Teja: 25 definitions
Introduction:
Teja means something in Buddhism, Pali, Hinduism, Sanskrit, Marathi, Jainism, Prakrit, Hindi, biology. 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
Yoga (school of philosophy)
Teja (तेज, “fire”):—One of the five gross elements assigned as a zone (or sphere) to the human body (bhūtamaṇḍala), according the Yogatattva-upaniṣad. The element fire is seated between the anus and the heart. Fire is represented by a triangle (trikoṇa), the colour red (rakta) and the syllable ra (र). The deity presiding over this region is Rudra.
Yoga is originally considered a branch of Hindu philosophy (astika), but both ancient and modern Yoga combine the physical, mental and spiritual. Yoga teaches various physical techniques also known as āsanas (postures), used for various purposes (eg., meditation, contemplation, relaxation).
Purana and Itihasa (epic history)
1a) Teja (तेज).—A son of Bala and grandson of Nārāyaṇa.*
- * Brahmāṇḍa-purāṇa II. 11. 4.
1b) Comes out of the subtle element, sparśa (touch) of Vāyu or wind; its qualities are sound, touch and form.*
- * Matsya-purāṇa 3. 24.
1c) One of the twenty Sutapa Gaṇas.*
- * Vāyu-purāṇa 100. 15.
1d) Of the burning universe in pralaya; similes used for colour.*
- * Vāyu-purāṇa 100. 161.
1e) Swallows the waters—all mouthed; its quality is prakāśaka or light which Vāyu eats up; vanishes like the flame in the wind.*
- * Vāyu-purāṇa 102. 10-12.
Teja (तेज) refers to the gross element named “light” which originates from Rūpatanmātra which originates from Vāyu through its spontaneous self-modification, according to the 10th century Saurapurāṇa: one of the various Upapurāṇas depicting Śaivism.—[...] The bhūtādi again covers up the ākāśa, śabda-tanmātra, sparśa-tanmātra and the differentiated vāyu which then produces the rūpa-tanmātra which immediately produces the gross light (teja). The sparśatanmātra and the vāyu cover up the rūpatanmātra. Being thus conditioned, the differentiated gross teja produces the rasatanmātra from which again the gross water is produced.
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)
Tejā (तेजा) refers to one of the thirty-two Bhairavīs (also Dūtis) embodying the syllables of the goddess’s Vidyā, according to the Manthānabhairavatantra, a vast sprawling work that belongs to a corpus of Tantric texts concerned with the worship of the goddess Kubjikā.—The thirty-two Bhairavīs [i.e., Tejā] are the consorts of the Bhairavas presiding over the sonic energies of the thirty-two syllables of her Vidyā. [...] Notice that like there are Yoginīs in this group who are also worshipped independently as the Great Goddess. Moreover, several also appear in other groups.
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)
Agriculture (Krishi) and Vrikshayurveda (study of Plant life)
Teja (तेज) (or, agni) refers to “that element which creates the calorific principles and heat in a plant body”; it represents one of the Pāñcabhautika (“five elementary matters”) that are associated with the Rasa (“watery juice”) part of a plant; representing a technical term related to the morphology branch of “plant science”, which ultimately involves the study of life history of plants, including its origin and development, their external and internal structures and the relation of the members of the plant body with one another.—The ‘rasa’ (watery juice) nourishes the plant organs with all the derivatives of five ‘pāñcabhautika’ elementary matters, viz. kṣiti, āp, teja (or agni), vāyu and ākāśa. The fiery element (teja-mahābhūta) is responsible for creating all sorts of calorific principles and heat.
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)
Tejā (तेजा) refers to the “vital power” (of crops, flowers, fruits, 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]: “The great sealing of the boundary is present until the stake is drawn out. All crops, all flowers and fruits will be well protected. [...] Even if perished they gain vital power (tejā) again. They reach vigour, growth and power again. The [contents of the] bowl should be sprinkled all around in the four directions in the fields and gardens. [...]”.
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.
Biology (plants and animals)
1) Teja in Malaysia is the name of a plant defined with Cinnamomum iners in various botanical sources. This page contains potential references in Ayurveda, modern medicine, and other folk traditions or local practices It has the synonym Cinnamomum iners Wall. (among others).
2) Teja is also identified with Cinnamomum javanicum.
