Nine Lives (47 page)

Kirtan

Lit. ‘singing the praises of God’, usually in a devotional gathering

Kshatriya

warrior caste.

Kucha

Informal, rough
.

Kufr

Infidelity, disbelief.

Kumari

Sanskrit for ‘virgin’. Today the word often refers to
the tradition of worshipping pre-pubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy or
Devi
in South Asian countries.

Kumkum

A red powder (vermilion) emblematic of the sexual power of goddesses, given to women at temples and during festivals.

Lathi

A bamboo staff, normally used by police and
chowkidars.

Lingam

The phallic symbol associated with Lord Shiva in his role as Divine Creator.

Lota

A small copper water pot used for ablutions.

Lungar

A free kitchen or distribution of food alms at a temple or during the religious festival.

Lungi

A sarong-style loin-wrap; simplification of the
dhoti.

Mahayana

Lit. ‘Great
Vehicle
one of the two principal branches of Buddhism

Mahasukha

The great bliss of the void.

Mahotsav

Great festival.

Malang

A wandering fakir, dervish or
qalander.

Mandala

A
circle or circular diagram; symbolic depiction of, and instruction about, the way to Enlightenment.

Mataji

A
white-clad Digambara nun (lit. ‘respected mother’).

Math

A
Monastery.

Maulana

A
title for a respected religious leader – lit. ‘Our Lord’.

Maya

Illusion.

Mazar

Lit. (in Arabic) ‘tomb or mausoleum’, but usually in practice the tomb of a saint, and hence a Sufi shrine.

Mehndi

The application of henna patterns on the hands, usually at an Indian wedding.

Mela

A gathering, meeting, festival or fair.

Mihrab

A prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca.

Moksha

Enlightenment or spiritual liberation.

Mudra

Symbolic or ritual gestures in Hinduism, Buddhism and
Indian dance.

Muni

A Jain monk or nun.

Murid

A disciple.

Murti

An
image or statue.

Naan

Bread cooked in a tandoor.

Naga Sadhus

A
sect of naked holy men.

Nagashwaram

An
outsized Tamil oboe.

Namaz

Muslim prayers, traditionally offered five times a day.

Namaskar

Hindu words of greeting (lit. ‘I bow to thee’).

Nath Yogis

A sect of ash-smeared Shaivite mystics who invented hatha yoga in the twelfth century, and who claimed that their exercises and breathing techniques gave them great supernatural powers.

Navras

The nine essences of classical Hindu aesthetics.

Nirvana

Enlightenment, state of spiritual revelation.

Oran

A protected sacred grove, dedicated to a deity in Rajasthan.

Paan

An Indian delicacy and digestive. It consists of a folded leaf containing (among other ingredients) betel nut, a mild stimulant.

Padmasana

The Lotus position.

Panjthan

The Five Sacred Personalities: the Prophet Muhammad, Hazrat Ali, Hazrat Fatima, Hasan and Husain.

Paramatma

The Supreme soul, or absolute
atman
in Hindu Vedantic philosophy.

Parikrama

A pilgrimage circuit.

Pashto

The language of the Pashtun people of the North-West Frontier of Pakistan and southern Afghanistan.

Phad

A long narrative textile-painting, which serves both as an illustration of the highlights of
The Epic of Pabuji
and a portable temple of Pabuji the god.

Pir

A
Muslim holy man or Sufi saint.

Prasad

The portion of consecrated offering – usually food or small white sweets – returned to the worshipper at a Hindu temple.

Puja

A
religious devotions (‘lit. adoration’).

Pukka

A
good, proper, correct.

Pukur

A
village pond in Bengal.

Pullao

Rice.

Pundit

Brahmin (lit. ‘a learned man’).

Purohit

A
Brahmin priest.

Rakhi

A band worn around the wrist as a sign of sisterhood, solidarity or protection.

