Hindi
names 31objects 13ISO 639-3 hin
Spoken in Bihar (Bhojpuri- and Magahi-speaking districts); the couplet is ascribed to the peasant weather-prophet Ghāgh, Bihar (Bhojpuri/Magahi); the same forms in Fallon for Hindustani generally, Hindustani generally, Hindustani generally (Fallon's dictionary is explicitly one of spoken idiom), Hindustani generally; recorded without regional restriction by Platts, Fallon and Shakespear, Hindustani generally; the proverb marked Hin. (Hindu usage) by Fallon, Hindustani generally; the ritual is reported for Punjabi Hindus, Hindustani generally; the tail-star form marked dakh. (Deccani) by Shakespear, North-Western Provinces (Mirzapur/Saharanpur region; recorded by Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube for Crooke's journal), Oudh (Awadh), eastern United Provinces, Punjab and northern India (contributed to a Panjab journal), Upper India (North-Western Provinces and Oudh), eastern Hindi belt (Fallon marks the sense 'morning star' E., the nose-ring sense W.), eastern Hindi belt - Bhojpuri and Awadhi districts; Fallon's proverbs are marked Bhoj., northern India, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Upper India).
vernacular 1 · folk 23 · borrowed 7
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The sky in Hindi
| Name | Object | Meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| तारा / تارا tārā | 'Star' as a word | 'star'; also 'the pupil of the eye' The workhorse word, and the base of most compound names in this file (guććhā tārā, quṭbī tārā, ujāle-kā tārā, dhurū tārā, dum kā tārā, tapt tārā). Platts's sub-entries are a small ethnography in themselves: tārā ṭūṭnā 'a star to shoot', tāre ginnā 'to count the stars, to get no sleep', tāroṅ-kī chān 'daybreak', din-ko tāre dikhānā 'to show one stars by daylight, to beat severely'. | borrowed |
| agast | Canopus | vernacular contraction of Agastya Not a learned citation but a farmer's calendar marker: the heliacal rising of Canopus, paired with the flowering of kās grass, announces that the rains are over. This is the Sanskrit Agastya name doing agricultural work in a peasant couplet. | folk |
| झाड़ू / جهاڙو jhāṛū | Comets | 'a broom, a besom' A comet is simply a broom in the sky. The word is otherwise heavily charged in domestic usage - Fallon records the women's curse 'may the broom sweep through your house' - which suits the omen value comets carried. | folk |
| केत / کيت ket (dum kā tārā) | Comets | 'tail star' ket is the vernacular reduction of Sanskrit Ketu, the descending node and mythic tail; Fallon parses the word for his readers as 'lit. tail star', which is a folk etymology but tells us how it was heard. The transparent Hindustani phrase dum kā tārā says the same thing outright. | folk |
| (the stars as kine, the moon their shepherd) | Figures with no secure modern identification | Not a name but a cosmology, transmitted by women to children, and the closest thing in this material to a systematic non-Sanskritic picture of the night sky. | folk |
| ākās-agan-golā | Meteors and shooting stars | 'sky-fire-ball' A three-word descriptive compound, entirely vernacular in its material. Beside it Platts records the simple idiom tārā ṭūṭnā, 'a star to shoot' (p. 304), and the Hindi luk (p. 958, from S. ulkā) 'a fiery phenomenon in the sky; meteor; falling star'. | folk |
| harinā-harin | Orion | 'the stag and the hind' A children's sky-name taught by mothers, with a Brahmā-and-Purvacitti pursuit myth attached in which Śiva takes the form of the Ārdrā asterism to help the hind. The living folk survival of the Vedic Mṛga/Prajāpati story, still located in Orion. | folk |
| Bhagwān kī Kachahrī | The Milky Way | 'God's court-house' The colonial district court transposed to the sky - kachahrī is the ordinary word for a magistrate's court. Crooke picked this name up from the same source and reprinted it. | folk |
| Sufed Bādhī | The Milky Way | 'the white garland' Printed in the original note as 'Supesh Bidhi, the way of fate' and corrected by the contributor himself in a later note - a good example of why the correction slip matters. | folk |
| Surg Dwārī | The Milky Way | 'the gate of heaven' svarga 'heaven' + dvārī 'gateway', in vernacular shape. Crooke gives the same as Swarga-duari, 'the door of Paradise'. | folk |
| هتهيا کي راه hathiyā kī rāh | The Milky Way | 'the road of Hathiyā (the Hasta asterism)' The same 'road' image, but named for hathiyā, the thirteenth lunar mansion - the hand-shaped asterism in Corvus which in the Hindi belt is above all the season of the closing rains. A sky-road named after a calendar station, not after a bright star. | folk |
| hāthī kī rāh | The Milky Way | 'the elephant's road' A folk name that answers to the Sanskrit Gajavīthī, 'the elephant's course' - Platts records gaj-vīthī for the Milky Way as well (p. 898) - but here it is built from the ordinary Hindi word hāthī, not from Sanskrit gaja. | folk |
