Tavatimsa, Tāvatiṃsa: 5 definitions
Introduction:
Tavatimsa means something in Buddhism, Pali. 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: Pali Kanon: Pali Proper NamesThe second of the six deva worlds, the first being the Catummaharajika world. Tavatimsa stands at the top of Mount Sineru (or Sudassana). Sakka is king of both worlds, but lives in Tavatimsa. Originally it was the abode of the Asuras; but when Magha was born as Sakka and dwelt with his companions in Tavatimsa he disliked the idea of sharing his realm with the Asuras, and, having made them intoxicated, he hurled them down to the foot of Sineru, where the Asurabhavana was later established.
The chief difference between these two worlds seems to have been that the Paricchattaka tree grew in Tavatimsa, and the Cittapatali tree in Asurabhavana. In order that the Asuras should not enter Tavatimsa, Sakka had five walls built around it, and these were guarded by Nagas, Supannas, Kumbhandas, Yakkhas and Catummaharajika devas (J.i.201ff; also DhA.i.272f). The entrance to Tavatimsa was by way of the Cittakutadvarakotthaka, on either side of which statues of Indra (Indapatima) kept guard (J.vi.97). The whole kingdom was ten thousand leagues in extent (DhA.i.273), and contained more than one thousand pasadas (J.vi.279). The chief features of Tavatimsa were its parks - the Pharusaka, Cittalata, Missaka and Nandana - the Vejayantapasada, the Paricchatta tree, the elephant king Eravana and the Assembly hall Sudhamma (J.vi.278; MA.i.183; cp. Mtu.i.32). Mention is also made of a park called Nanda (J.i.204). Besides the Paricchataka (or Parijata) flower, which is described as a Kovilara (A.iv.117), the divine Kakkaru flower also grew in Tavatimsa (J.iii.87). In the Cittalatavana grows the Asavati creeper, which blossoms once in a thousand years (J.iii.250f).
It is the custom of all Buddhas to spend the vassa following the performance of the Yamakapatihariya, in Tavatimsa. Gotama Buddha went there to preach the Abhidhamma to his mother, born there as a devaputta. The distance of sixty eight thousand leagues from the earth to Tavatimsa he covered in three strides, placing his foot once on Yugandhara and again on Sineru.
The Buddha spent three months in Tavatimsa, preaching all the time, seated on Sakkas throne, the Pandukambalasilasana, at the foot of the Paricchattaka tree. Eighty crores of devas attained to a knowledge of the truth. This was in the seventh year after his Enlightenment (J.iv.265; DhA.iii.216f; BuA. p.3). It seems to have been the frequent custom of ascetics, possessed of iddhi power, to spend the afternoon in Tavatimsa (E.g., Narada, J.vi.392; and Kaladevala, J.i.54).
Moggallana paid numerous visits to Tavatimsa, where he learnt from those dwelling there stories of their past deeds, that he might repeat them to men on earth for their edification (VvA. p.4).
The Jataka Commentary mentions several human beings who were invited by Sakka,
Source: Pali Kanon: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines'the Thirty-three (Gods)', a class of heavenly beings in the sensuous sphere; s. deva (I).
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).
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
Source: BuddhaSasana: Concise Pali-English Dictionarytāvatiṃsa : (m.) name of a heavenly abode.
