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punabbhavanti

punabbhava

masculine nominative plural (-anti is 3rd person plural present indicative of the denominative punabbhavati, which treats punabbhava as its stem)

1. appearing again; renewed existence; rebirth; future life; lit. again being

Built from

• puna — prefix · again
  Old I.E. iterative adverb. Sanskrit punar, Lithuanian pùnai; emphasizes cyclical return.
• bhav — root · to be, become
  √bhū in Sanskrit; cognate with English be, German bin, Latin fui. Roots the entire doctrine of becoming (bhava) as the process of existence.
• a — ending · nominative singular stem-forming vowel
  Masculine -a stem formation. bhava as a noun means 'becoming' or 'state of existence'.
• anti — ending · 3rd person plural present
  Standard Pali present plural ending (-anti) on the denominative verb stem punabbhava-, derived from the noun punabbhava.

Analysis. puna + bhava: puna 'again' (adverb) + bhava 'becoming, existence' (noun, from √bhū 'to be'). The denominative verb punabbhavati means 'to be reborn' or 'to come into renewed existence'; -anti is the 3rd person plural present ending. Often appears with iti 'thus' to form the noun phrase punabbhavaṃ iti 'the condition of rebirth'.

Etymology. puna is an old Indo-European word for 'again' (Sanskrit punar, Lithuanian pùnai 'once more', Greek palin 'back again'); bhava derives from √bhū 'to be, become', cognate with English be, German bin, Latin fui. Together they express the core Buddhist teaching of repeated cycles of existence driven by craving and ignorance.

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

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