3) Teja is also identified with Cinnamomum rhynchophyllum It has the synonym Cinnamomum lampongum Miquel.
Example references for further research on medicinal uses or toxicity (see latin names for full list):
· Numer. List (2583)
· Flora van Nederlandsch Indië (1855)
· Bijdragen tot de flora van Nederlandsch Indië (1826)
If you are looking for specific details regarding Teja, for example chemical composition, diet and recipes, extract dosage, health benefits, side effects, pregnancy safety, have a look at these references.
This sections includes definitions from the five kingdoms of living things: Animals, Plants, Fungi, Protists and Monera. It will include both the official binomial nomenclature (scientific names usually in Latin) as well as regional spellings and variants.
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
teja : (m.; nt.) (mano-group), heat; radiance; glory; power. (This becomes tejo in cpds.)
Teja, & Tejo (Vedic tejas (nt.) from tij to be sharp or to pierce=a (piercing) flame. See tejate; semantically (sharp›light) cp. Ger. strahl (ray of light)=Ags. strael (arrow).—The nt. tejo is the usual form; Instr. tejasā (Dh. 387; Sn. 1097) & tejena (J. III, 53), cp. tapa & tapo) “sharpness, ” heat, flame, fire, light; radiance, effulgence, splendour, glory, energy, strength, power D. II, 259 (personified as deva, among the 4 Elements paṭhavī, āpo, t. , vāyo; cp. tejo-dhātu); S. IV, 215; M. I, 327; Sn. 1097 (glory of the sun compd with that of the Buddha); Dh. 387 (sabbaṃ ahorattiṃ Buddho tapati tejasā); J. III, 53 (sīla°); I, 93 (puñña° the power of merit); Vbh. 426 (id.); Ps. I, 103; Vism. 350 (def.); VvA. 116.
teja (တေဇ) [(pu) (ပု)]—
[tija+ṇa．tejeti paripācetiç nisetivā tikkhabhāvena sesabhūtattayaṃ usmāpetīti tejo．vibhāvinī．196．(-,ṭī．33-4．rū．97．nīti,pada．125,133,145．nīti,dhā．45．sūci)．]
[တိဇ+ဏ။ တေဇေတိ ပရိပါစေတိ,နိသေတိဝါ တိက္ခဘာဝေန သေသဘူတတ္တယံ ဥသ္မာပေတီတိ တေဇော။ ဝိဘာဝိနီ။ ၁၉၆။ (-ဓာန်၊ ဋီ။ ၃၃-၄။ ရူ။ ၉၇။ နီတိ၊ ပဒ။ ၁၂၅၊ ၁၃၃၊ ၁၄၅။ နီတိ၊ ဓာ။ ၄၅။ သူစိ)။]
[Pali to Burmese]
teja—
(Burmese text): (၁) တေဇော-ဓာတ်၊ ထက်မြက်-ရင့်ကျက်-လောင်မြိုက်-စေမှု (ပူမှု,အေးမှု)၊ (က) အဇ္ဈတ္တိကတေဇော-ဓာတ် (ကိုယ်တွင်း၌ဖြစ်သော-ပူမှု-အေးမှု)။ (ခ) သန္တပ္ပနတေဇော-ဓာတ် (ရက်ချန်ဖျား-စသည်ကို ဖြစ်စေတတ်သော ပကတိကိုယ်ငွေ့ထက် လွန်ကဲသော ကိုယ်ပူမှု)။ (ဂ) ဇိရဏတေဇော-ဓာတ် (ယပ်လေခတ်ရလောက်အောင် ကိုယ်ကို ပူလောင်စေမှု)။ (င) ပါစက (ကမ္မဇ) တေဇော-ဓာတ် (အစာကျေကျက်စေမှု,ဝမ်းမီး)။ (စ) ဗာဟိရတေဇော-ဓာတ် (ပြင်ပ၌ဖြစ်သော-ပူမှု-အေးမှု)။ (ဆ) ထင်းမီး။ (ဇ) ကောက်ရိုးမီး။ (ဈ) မြက်မီး။ (ည) နွားချေးမီး။ (ဋ) ဖွဲမီး။ (ဌ) တံမြက်ချေးစုမီး။ (ဍ) မိုးကြိုးမီး။ (ဎ) မီးလျှံ-မီးကျီး-ပူ။ (ဏ) နေဗိမာန်အပူ။ (တ) သစ်သားစုမှဖြစ်သော အပူ။ (ထ) မြက်စုမှဖြစ်သော အပူ။ (ဒ) စပါးစုမှဖြစ်သော အပူ။ (ဓ) ဥစ္စာ 'ဘဏ္ဍာ'စုမှဖြစ်သောအပူ။ (န) နိဇ္ဈာမတဏှိက-စသော ပြိတ္တာတို့၏ ခံတွင်းမှ ထွက်သောမီး။ (ပ) ကမ္ဘာဖျက်မီး။ (ဖ) (မီးတောက်-မီးလျှံ-ထွက်သော) ငရဲမီး၊ အဝီစိငရဲမီး။ (ဗ) မီးတောက်၊ မီးလျှံ။ (ဘ) မီးခိုး။ (၂) တေဇောကသိုဏ်းနိမိတ်။ အာရမ္မဏပထဝီ,နိမိတ္တပထဝီ-လည်းကြည့်။ (၃) တန်ခိုးရှိန်စော် အာနုဘော်၊ စွမ်းရည်၊ (၅)-လည်းကြည့်ပါ။ (က) ကိုယ်,နှုတ်ကိုကောင်းစွာထားမှု=သီလ။ စရဏတေဇ-လည်းကြည့်။ (ခ) တည်ကြည်မှု=သမာဓိ။ (ဂ) အထူးသိမြင်မှု=ဝိပဿနာဉာဏ်ပညာ။ (ဃ) အရိယမဂ်ကုသိုလ်တရား။ (င) ဘုရားစကားတော်၊ ပိဋက ၃-ပုံ။ (စ) သီလပျက်မှု (ဒုဿီလျ) စေတနာ။ (ဆ) ပျံ့လွင့်မှု=ဥဒ္ဓစ္စ။ (ဇ) တွေဝေမှု=မောဟ။ (ဈ) အကုသိုလ်ကံ။ (ည) တိတ္ထိတို့၏ အယူနှင့်စပ်သော စကား။ အဓမ္မတေဇ-လည်းကြည့်။ (ဋ) လုံ့လ၊ စွမ်းအား၊ ရဲစွမ်းသတ္တိ၊ ရဲရင့်ခြင်း။ တေဇုဿဒ-(၂)-ကြည့်။ (၅)-လည်းကြည့်ပါ။ (ဌ) အမိန့်ဩဇာအာဏာ။ တေဇဝိရဟိတ-ကြည့်။ (ဍ) ရှေးဘုန်းရှေးကံ။ (ဎ) အကျော်အစော၊ အခြံအရံ။ တေဇသမ္ပတ္တိ-ကြည့်။ (၄) နေဗိမာန်။ (၅) ထွန်းလင်းတောက်ပခြင်း၊ ထွန်းလင်း တောက်ပသော အရောင်အလင်း။ (၆) အဆိပ်။ (၇) တေဇ (ဇော) နတ်။ သမ္မုတိပထဝီ-လည်းကြည့်။ (ဂ) သွေး-ထက်စေ-ထက်အောင်ပြု-ခြင်း၊ လောင်မြိုက်ခြင်း။
(Auto-Translation): (1) Elements of heat and cold, (a) internal heat and cold (resulting in bodily warmth and coolness). (b) High fever causative heat: exceptionally high internal heat that can cause conditions such as fever. (c) Heat caused by sweating profusely. (d) Digestive heat (appetite stimulation, digestive fire). (e) External heat and cold. (f) Fire from a stove. (g) Fire from dry twigs. (h) Fire from grass. (i) Fire from cow dung. (j) Fire from an incinerator. (k) Fire from charcoal briquettes. (l) Lightning fire - intense heat and cold. (m) Solar heat. (n) Heat from wood. (o) Heat from grass. (p) Heat from rice. (q) Heat from flammable substances. (r) Fire emanating from internal living beings, such as those of insects. (s) Infernal fire that destroys the earth. (t) (fire that emits - explosive) torturous fire, incredibly torturous fire. (u) Explosive, fiery heat. (v) Ashes. (2) Elements as symbolic signs for the element of heat (and the earth). (3) Influential strength, qualities, (5) also see. (a) Good conduct of oneself and speech = morality. Consider the sacred element. (b) Stability = equanimity. (c) Special realization = insight wisdom. (d) Supreme merit of the Dharma. (e) Words of the Buddha, according to the Pali canon. (f) Concept of moral degradation (second immorality). (g) Dissemination = vanity. (h) Sharing = ignorance. (i) Luck of virtue. (j) Statements related to the philosophy of silence. Consider the improper elemental qualities. (k) Strength, power, bravery, valiance. Elemental law (2) also see. (5) also see. (l) The power of authority. Distinguished elemental virtues. (m) Ancient auspiciousness. (n) Early achievements, standards, milestones. Consider the elemental transmission. (4) Solar energy. (5) Bright brilliance, illuminating light colors, brightness. (6) Poison. (7) Deity of elemental heat. Consider the essence of earth. (h) Inflicting pain, causing burning.
