Avijja, Avijjā: 7 definitions

Introduction
In Buddhism
1. Theravada
2. General definition
Languages
1. Prakrit
2. Pali
See also

Introduction:

Avijja means something in Buddhism, Pali, Jainism, Prakrit. 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 Buddhism

Theravada (major branch of Buddhism)

Source: Google Books: The Great Chronicle of Buddhas

Avijjā (अविज्जा) refers to “bewilderment” representing one of the seven anusayas (‘latent tendencies’).—The anusayas are defilements that have not been eradicated by magga-ñāṇa and are liable to arise perceptibly whenever circumstances prevail. These anusayas are of seven kinds. They are called the elements of latent tendencies.They are: (1) Kāmarāga-anusaya, the seed element of greed, (2) Bhavarāga-anusaya, the seed element of attachment to existence, (3) Paṭigha-anusaya, the seed element of hatred, (4) Māna-anusaya, the seed element of conceit, (5) Diṭṭhi-anusaya, the seed element of wrong view, (6) Vicikiccha-anusaya, the seed element of uncertainty, (7) Avijjā-anusaya, the seed element of bewilderment.

Source: Pali Kanon: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines

Avijjā (“Ignorance”); further s. paticcasamuppāda (1).

Source: Dhamma Study: Cetasikas

Ignorance (avijja) can, as we have seen, also be classified as a hindrance. There is ignorance with each akusala citta, ignorance is the root of all evil. Ignorance blinds us, it is a hindrance to kusala and to right understanding

One of the six Kamacchandas;

context information

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).

General definition (in Buddhism)

Source: Buddhist Door: Glossary

Sanskrit word is Avidya. Literally, it means darkness without illumination. Actually it refers to illusion without englightenment, i.e., the illusory phenomena for realities. Avidya is the first or the last of the Twelve Nidanas. Ignorance, karma and desire are the three forces that cause reincarnation.

Languages of India and abroad

Prakrit-English dictionary

Source: DDSA: Paia-sadda-mahannavo; a comprehensive Prakrit Hindi dictionary

Avijja (अविज्ज) in the Prakrit language is related to the Sanskrit word: Abīja.

context information

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.

Pali-English dictionary

Source: Sutta: Pali Word Grammar from Pali Myanmar Dictionary

avijjā (အဝိဇ္ဇာ) [(thī) (ထီ)]—
[(1) na+vijjā (=vidi+ṇyaçvida+ṇya)．(2) avindiya+vidi+a- ]]avindiyavindā]]hu ¤ç (3)ç avidita+kara+a- ]]aviditakarā]]hu¤ç (4) avijjamāna+ju+ṇa ]]avijjamānajavā]]hu ¤ç (5) vijjamāna+na+ju+ṇa ]]vijjamānanajavā]]hu¤ç (6)antavirahita+ju+ṇa ]]antavirahitajavā]]hu¤ nirutti- ]]avijjā]]hu ．nīti,dhā．36va-1．maṇimañjū,2．335-6．]
[(၁) န+ဝိဇ္ဇာ (=ဝိဒိ+ဏျ,ဝိဒ+ဏျ)။ (၂) အဝိန္ဒိယ+ဝိဒိ+အ-ဖြင့် ''အဝိန္ဒိယဝိန္ဒာ''ဟု ၎င်း,(၃),အဝိဒိတ+ကရ+အ-ဖြင့် ''အဝိဒိတကရာ''ဟု၎င်း,(၄) အဝိဇ္ဇမာန+ဇု+ဏဖြင့် ''အဝိဇ္ဇမာနဇဝါ''ဟု ၎င်း,(၅) ဝိဇ္ဇမာန+န+ဇု+ဏဖြင့် ''ဝိဇ္ဇမာနနဇဝါ''ဟု၎င်း,(၆)အန္တဝိရဟိတ+ဇု+ဏဖြင့် ''အန္တဝိရဟိတဇဝါ''ဟု၎င်း ဆိုအပ်လျက် နိရုတ္တိနည်း-ဖြင့် ''အဝိဇ္ဇာ''ဟု ရုပ်ပြီးသည်။ နီတိ၊ဓာ။၃၆ဝ-၁။ မဏိမဉ္ဇူ၊၂။၃၃၅-၆။]

[Pali to Burmese]