| आकास / آکاس ākāś-gaṅgā (akkās gaṅgā) | The Milky Way | 'the sky-Ganges' The Sanskrit name carried into Hindi with a vernacular first member (akkās for ākāśa). Recorded here because every other Milky Way name in this file is explicitly glossed against it - it is the reference point the folk names are measured from. | borrowed |
| (the seven sisters - no name recorded) | The Pleiades | An aetiological tale rather than a name: the seventh sister is left out of the sharing of a sesame seed and so sits a little apart in the sky. Recorded from Sitapur. It explains a naked-eye fact - the cluster's outlier - and shows that the 'seven sisters' reading of the Pleiades is independently present in Awadhi village lore alongside the Sanskrit six Kṛttikās. | folk |
| बहुला / بہلا bahulā | The Pleiades | 'the abundant/dense ones' Platts classes it H (Hindi), from Sanskrit bahulāḥ, an old alternative name for the Kṛttikās; his adjectival entry bahul (p. 190) even preserves the sense 'born under the Pleiades'. | borrowed |
| baććē-wālī murġī | The Pleiades | 'the hen with chickens' The commonest folk image for the cluster across Eurasia; here attached to the ordinary Hindi word for a young of any creature. Platts prints the compound in roman only, under the Devanagari/Urdu headword बच्चा / بچا. | folk |
| गिचपिचिया / گچپچيا gić-pićiyā | The Pleiades | 'crowded/squeezed together' (variant of kac-pac) A phonetic doublet of kaćpaćiyā with initial g-; the two forms sit on different pages of Platts and evidently belong to different speech areas, though he marks neither. | folk |
| guććhā tārā | The Pleiades | 'the cluster star' guććhā is the ordinary word for a bunch of flowers or fruit, a tassel, a skein; the Pleiades are simply 'the bunch'. Fallon gives the Arabic ʻaqd-i-suraiyā ('the necklace of the Thurayyā') as its equivalent, showing the two layers translating each other. | folk |
| कचबचिया / کچ بچيا kachbach'iyā | The Pleiades | 'the jumbled ones' (kac-bac, variant of kac-pac) Fallon's spelling with -b- suggests contamination from bacca 'child/young one', which is also the base of the competing 'hen and chickens' name for the same cluster. | folk |
| कचपचिया / کچپچيا kaćpaćiyā | The Pleiades | 'crowded together' Built on the Hindi echo-compound kac-pac 'jumbled, crowded together' with the agent suffix -iyā; it is a descriptive nickname for the huddled cluster, not a reflex of Kṛttikā. Still current: McGregor, Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (1993), p. 155, has कचपचिया नक्षत्र and Braj/Awadhi कचपची. | folk |
| Mūla | The lunar mansions as a system | Crooke's point is a social one: the twenty-seven asterisms are used only in calculating the marriage horoscope, and the one an ordinary cultivator actually has to reckon with is the unlucky Mūla — a son born under it must undergo an elaborate purification. | borrowed |
| हथिया / ﮩتيا hathiyā | The lunar mansions as a system | 'the hand' (vernacular reflex of Sanskrit hasta) The single most important star name in Hindi-belt village life: not an object to look at but a rain season to reckon by. Grierson notes it is the longest of the asterisms, sixteen lunar days, and that cultivators said the rains used to end in Swati but now end in Hathiya. It is personified as Hathi rāni, 'Queen Hathiya', who announces herself by thunder. | folk |
| nakhat / nachhattr / nichhattr | The lunar mansions as a system | vernacular reflexes of Sanskrit nakṣatra The word survives in the countryside as a unit of the farming year, not of astronomy: twenty-seven unequal periods, each governing a specific operation, ranging from about thirteen lunar days in the dry months to sixteen for Hathiya. Grierson's list of their vernacular names - Rohni, Mirgsira, Aradra, Punarbas, Pukh, Maggha, Purba/Utra Phaguni, Hast or Hathiya, Chitra, Bināti or Siwāti, Bisākha, Anurādha, Jeshtha, Mul, Purba Khārh, Utra Khārh - is the vernacular register of the whole nakṣatra series in one place. | folk |
| धुरू / دهرو dhurū tārā (dhruv-tārā) | The pole star | 'the fixed star' Fallon's headword form dhurū is the vernacular reduction of Sanskrit dhruva, and he equates it directly with Arabic quṭb - the two layers glossing each other on one line. Ethnographically the star carries a vow: a Punjabi Hindu who salutes Dhrū for forty nights with his turban round his neck is said to learn of his death forty days in advance and to be joined to Dhrū's world after it. | borrowed |
| रीछ / ريچهـ baṛā rīchh / chhoṭā rīchh | Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) | 'the big bear' / 'the little bear' A calque, almost certainly of Arabic ad-dubb al-akbar / al-aṣghar rather than of English, since Fallon himself glosses sapt-rishī with 'A. dub-i-asgar'. The word rīchh is the inherited Indo-Aryan reflex of Sanskrit ṛkṣa, which in Sanskrit already meant both 'bear' and 'star' - so the calque lands on a word that was etymologically waiting for it. | vernacular |
