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kāye
kāya
masc acc pl of kāya (noun); masc loc sg of kāya (noun); masc acc pl of kāya (adj); nt acc pl of kāya (adj); …
- kāya (masc): body; physical body; physical process; lit. accumulation
- kāya (masc): group; host; company; collection; multitude; mass; lit. accumulation
- kāya (masc): process; collection; lit. accumulation
- kāya (masc): category; class; group (of); lit. accumulation
- kāya (masc): physical existence; material existence; lit. accumulation
- kāya (masc): group of beings; class of beings; state of existence; lit. accumulation
- kāya (masc): mass; heap; bulk; body; lit. accumulation
- kāyati (pr): chants; recites
- …
Built from
- kā — root · accumulate, heap up
From √ku "to heap"; the root imagery is of piling or gathering things together. Cognate: Sanskrit ku-; possibly related to Latin "caulis" (stem, stalk).
- ya — ending · nominalization
The suffix -ya creates a noun of action or state. Here it marks kāya as "that which is heaped up" — the product of accumulation.
Etymology. From √ku "to heap up" (Sanskrit √cu-, proto-Indo-European *keu- "to swell, to heap"); kāya literally "accumulation, heap" in the sense of the body as a collection of physical elements (the five aggregates, pañcakkhandhā). The semantic shift from "heap" to "body" and "group" follows the concrete image of aggregation — the body as a unified mass of elements.