The root of Doubts

When look in a dictionary of Sanskrit to find out the meaning of a root-sound, we find that often a root-sound has more than one meaning. How do we justify the multiple meanings attached to one root-sound? Let me give you one example. One of the Sanskrit words for doubt is sandeha. When we split this word to arrive at the root of it we find that this word has two components in it – sam and deha. The sound ‘sam’ is a prefix which refers to the experience of completeness, totality and perfection. We also see this in the English word ‘sum’. The next sound in the word sandeha is ‘deha’. The sound deha has been derived from the root-sound ‘dih’ which primarily means ‘to gather, collect, pile-up’ etc. This is the first level of meanings of root dih. Now let us start experiencing this. Now we are in a group and sitting opposite to each other and we have decided to collect or gather or pile up, say books. So we kept bringing books and piling up. Now we see that there were few books and slowly it started increasing and now there are so many books. This original experience of gathering leads to the experience of growth, increase, prosperity etc. So the root dih along with its primary meaning ‘to gather’ also means ‘to increase, grow, prosper’ etc. This is the second level of meanings of the root. This also leads to another experience. When things grow they also cover. When books are piled up between two groups they are unable to see each other. Now we see that ‘to cover’ is another very important meaning of root dih. To cover also means to hide, to conceal, to anoint, to plaster, to smear etc. This is the third level of meanings of root dih. Now you see how from one root idea different ideas have come forth. This is how one root-sound in Sanskrit has so many meanings attached to it. Let us come to the meaning of the word deha and sandeha. Taking into account the later meaning we can very well explain that the body is called deha in Sanskrit because it is a cover for the soul. It conceals the soul within. The word sandeha which generally means doubt, is in its root sense ‘perfect concealment or covering’. So in a state of doubt the consciousness is perfectly clouded, the reality is covered, the truth is hidden, there is no clarity in the vision, one is confused and gropes in the darkness and obscurity.

The analysis given above shows that one root-sound has multiple levels of meanings which correspond to different experiences related to it. We also find that all these meanings are interdependent, not isolated from each other. They form an integrated whole of many levels of experiences, all in a single root-sound. Further, these multiple meanings can each be used to derive various words from the root-sound by adding prefixes and suffixes as per the rules of Sanskrit Grammar. So we see here that a single root-sound referring to multiple experiences and each of these experiences lead to derived words containing that specific experience.

Furthermore, as we have seen earlier in the case of synonyms in Sanskrit that a single object has several words for its expression, each derived from a particular root-sound that has multiple levels of meaning and has the potentiality to generate enormous amount of vocabularies. Here we see a deeper unity which binds the derived words, root-sounds and many experiences together. So, when I look at Sanskrit from this angle I find that the very structure of the language explains the nature of complex unity, a greater unity underlying the multiplicity of forms, integrating all into a single whole.