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satova
sa
sandhi form: sato + eva
- sa (pron): own; one's own; one's own possession
- sa (adj): self-; personal-
- sa (letter): (gram) letter s; 36th letter of the alphabet; dental consonant
- sata (pp): mindful; present; attentive; lit. remembered
- sata (pp): remembered
- sata (adj): (comm) impermanent
- sato (prp): when being; when it is; when they are
- satova (sandhi): just mindful; simply attentive
- …
Built from
- sat- — root · remember, be mindful
Sanskrit √smṛ 'remember'; cognate with English smart (originally 'keen, sharp'). The past participle encodes the sense of continuous presence through remembered attention.
- -a — ending · past participle, masculine nominative singular
Marks sati as a verbal adjective; when used attributively or predicatively, it carries the sense of an ongoing quality—one who is remembering, i.e. mindful.
- eva — prefix · just, only, indeed (emphatic particle)
Intensifies and isolates the preceding word; often used in the canon to stress the sufficiency or exclusivity of the preceding term. No clear Indo-European cognate.
Analysis. sato (nominative singular masculine of sata, past participle of √sati 'remember', used as adjective 'mindful') + eva (emphatic particle 'just, only, indeed'); the sandhi contracts sato eva to satova when following a vowel or in rapid speech.
Etymology. sata from √sati (Sanskrit smṛti 'memory', cognate with English 'smart' in its original sense of 'sharp, keen perception'); eva is an emphatic particle of uncertain origin, possibly related to iva 'like' or a weakened form of an earlier deictic.