Celestial Beings

[camerata]

Anyone know the difference between theva, thevada and thep? My Thai friends assure me there is a difference. I think I've also heard thevaburoot and thevathida while watching Chinese TV series.

[Grover]

Anyone know the difference between theva, thevada and thep? My Thai friends assure me there is a difference. I think I've also heard thevaburoot and thevathida while watching Chinese TV series.

You're right with the basic meaning of celestial beings, or heavenly beings. It's a word coming from sanskrit, and its similar to english words like "divine", "divination", "pop diva" etc. For a book definition your best bet is to get the small green thai-english-pali dictionary by the famous scholarly Buddhist monk, forgot his name... or even better, the thai translation of the Pali-English-Dictionary by the Rydds fellow (its a massive, comprehensive 8-10 volume dictionary, the BEST but hard to locate).

[sabaijai]

Anyone know the difference between theva, thevada and thep? My Thai friends assure me there is a difference. I think I've also heard thevaburoot and thevathida while watching Chinese TV series.

I just checked the latest edition of RID, and it appears that theva (thewa)/à·Ç- does not normally occur on its own but rather as a prefix, meaning 'divine' or related to a celestial being. It derives from the Pali-Sanskrit deva, which means the same thing.

Thewada/à·Ç´Ò is the generic term used to mean 'celestial being'and derives from the P/S devata.

According to RID, thep/à·¾ is a synonym for thewada and occurs both on its own and as a prefix/suffix.

Thephabut/à·¾ºØÉ (which you didn't ask about) is a thewada of male gender, thevathida the female. I couldn't find thewaburoot/à·ÇºØÃØÉ in RID and found only four mentions in Thai Google, and there only used as Thai nicks on forums (one user glossed his nick as 'human who becomes lost confused and thinks he's a celestial being'). I did find thephaburutà·¾ºØÃØÉ, however, where it appears to be the same as thephabut.

Of course the ¾- and Ç- are often interchangeable in Thai transliterations of P/S terms.

[Richard W]

Thephabut/à·¾ºØÉ (which you didn't ask about) is a thewada of male gender

That's quite a shift in meaning - it's literal meaning is 'son of a god', and in a Hindi film I've heard the original form devaputra used of Alexander the Great, who let it be said that he was the son of Jupiter Ammon.

[Rikker]

To help clear up any remaining confusion, notice that in Thai words from Pali/Sanskrit, the letters ว and พ (often? always?) go back to the same root. So in Thai, words like วิชัย and พิชัย are from the same source, and mean 'victory.'

In this case, some of the forms used in Thai have ว, like เทว- (which only works as a prefix, unless it's written เทวา), other have พ, like เทพ. These forms combine with other words to form new compounds. เทพ + ธิดา (daughter) = เทพธิดา [เทพ-ทิ-ดา], a female divine being. เทพ + บุตร = เทพบุตร [เทพ-พะ-บุด], a male divine being. Or เทว- + บุตร = เทวบุตร [เท-วะ-บุด]. These uses are all quite similar in meaning, though.

Often such words from the same root develop different meanings in the borrowing language. For example, พิเศษ and วิเศษ are clearly related, but have developed different meanings: special vs. magical (though วิเศษ can also mean 'excellent,' 'superb,' et cetera).

[Richard W]

To help clear up any remaining confusion, notice that in Thai words from Pali/Sanskrit, the letters ว and พ (often? always?) go back to the same root.

Often, rather than always. Basically, P/S b (พ) always gives พ, but P/S v (ว) can give either. b was relatively infrequent in P/S. One notable correspondence is that the Pali correspondent of Sanskrit rv is Pali bb.

In the script of the Sri Vijaya, there were not distinct letters for b and w, and the distinction in the modern scripts seems to be a later repair of a defect that had crept into the script. The deficiency certainly affected the 10th century Khmer script. I think therefore that P/S v = พ is a sign of an old loan, rather as P/S p = บ before a vowel is a sign that the word has come through Khmer.

Edited September 13, 2006 by Richard W