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abyāpādo

abyāpāda

masc nom sg of abyāpāda (noun)

1. absence of ill-will; goodwill; kindness; friendliness; benevolence; lit. not going wrong

Built from

• a- — prefix · not, without
  Plain negation. Cognate to English un-, Greek a(n)-.
• byāpāda — stem · ill-will, harming
  From vi- (apart, asunder) + √pad/vpad (go, fall). The prefix vi- carries the sense of things scattered in wrong directions, yielding 'going astray, doing harm'.

Analysis. a- (not) + byāpāda (harming, ill-will); lit. 'non-harming'. In the canon, one of the three wholesome mental states opposed to anger and malice (sammā-saṅkappa, right intention).

Etymology. Composed of the negating prefix a- and byāpāda (from √vpad 'to go, fall', with prefix by- [Sanskrit vi-], meaning 'going astray, going wrong'). The spatial imagery of vi- 'apart, asunder' in byāpāda (things going in wrong directions, hence harm) is negated by a-, leaving the sense 'not going astray mentally', hence goodwill and harmlessness.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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