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
tēja (तेज).—n (tējas S) Light, lustre, splendor, brilliancy. 2 Heat; esp. fervid or fierce heat (of the sun or fire). 3 Majesty, dignity, glory, grandeur, authoritativeness, awfulness. 4 Virtue, efficacy, excellence, goodness, power (as of medicines, spirits &c.): fire, energy, vigor, nerve, force, pith, beauty (of a speech, an action, a look). 5 Semen virile. 6 Sharpness (as of weapons or tools). 7 Pungency: also acritude.
tēja (तेज).—n Light, lustre, splendour, brilliancy. Heat, esp. fervid or fierce heat (of the sun or fire). Majesty, dignity, glory, authoritativeness, awfulness. Virtue, efficacy, excellence, power (of medicines, spirits &c.): fire energy, vigour, force, sharpness (as of weapon or tools).
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
Teja (तेज).—
1) Pungency.
2) Sharpness (of a weapon).
3) Brilliancy.
4) Spirit.
Derivable forms: tejaḥ (तेजः).
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Teja (तेज).—See under तिज् (tij).
Derivable forms: tejaḥ (तेजः).
See also (synonyms): tejana.
Teja (तेज).—m.
(-jaḥ) 1. Sharpness, pungency. 2. Sharpness of a weapon. 3. Brilliancy. 4. Spirit. E. tij to sharpen, affix ghañḥ see tejas.
Teja (तेज).—[masculine] sharpness; [Name] of a man.
1) Teja (तेज):—m. (√tij) sharpness, [Vopadeva viii, 132]
2) m. Name of a man, [Rājataraṅgiṇī viii, 1226]
3) Tejā (तेजा):—[from teja] f. the 13th night of the Karma-māsa, [Sūryaprajñapti]
1) Teja (तेज):—tejati 1. a. To guard, to cherish.
2) (jaḥ) a. Sharpness; brightness; pungency; spirit.
Teja (तेज):—
1) m. a) nom. act. von tij, zur Erklärung von śān [Vopadeva’s Grammatik 8, 132.] — b) Nomen proprium eines Mannes [Rājataraṅgiṇī 8, 1226.] —
2) tejā (= tejas?) in tilatejā .
--- OR ---
Teja (तेज):—
3) f. ā Bez. der 15ten Nacht [Weber’s Indische Studien 10, 296.]
Teja (तेज):——
1) m. — a) Nom. act. von tij. — b) Nomen proprium eines Mannes. —
2) f. ā die 13te Nacht im Karmamāsa.
Teja (तेज) in the Sanskrit language is related to the Prakrit words: Tea, Teā, Teja.
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) Teja (तेज) [Also spelled tej]:—(nm) glow; splendour, brilliance, refulgence; awe; ~[svitā] see [tejasvitā]; ~[svī] see [tejasvī].
2) Teja (तेज) [Also spelled tej]:—(a) sharp; sharp-pointed; dear, costly; acute; keen; penetrating (as —[najara]); acrid, pungent; corrosive, caustic; violent, fiery; swift, quick (as —[raphtāra]), fleet; smart; intelligent, nimble-witted; -[tarrāra] fiery and fierce, caustic-tongued; sharp and smart; ~[dimāga] sharp, intelligent; ~[mijāja] short-tempered; petulant; ~[raphtāra] swift fast-moving.
