‹ Back to the text

mārassa

māra

masc dat sg of māra (noun); masc gen sg of māra (noun)

1. death; Death; death personified

Built from

• māra — root · death, death personified
  From PIE *mer- 'to die'. Related to English 'mortal', Latin 'mors', Sanskrit 'mṛta'. In the canon, Māra embodies the defilements and craving that keep beings in cyclic existence.

Etymology. From Proto-Indo-European *mer- 'to die', the same root as English 'mortal', Latin 'mors' (death), and Sanskrit 'mṛta' (dead). In Buddhist doctrine, Māra is the personification of death, delusion, and the forces that bind beings to saṃsāra. The concrete sense (death as an event) becomes the mythic agent of spiritual hindrance.

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

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