| झुमका / جهمکا jhumkā (sāt sahelyoṅ kā jhūmkā) | Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) | 'the bell-shaped ear-drop'; in full 'the ear-drop of the seven girl-friends' jhumkā is the pendant cluster of an ear-ring; applied to the sky it names both the Bear and the Pleiades, which is a genuine ambiguity in the sources and not a slip - Platts gives both senses in one entry. The full phrase sāt sahelyoṅ kā jhūmkā ('the seven girl-friends') fixes it on the Bear. | folk |
| सप्त / سپت sapt-r̤ishi (sapt-rikh) | Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) | 'the seven sages' The inherited Sanskrit name, retained unchanged; Platts and Fallon both file it as the standard learned equivalent of 'Charles's Wain'. Individual members keep their Sanskrit names in Hindi too: Platts s.v. marīćī (p. 1027) and vaśishṭh (p. 1194) each identify the sage with one of the seven stars. | borrowed |
| सूक / سوک sūk (also suk) | Venus | vernacular reflex of Sanskrit Śukra A tadbhava, not a tatsama: Prakrit sukko > Hindi sūk, which also names Friday. Fallon attaches a working rule to it - nothing auspicious is begun while Venus is set (i.e. during its heliocentric conjunction), a piece of practical astrology still observed at weddings. | borrowed |
| भलका / بهلکا bhalkā | Venus as morning star | 'daybreak' The same word means both 'the morning star' and 'a gold star or patch fixed on a nose-ring' - the ornament/star doubling seen also in jhumkā and in Punjabi kirhkaṭī. | folk |
| भुरका / بهرکا bhurkā | Venus as morning star | 'the dawn one' (Platts derives it from S. vyuṣṭa 'daybreak'; cf. Hindi bhor 'dawn') A purely vernacular formation on the word for daybreak, with no Sanskrit or Persian star name behind it. | folk |
| ujāle-kā tārā | Venus as morning star | 'the star of the daylight' Named from the watch it belongs to: Platts's preceding sub-entry is ujāle-kā pahrā, 'the morning watch, the watch which begins at dawn'. The star is the one that stands in that watch. | folk |
Sources
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. tārā, p. 304 link
- G. A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life (Calcutta, 1885), §1091, p. 283 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. jhāṛū, p. 400 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. ket, p. 980 link
- W. Crooke, 'Kine as Stars', North Indian Notes and Queries, vol. IV (1894-95), note 279 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. ākās, p. 64 link
- Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube, 'The Harina Harin Stars', North Indian Notes and Queries, vol. V (1895-96), note 517 link
- L. Whyte King, 'Names for the Milky Way', Panjab Notes and Queries, vol. II (Dec. 1884), note 308 link
- L. Whyte King, 'Names for heavenly objects', Panjab Notes and Queries, vol. II (Feb. 1885), note 523, p. 84 (correcting note 308) link
- R. C. Temple, 'Name for the Milky Way', Panjab Notes and Queries, vol. II (Mar. 1885), note 610, p. 102 link
- John Shakespear, A Dictionary, Hindustani and English, 3rd ed. (London, 1834), s.v. hath-iyā, p. 1851 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. hāthī, p. 1215 link
- G. H. Roberts, 'Oudh - The Pleiades - Popular astronomy', Indian Notes and Queries [late Panjab Notes and Queries], vol. IV (1886-87), note 566 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. bahulā, p. 190 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. baććā, p. 135 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. gić-pićiyā, p. 898 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. guććhā, p. 898 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. kachbach'iyā, p. 917 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. kaćpaćiyā, p. 818 link
- William Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, 2nd ed. (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1896), vol. I, p. 24 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. hath'iyā, p. 1197 link
- G. A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life (Calcutta, 1885), §1082, p. 271, with the table of asterisms pp. 272-73 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. dhur'ū, p. 656 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. rīchh, p. 722 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. jhum'kā, p. 499 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. sapta, p. 634 link
- S. W. Fallon, A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (Banaras/London, 1879), s.v. sūk, p. 794 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. bhalkā, p. 191 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. bhurkā, p. 186 link
- John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (London, 1884), s.v. ujālā, p. 23 link