...
Prakrit-English dictionary
Teja (तेज) in the Prakrit language is related to the Sanskrit word: Teja.
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
Tēja (ತೇಜ):—
1) [noun] = ತೇಜಸ್ಸು [tejassu].
2) [noun] 5) a ray of light.
3) [noun] the Sun-God.
4) [noun] the quality or fact of being sharp, keen; sharpness; keenness.
5) [noun] the whole physical structure of a human being or any animal; the body.
6) [noun] a building in which people usu. live; a residence for human beings.
7) [noun] all things that have a monetary or exchange value; wealth.
8) [noun] (in comp.) a person having radiant personality.
9) [noun] (pros.) a particular kind of meter having three units, of which the first and the third are long and the middle one being short(-u-).
--- OR ---
Tēja (ತೇಜ):—[noun] = ತೇಜಿ [teji]2.
Kannada is a Dravidian language (as opposed to the Indo-European language family) mainly spoken in the southwestern region of India.
Nepali dictionary
1) Teja (तेज):—adj. 1. smart; active; 2. bright; brilliant; efficient; 3. speedy;
2) Teja (तेज):—n. 1. light; flame; glow; brilliance; 2. bravery; spirit; energy; force; 3. heat; 4. essence; substance;
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): Tija, Na.
Starts with (+29): Teja badak, Teja dalchini, Teja lawang, Tejabhinandi, Tejadhika, Tejagarahaka, Tejahani, Tejahina, Tejajigucchaka, Tejakaraniya, Tejakasiṇa, Tejala, Tejamandala, Tejanupalita, Tejapala, Tejapasamsaka, Tejapatra, Tejapattra, Tejaphala, Tejapumja.
Full-text (+654): Thina, Tejas, Tejodhatu, Bhuritejas, Tejasvin, Tejin, Suteja, Tejomaya, Brahmateja, Mahateja, Mahatejas, Shritejas, Tejorupa, Tejomurti, Nistejas, Tejovritta, Mamsatejas, Amitatejas, Brahmatejas, Sutejas.
Relevant text
Search found 247 books and stories containing Teja, Tēja, Tejā, Tija-na, Tija-ṇa; (plurals include: Tejas, Tējas, Tejās, nas, ṇas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Brihad Bhagavatamrita (commentary) (by Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktivedānta Nārāyana Gosvāmī Mahārāja)
Verse 2.2.49 < [Chapter 2 - Jñāna (knowledge)]
Verse 2.3.108-111 < [Chapter 3 - Bhajana (loving service)]
Verse 2.2.179 < [Chapter 2 - Jñāna (knowledge)]
Nighantu (critical study) (by Gopalakrishna N. Bhat)
Part 17 - Jvalato Namadheyani (Namadheya) < [Chapter 3 - First Adhyaya (chapter) of the Nighantu (study)]
Part 12 - Udakanamani (Udaka Nama) < [Chapter 3 - First Adhyaya (chapter) of the Nighantu (study)]
Part 4 - Sadharanani (Sadharana) < [Chapter 3 - First Adhyaya (chapter) of the Nighantu (study)]
Dictionaries of Indian languages (Kosha)
Page 866 < [Hindi-Bengali-English Volume 1]
Page 494 < [Hindi-Assamese-English Volume 1]
Page 893 < [Hindi-Assamese-English Volume 1]
Krishna Sandarbha of Jiva Goswami (by Kusakratha Prabhu)
Gommatsara by Acharya Nemichandra (by Bai Bahadur J. L. Jaini)
Chapter 15.1 - The concept of Nirdesha (Description) < [Volume 1 - Jiva-kanda (the soul)]
Chapter 19 - The concept of Ahara Margana (Assimilative Soul-Quest) < [Volume 1 - Jiva-kanda (the soul)]
Chapter 8 - The concept of Kaya-margana (Embodiment soul-quest) < [Volume 1 - Jiva-kanda (the soul)]
Journal of Ayurveda and Integrated Medical Sciences
Tridosha Theory - Origin and Acceptance in Ancient Literature < [Vol. 3 No. 06 (2018)]
Genetics of Ayurveda in Infertility < [Vol. 2 No. 04 (2017)]
Conceptual study on Khalitya < [Vol. 10 No. 1 (2025)]