aṭavī (अटवी).—f. (-vī) A forest, or grove. See aṭavi.
Aṭavī (अटवी).— (vb. aṭ. ), f. A wood.
Aṭavī (अटवी).—[feminine] forest.
1) Aṭavi (अटवि):—[from aṭ] f. ‘place to roam in’, a forest.
2) Aṭavī (अटवी):—[from aṭ] f. ‘place to roam in’, a forest.
3) Āṭavī (आटवी):—[from āṭavika] f. Name of a town, [Mahābhārata ii, 1175.]
Aṭavi (अटवि):—f.
(-viḥ or -vī) A forest or wood. E. aṭ, kṛt(?) aff. avi, without or with fem. aff. ṅīṣ. The E. is uncertain.
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Aṭavī (अटवी):—f.
(-vī) A forest or grove. See aṭavi.
Aṭavi (अटवि):—(viḥvī) 2. 3. f. A forest.
[Sanskrit to German]
Aṭavi (अटवि) in the Sanskrit language is related to the Prakrit words: Aḍai, Aḍaī, Aḍāva, Aḍavī.
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
Aṭavi (ಅಟವಿ):—[noun] an old measure of quantity.
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Aṭavi (ಅಟವಿ):—[noun] a vast tract of uncultivated land covered by wild growth of trees, shrubs etc.; forest.
Kannada is a Dravidian language (as opposed to the Indo-European language family) mainly spoken in the southwestern region of India.
Tamil dictionary
Aṭavi (அடவி) noun < aṭavī.
1. Forest, jungle; காடு. அடவிக் கானகத் தாயிழை தன்னை [kadu. adavig kanagath thayizhai thannai] (சிலப்பதிகாரம் அரும்பதவுரை [silappathigaram arumbathavurai] 14, 54).
2. Large collection; மிகுதி. [miguthi.]
3. Pleasure-garden; நந்தவனம். (திவா.) [nanthavanam. (thiva.)]
Tamil is an ancient language of India from the Dravidian family spoken by roughly 250 million people mainly in southern India and Sri Lanka.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Starts with (+14): Atavi-jambira, Atavi-jirakaha, Atavi-madhukavriksha, Ataviarakkhaka, Ataviarakkhakakula, Ataviarulha, Ataviarulhamanussa, Atavibala, Atavicara, Atavicare, Ataviccol, Atavicora, Atavidava, Ataviga, Atavigata, Atavigatakala, Atavijanapada, Atavijiraka, Atavika, Atavikabala.
Full-text (+137): Atavika, Vindhyatavi, Atavishikhara, Trinatavi, Coratavi, Mahatavi, Atavimukha, Atavibala, Akhetakatavi, Ataviarulha, Atavigata, Kalasilatavi, Atavivisanketa, Atavipavesana, Vinjhatavi, Vattaniatavi, Ataviarakkhaka, Atavivasi, Ataviccol, Atavikkaccolam.
Relevant text
Search found 39 books and stories containing Atavi, Āṭavī, Aṭavī, Aṭavi, Adavi, Ata-ava-i, Aṭa-ava-ī, Ata-ava-i, Aṭa-ava-ī; (plurals include: Atavis, Āṭavīs, Aṭavīs, Aṭavis, Adavis, is, īs). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Tirumantiram by Tirumular (English translation)
Verse 2026: Senses are Like Roaming Lions < [Tantra Seven (elam tantiram) (verses 1704-2121)]
Dictionaries of Indian languages (Kosha)
Page 22 < [Telugu-English-Malayalam (1 volume)]
Page 26 < [Tamil-Hindi-English, Volume 1]
Page 21 < [Telugu-English-Malayalam (1 volume)]
Paumacariya (critical study) (by K. R. Chandra)
2.4. Knowledge of Flora and Fauna < [Chapter 8 - Education, Literature, Sciences, Arts and Architecture]
6. Anaryas (or Mlecchas) and other tribes or clans < [Chapter 10 - Geographical Places, Peoples and Tribes]
List of Mahabharata people and places (by Laxman Burdak)
Yavanajataka by Sphujidhvaja [Sanskrit/English] (by Michael D Neely)
Verse 4.10 < [Chapter 4 - The Rule of the Objects of the Zodiac Signs and Planets]
Verse 1.18 < [Chapter 1 - The Innate Nature of the Zodiac Signs and Planets]
Verse 4.28 < [Chapter 4 - The Rule of the Objects of the Zodiac Signs and Planets]
Matangalila and Hastyayurveda (study) (by Chandrima Das)
Concluding Remarks < [Chapter 5]
Elephants in the Kingdom and as a Royal Asset < [Chapter 5]