Source: Sutta: Pali Word Grammar from Pali Myanmar Dictionarytāvatiṃsa (တာဝတိံသ) [(na) (န)]—
[တိ+တိံသ။ (တေတ္တိံ သ-ဆိုလိုလျက် တေ-ကို တာဝ-ပြု,တ-တလုံးချေ၍ 'တာဝတိံသ'ဟု ပြီးရသည်)။ တေတ္တိံသ သဟပုညကာရိနော ဧတ္ထ နိဗ္ဗတ္တာတိ တံသဟစရိတဋ္ဌာနံ တေတ္တိံသံ၊ တဒေဝ တာဝတိံ သံ၊ တံနိဝါသော ဧတေသန္တိ တာဝတိံသာ။ နိဝါသဘာဝေါ စ တေသံ တတ္ထ နိဗ္ဗတ္တနပုဗ္ဗကောတိ အာဟ ＂ဒေဝါနံ တာဝတိံ သာနန္တိ တာဝတိံသ ဘဝနေ နိဗ္ဗတ္တဒေဝါန＂န္တိ။ မ၊ ဋီ၊ ၏။ ၁၄၈။ (-အဘိ၊ဋ္ဌ၊ ၂။ ၅ဝ၂။ ထေရီ၊ ဋ္ဌ။ ၁၇၄-၅။ မဟာနိ၊ ဋ္ဌ။ ၁၃၃။ ပဋိသံ၊ ဋ္ဌ၊ ၂။ ၂၁၈။ သံ၊ ဋီ၊ ၁။ ၇၃-၄။ အံ၊ ဋီ၊ ၂။ ၃၁။ ဝိသုဒ္ဓိ၊ ဋီ၊ ၁။ ၂၈၄။ ဝိဘာဝိနီ။ ၁၆၂။ မဏိမဉ္ဇူ၊ ၂။ ၇။ (တြယသ္တြိံ-ဂ-သံ)]
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.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Starts with (+2): Tavatimsabhavana, Tavatimsabhavanupaga, Tavatimsabhimukha, Tavatimsadeva, Tavatimsadevakaya, Tavatimsadevaloka, Tavatimsadevalokabhimukha, Tavatimsadevalokappamana, Tavatimsadevanagara, Tavatimsadevanikaya, Tavatimsadevanikayupaga, Tavatimsadevaraja, Tavatimsadhipati, Tavatimsagata, Tavatimsakaya, Tavatimsakayika, Tavatimsanamaka, Tavatimsaparisa, Tavatimsapura, Tavatimsasadisa.
Full-text (+157): Tavatimsagata, Tavatimsabhavana, Tavatimsupaga, Tavatimsapura, Tavatimsanamaka, Tavatimsaparisa, Tavatimsabhimukha, Tidasa, Tidivorohana, Indabhavana, Cittaratha, Cularatha, Suvannavithi, Tidiva, Mallikavimana Vatthu, Cittakuta Dvarakotthaka, Masakkasara, Javana, Acala Cetiya, Cularathavimanavatthu.
Relevant text
Search found 30 books and stories containing Tavatimsa, Tāvatiṃsa; (plurals include: Tavatimsas, Tāvatiṃsas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Maha Buddhavamsa—The Great Chronicle of Buddhas (by Ven. Mingun Sayadaw)
Part 4 - Buddha’s Ascension to Tāvatiṃsa < [Chapter 24 - The Buddha’s Sixth Vassa at Mount Makula]
Part 2 - The Buddha’s Discourse to Sakka (Sakka Pañha Sutta) < [Chapter 39 - How the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta came to be Taught]
The Story of Deva Gopaka < [Chapter 39 - How the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta came to be Taught]
Dhammapada (Illustrated) (by Ven. Weagoda Sarada Maha Thero)
Verse 181 - The Story of the Buddha’s Return from the Tāvatiṃsa Deva World < [Chapter 14 - Buddha Vagga (The Buddha)]
Verse 48 - The Story of Patipūjikā Kumāri < [Chapter 4 - Puppha Vagga (Flowers)]
Verse 2 - The Story of Maṭṭakuṇḍali < [Chapter 1 - Yamaka Vagga (Twin Verses)]
The Catu-Bhanavara-Pali (critical study) (by Moumita Dutta Banik)
(1) Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta < [Chapter 4 - Subject Matter of the Third Bhanavara]
(2) Mahamoggallana Thera Bojjhanga < [Chapter 3 - Subject Matter of the Second Bhanavara]
Abhidhamma in Daily Life (by Ashin Janakabhivamsa) (by Ashin Janakabhivamsa)
Chapter 11 - Planes Of Existence
Domain 5 - Veyavacca (service) < [Chapter 6 - Ten domains of meritorious actions (ten punna kiriyavatthu)]
Part 3 - Abodes Of Devas < [Chapter 11 - Planes Of Existence]
And He Guides His Brother, Nanda < [Forty-five Years Of Teaching]
The Dawn of the Dhamma (by Sucitto Bhikkhu)
Chapter 19 - The Abodes Of Bliss < [The Sutta]
Chapter 18 - The Realms Of The Guardians < [The Sutta]