Rasa

Lit.
juice, flavour or essence: an essential concept in Hindu aesthetics, denoting
an essential mental state, and the dominant emotional theme of a work of art. Hence
navras:
the nine essences.

Ravanhatta

A Rajasthani zither or spike fiddle with eighteen strings and no frets.

Rinpoche

An honorific used for senior monks in Tibetan Buddhism. It means literally ‘precious one’.

Qalander

A Sufi mendicant of Holy fool.

Qawwal

A singer of
qawwalis.

Qawwali

Rousing poems and hymns sung at Sufi shrines.

Rakhi

A thread tied around the wrist, usually by brothers and sisters as a symbol of sisterly or fraternal love and protection, especially on the festival of
raksha bandhan
.

Rangoli

Decoration using coloured sand, paint or salt, usually on floors outside houses.

Rani

Queen

Rath

A chariot, esp. in Hindu temple festivals.

Rishi

A poet-sage and scribe-ascetic through whom the ancient
Hindu scriptures and Vedic hymns flowed.

Roti

Bread.

Rudraksh

A large evergreen broad-leaved tree whose hard, dried seed is traditionally used for prayer beads or rosaries in Hinduism, often on strings of 108 beads.

Sadhu

A Hindu holy man.

Sadhana

A spiritual, ritual or Tantric practice or discipline.

Sahajiya

A spontaneous or natural form of Indian. spirituality.
Vaishnava-Sahajiya
was a
Tantric Hindu cult that became popular in seventeenth-century Bengal. The Vaishnava-Sahajiya sought religious experience through the five senses, which included sexual love.

Salwar-kameez

A
long tunic and matching loose trousers favoured mainly by girls in North India and by both sexes in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Samadhi

Detachment from the body, through fasting or concentrated prayer. For Jains the world has a more specific meaning of gathering to pray around a monk or nun who is undergoing
sallekhana
– the deliberate and permanent separation of the soul from the body. The word is also used for a mausoleum or place of cremation.

Samsara

The illusory physical world and its cycle of rebirths. The word is derived from the Sanskrit for
‘to flow together’, to go or pass through states, to wander.

Sallekhana

The final renunciation for a Jain: the gradual, voluntary, intentional and ritualised giving up of all food and sustenance, until the monk or nun finally dies of starvation. Jains do not regard
sallekhana
as suicide so much as the ultimate form of detachment. Around 240 Jains embrace
sallekhana
each year.

Sangha

A
community or association, usually used today in the context of a Buddhist or Jain monastic community.

Sanyasi

A Hindu wanderer or ascetic.

Sati

The old Hindu practice of widow burning, now illegal (lit. ‘a good woman’).

Saz

A lute-like stringed instrument popular in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Shaheed

A Muslim martyr.

Shakti

The personification of the creative power and energy of the divine feminine.

Shakta

The denomination of Hinduism that concentrates on the worship
of Shakti
,
or the Devi: the female principle of the Divine Mother.

Shamiana

An Indian marquee, or the screen formed around the perimeter of a tented area.

Shastra

An ancient Hindu and Buddhist treatise or text; the word in Sanskrit means ‘rules’.

Shenai

A North Indian wind instrument of the oboe family.

Shirk

Heresy, polytheism or idolatry.

Siddi

The Afro-Indians who settled on the coast of Sindh and Gujarat and usually engaged in fishing and coastal trading and sailing.

Sishya

A disciple.

Sindhoor

A red powder (vermilion) which is traditionally applied at the beginning of or completely along the parting-line of a woman’s hair. Similar to
kumkum
.

Sloka

A stanza in a Sanskrit poem.

Sudra

The base of the caste pyramid, traditionally farmers, labourers and craftsmen.

Svetambara

One of the two great sects of the Jain faith. The Sventambaran Jain monks do not go naked like the ‘Sky Clad’ Digambara Jains.

Tabla

A pair of small Indian hand drums used as accompaniment in Hindustani music.