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asatiamanasikāro

asatiamanasikāra

masc nom sg of asatiamanasikāra (noun)

1. forgetting and ignoring; lit. not remembering and non-attention

Built from

• a — prefix · not, without
  Plain negation. Cognate with English un-, Greek a(n)- (atheist).
• sati — root · recollection, mindfulness
  From √smṛ 'remember'; cognate with English smirch, Latin memor, Greek mimnēskō. In the Canon, sati is the cardinal factor of the path.
• a — prefix · not, without
  Plain negation, repeated in the second half of the compound.
• manas — stem · mind
  Cognate with English mind, Latin mens. The mental faculty as such.
• ikāra — ending · doing, action
  Derived from kṛ 'make, do' (root cognate with Latin creare, English create); -ika- is an agent suffix, and -ara marks the action itself. Here it forms an abstract noun denoting the activity or quality of attention.

Analysis. a-sati + a-manasikāra: 'non-recollection' + 'non-attention'; a compound of two privative formations. sati (recollection) and manasikāra (mental application) are both negated by the prefix a-, and the two are joined in copulative synthesis to denote the cognitive absence that constitutes forgetting and inattention.

Etymology. From a- (negation) + sati (recollection, from √smṛ 'remember'; cognate with English smirch, Latin memor, Greek mimnēskō) and a- + manasikāra (attention, from manas 'mind' + kāra 'doing', where manas cognates with English mind, Latin mens). The compound expresses the doctrinal notion of heedlessness—the opposite of mindfulness and right attention, both essential to the path.

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

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