Sanskrit : Hṛdaya

[allf100]

Hello,

प्रज्ञापारमिताहृदयसूत्र Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya

This is the name of a Buddhist scripture in Sanskrit. In Chinese it is named or translated as Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra.

I wonder what Hrdaya means in Sanskrit. Does it mean 'Heart Sutra" or anything else?

I copied and pasted either Hrdaya" or हृदयसूत्र into the searching box of an online Sanskrit dictionary, but got nothing.
http://spokensanskrit.org/index.php?mod ... au&anz=100

Thank you very much!

P.S. I hope I separate the Sanskrit compound wordप्रज्ञापारमिता हृदयसूत्र correctly, because I just can basically memorise those Sanskrit letters.

[jonm]

Hi alif100, that's right, हृदय hṛdaya means "heart" (and "soul," "mind," "spirit," etc.), and the second part is सूत्र sūtra.

Incidentally, Sanskrit हृदय hṛdaya and English heart are cognates. And so are Ancient Greek καρδία kardía (the ancestor, through Latin and French, of the English word cardiac) and Latin cor (the ancestor, through French, of the English word courage). All of these words ultimately come from Proto-Indo-European *ḱḗr (phonemically */ḱérd/ with a /d/ at the end, which I think makes some of those connections a little easier to see).

For studying the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit, this page might be helpful. For each sentence of the text, there's a translation, definitions of all the words, audio, commentary, and a diagram of the sentence structure. I think it would be better if they included Devanagari on the same page, and I'm not certain that everything is absolutely correct... In particular, I'm not sure about the sentence diagrams, and I noticed at least one English misspelling, holly instead of holy. Still, it looks like it could be a useful resource, as you wouldn't have to look up every word individually.

[allf100]

Thank you so much for your help!

It's very kind and thoughtful of you to share the relevant etymologies of the languages and to search the website of "Heart Sutra" for me.

That website you recommend is very helpful to me. I have been searching and gleaning the meanings of some Sanskrit words which are just transliteration in Heart Sutra from different websites.

Heartfelt appreciation, and have a good one there!

[jonm]

You're very welcome! Wish you all the best with your studies of the Heart Sutra. You have a good one there too!