1887.] S. C. Das— On Ekotibhava. 173 



cumstances, I am obliged, with much reluctance, to say that Mr. Growse 

 has been very hasty in saying * I am bold enough to maintain that it 

 (the derivation of ehoti) is quite in accordance with rule.' He has 

 obviously nothing at hand to maintain the assertion. 



The following papers were read — 



I. On the Etymology and Meaning of the Buddhist term, Ekoti- 

 bhdva. — By Babu Sarat Chandra Das, 0. I. E. 



In his address the President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal made 

 mention of the work I have in hand, i. e., the compilation of a list of 

 Buddhist philosophical and technical terms in Sanskrit, and their equi- 

 valents in Tibetan and English. When I commenced this work in Oc- 

 tober last I had doubts as to its usefulness, but the importance at- 

 tached to one such term as " Ekotibhava " by the attempts of Max 

 Muller, Morris, Schiefner and Dr. Mitra to explain it, in " The Aca- 

 demy " and elsewhere, has encouraged me to push on my work with some 

 vigour. I have, therefore, ventured to write a short note on the etymo- 

 logy and meaning of the term " Ekotibhava," with a view to explain an 

 important fact connected with the doctrine of incarnation which pre- 

 vails in Tibet and Mongolia. 



I have brought with me from Lhasa some very old Sanskrit and 

 Tibetan Dictionaries ; one of them, called " Mahavyutpatti " [in Tibe- 

 tan Lopon manpo s-m dsod paM bye — bragtu r togs byac2 chhen mo, i. e., 

 " the great critical work prepared by many Pandits and Lochavas ", 

 (Tibetan Interpreters)] is a manuscript written in the Devanagari 

 characters of the 8th or 9th century A. D. and the rest are in Tibetan. 

 The term* " Ekotibhava " occurs in all of them written with dental t 

 and a long i, in consequence of which its etymology becomes very sim- 

 ple. It is derived from eka + uta + bhava. Uta comes from ve (#) 

 and the affix Ma (tJ?). The verb ve ( t ) means " to sew " or " unite." 

 Hence the compound means " something sewn or united together." The 

 Tibetan version of this term is fBgjud + ^chig-tu + gyur-pa, i. e., 

 Bgyud gfchigtu gyur-pa." " Bgyud #yur-pa "= strung or united together, 

 gchig = one and " tii " means " into." The compound word therefore 

 means formed into one string or line. In Csoma's translation of a 



* The term Ekotibhava with long i incidentally also occurs in Professor Max 

 Miiller's note published in The Academy, April 3, 1886. Vide the following passage. 

 " Schiefner' s explanation, too, which Dr. Morris does not mention, namely, that 

 " Ekotibhava" represents " Eka vati or Eka vati bhava, is not convincing. 



f Rgyud, means string, extraction, connection nature &c. Gyurpa, means 

 formed, become, changed, &c. 