Source: Sutta: Tipiṭaka Pāḷi-Myanmar Dictionary (တိပိဋက-ပါဠိမြန်မာ အဘိဓာန်)

avijjā—

(Burmese text): [(၁) န+ဝိဇ္ဇာ (=ဝိဒိ+ဏျ,ဝိဒ+ဏျ)။ (၂) အဝိန္ဒိယ+ဝိဒိ+အ-ဖြင့် ''အဝိန္ဒိယဝိန္ဒာ''ဟု ၎င်း,(၃),အဝိဒိတ+ကရ+အ-ဖြင့် ''အဝိဒိတကရာ''ဟု၎င်း,(၄) အဝိဇ္ဇမာန+ဇု+ဏဖြင့် ''အဝိဇ္ဇမာနဇဝါ''ဟု ၎င်း,(၅) ဝိဇ္ဇမာန+န+ဇု+ဏဖြင့် ''ဝိဇ္ဇမာနနဇဝါ''ဟု၎င်း,(၆)အန္တဝိရဟိတ+ဇု+ဏဖြင့် ''အန္တဝိရဟိတဇဝါ''ဟု၎င်း ဆိုအပ်လျက် နိရုတ္တိနည်း-ဖြင့် ''အဝိဇ္ဇာ''ဟု ရုပ်ပြီးသည်။ နီတိ၊ဓာ။၃၆ဝ-၁။ မဏိမဉ္ဇူ၊၂။၃၃၅-၆။]
အဝိဇ္ဇာ မည်သော တရား၊ မသိခြင်း၊ အမှန် မသိခြင်း၊ အမှန်တရားသဘောကို-ဖုံးလွှမ်းခြင်း-ဖုံးလွှမ်းတတ်သော တရား၊ မောဟ။ (၁) မရ-မယူ-အပ်သော ကာယဒုစရိုက်စသည်ကို ရယူတတ်သော တရား။ (၂) ရအပ်-ယူအပ်-သော သုစရိုက်တို့ကို မရမယူတတ်သော တရား။ (၃) (ခန္ဓာစသည်တို့၏ ရာသီအစရှိသော အနက်ကို) မသိအပ်-မသိနိုင်-သည်ကို ပြုတတ်သော တရား။ (၄) အဆုံးမရှိသော သံသရာ၌ သတ္တဝါတို့ကို-ပြေးသွား-မျော-စေတတ်သော တရား။ (၅) ပရမတ္ထအားဖြင့် ထင်ရှားမရှိသော ယောက်ကျား မိန်းမစသည်၌ ဖြစ်တတ်သော တရား။ (၆) ထင်ရှားရှိသော ခန္ဓာစသည်တို့၌ မဖြစ်တတ်သော တရား။ (၇) ဝိဇ္ဇာ-ဉာဏ်-၏ ဆန့်ကျင်ဖက်ဖြစ်သော တရား။ မူရင်းကြည့်ပါ။

(Auto-Translation): (1) Abhidhamma (= Vijna + Nya, Veda + Nya). (2) Avidya + Veda + A- meaning "Avidya-Veda," (3) Avidyatakara + A- meaning "Avidyatakara," (4) Avijjamana + Zuna + Nya meaning "Avijjamanazawa," (5) Vijnamana + N + Zuna + Nya meaning "Vijnamananazawa," (6) Antavirahita + Zuna + Nya meaning "Antavirahitajawa," thus representing "Avijja" in a definitional manner. Niti, Dhamma. 360-1. Manimekhala, 2. 335-6. What is Avijja? It is the state of not knowing, ignorance of truth, the ability to obscure the true nature of reality - delusion. (1) It is the ability to grasp things that should not be taken, such as the physical misconducts. (2) It is the inability to receive or grasp things that can be obtained. (3) It is the ability to not know - to not know the essence of things like the nature of the body. (4) It is the ability to cause beings to run and stumble in the endless cycle. (5) It can be associated with gender, especially when individuals are not apparent. (6) It is a nature that cannot be found within the apparent body. (7) It is a nature contrary to wisdom and understanding. Please refer to the original source.

context information

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.

Relevant text

Search found 60 books and stories containing Avijja, Avijjā; (plurals include: Avijjas, Avijjās). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:

Chapter 2 - Unwholesome Kammas < [Part 2]

Chapter 7 - What Is Avijja < [Part 1]

Chapter 3 - Five Causes In The Past < [Part 9]

+ 30 more chapters / show preview

Verse 63 - The Story of Two Pick-pockets < [Chapter 5 - Bāla Vagga (Fools)]

Verse 302 - The Story of the Monk from the Country of the Vajjis < [Chapter 21 - Pakiṇṇaka Vagga (Miscellaneous)]

Verse 242-243 - The Story of a Man Whose Wife Committed Adultery < [Chapter 18 - Mala Vagga (Impurities)]

+ 8 more chapters / show preview

Part 6 - Avijjā and Āsava < [Chapter V - Buddhist Philosophy]

Part 4 - The Doctrine of Causal Connection of early Buddhism < [Chapter V - Buddhist Philosophy]

Part 9 - Upaniṣads and Buddhism < [Chapter V - Buddhist Philosophy]

+ 1 more chapters / show preview