‹ Back to the text

andhakāre

andhakāra

masc acc pl of andhakāra (noun); masc loc sg of andhakāra (noun)

1. darkness; blackness; blindness; lit. blind making
2. ignorance; spiritual darkness; lit. blind making

Built from

• andha — root · blind
  From IE *h₂endh- (to bind, obstruct vision); cognates include English 'end' (something that stops or blocks) and Sanskrit andha. In Buddhist usage, blindness is metaphorical: ignorance that obscures the truth.
• kāra — stem · making, action
  From √kṛ (to make, do) + instrumental suffix -a-. Here used as a noun meaning 'the action/effect of making', so andhakāra = 'the making blind', hence darkness as a condition. Elsewhere in compounds, kāra forms agent nouns and action nouns.

Analysis. andha (blind) + kāra (making, action): blindness made visible; in the Buddha's teaching, the darkness of ignorance that obscures the path to liberation.

Etymology. andha from Indo-European *h₂endh- (to bind, constrain, block sight); cognate with Sanskrit andha, English end. kāra from √kṛ (to make, do), with the instrumental suffix -a-. The compound is calqued internally: darkness is the action or effect of making blind.

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

Lite mode — plain HTML for e-readers and old browsers. Full version