Words Without Their Meanings: The Corruption of Terms

The Book

Bhram Ka Pulinda (भ्रम का पुलिंदा, roughly “A Bundle of Delusions”) is a Hindi-language polemic on ancient Indian history, published by Samyak Prakashan, New Delhi. The first edition appeared in 2021 (Buddhist Era 2565) and a second edition followed the same year. It runs to roughly 175 pages and was priced at ₹250 (ISBN 978-93-91503-14-7).

The book argues that India’s original culture was a Buddhist-centered “Samyak culture,” and that a later priestly class rewrote history, language and religious vocabulary to make Brahmanical and Vedic tradition appear ancient. It moves through the Stone Age, the Indus Valley, the Mauryan, Shunga, Satavahana, Kushan, Gupta and Pala periods, and then the Mughal era, using photographs of inscriptions, coins and sculptures as its main evidence. Its recurring demand is that claimed ancient texts and authors be shown on stone or metal inscriptions. Its tone is combative, with frequent insults aimed at its opponents, and it is better read as advocacy than as neutral scholarship.

It is presented as part of a series. The author repeatedly refers readers to his earlier books from the same publisher, Vaidik Yug ka Ghalmel (“The Muddle of the Vedic Age”) and Buddhijiviyon ka Shadyantra (“The Conspiracy of the Intellectuals”).

The Author

Rajiv Patel is credited as the author, with Kumar Singh listed as co-author and Sanjay Kumar named in the credits. The front matter gives little biographical detail, and the book does not state his academic qualifications or institutional affiliation. His writing places him within the Ambedkarite and Buddhist-revivalist stream of Hindi publishing, which reads Indian history through a Buddhist and anti-caste lens.

The author’s framework

Patel’s most distinctive idea in the second half of the book is grammatical. He argues that in what he calls the Samyak period (roughly to the 9th century CE), Pali words such as bhagavā, deva, isivara or dhamma were guṇavācak saṃjñā: “quality nouns,” honorifics earned by conduct and open to anyone. After that, he says, they were “refined” into Sanskrit and turned into proper names, caste labels, or names of supernatural beings. The words stayed; the meanings were swapped. He calls the process an “implant” of new content into old vocabulary, and says that commerce in these words is how the priestly class lives.

He gives the same template for each term: here is the Pali usage, here is the inscription or chant that proves it, and here is how it was later hijacked.

The terms, one by one

Bhagavān (bhagavā). From the Pali formula bhagga-rāgo, bhagga-doso, bhagga-moho, “one who has broken attachment, hatred and delusion.” The title was earned by liberation, and Patel says only two people held it: the Buddha and Mahavira. Later usage applies it to supernatural beings and miracle-workers.

Deva. Not a celestial being but an arhat monk who gave Dhamma teaching. He cites the Buddha’s title satthā devamanussānaṃ (“teacher of devas and humans”) and argues that “devas” here must be real, teachable people. He reads the place-names Devas, Deva-kothar (Deur Kothar, a Madhya Pradesh site with many stupas), Deva-talab and Deoria as places where teaching monks lived. Ashoka and Samudragupta’s epithet Devānaṃpiya means “dear to the teaching monks,” not “dear to the gods.”

Īśvara (isivara). Patel derives it from isi (Skt. ṛṣi, a researcher into the outer, material world) plus vara (“excellent”), parallel to munivara for an inner-world researcher like the Buddha. Ishvara thus meant an honoured scientist, not a creator. He finds support in Sarnath’s old name, Isipatana, “where sages gathered.”

Sarasvatī (surasatī). He splits it as sura (vowel-sound) plus sati (mindfulness, the Eightfold Path’s sammā-sati), meaning the disciplined practice of sounds that makes speech and letters possible, later turned into a goddess worshipped for learning.

Pitṛ Pakṣa and Durgā Pūjā. The three-month rains retreat (vassāvāsa) ended in the month of Ashvin. In its first fortnight, monks’ meditation was assessed (pitu pakkha sādhanā); in the second, nuns’ stricter practice was (duggama mātu pakkha, “the difficult mother-fortnight,” because nuns keep 311 rules to the monks’ 227). Vaishnava tradition, he says, re-spelled the first as pitṛ pakṣa śrāddha, and the Shakta tradition re-spelled the second as durgā. He ties the nine-day Durga ritual to eastern India, the old Pala territory, and notes the Pala-era Tara images with eight arms.

Sanātana. From the Dhammapada’s esa dhammo sanantano, “this is the eternal law.” He reads it as the unchanging natural laws (fire burns, water cools, anger agitates the mind), not a religion, and calls it illogical to tie something eternal to a sect that has a start date.

Dharma/Dhamma. In Pali there is no conjunct rma, so it was written dhamma; the meaning was “nature’s law” (attano sabhāvaṃ dhāretī ti dhammo), shared by all. In the later period it became a word for a sect, parallel to sampradāya, panth, mazhab and “religion,” each tied to a group.

Adhyātma (ajjhatta). Pali ajjhatta means simply “within oneself.” It is the study of what happens in one’s own body and mind (why anger agitates, why joy lifts). Later use added soul and God, and made someone “spiritual” for ritual practice.

Ātmā. He argues that attā in Pali means “self” in the ordinary sense (self-respect, self-reliance), and anattā means “not one’s own, not permanent.” The soul as an unseen entity is a later addition. His test: the Buddhist universities taught no such doctrine, and neighbouring countries that preserved their teachings have no such concept.

Pūjā. In the Buddhist period, honouring a guide meant following and absorbing his example (sīla, samādhi, paññā), not asking for favours. He cites the sayings of Osho for the idea that begging a dead being is pointless, and notes that today’s pūjā and “prayer” have merged.

Ārya/Anārya (ariya/anariya). One who follows the Eightfold Path versus one who is ignorant or in bad company (anariya, “not yet trained”). He says that these became group labels, then, to evade the Mughal jizya tax, Brahmins claimed foreign “Aryan” ancestry. He lists the contradictory homelands that Indian writers gave for the Aryans (Volga, Arctic, Tibet, Central Asia). In the south, he derives Ayyar and Iyengar from ariyo.

Brāhmaṇa (bamhan, bāmhan, bābhan). In Ashoka’s inscriptions, bāmhana means scholar. It became a caste label around the 9th-10th centuries, and lājā-putta (“king’s son”) became rājaputra and “Rajput.”

Hind, Jambudvīpa, Sanskrit. Hida in Ashoka’s Lumbini pillar means “here.” It later became the name of a country. Jambudīpa he reads as “an island of self-reliance.” Saṃskṛta, “refined,” is for him the very proof of derivation.

Evaluation

Where there is a real kernel.

• Words do change. Dhamma → dharma, bhikkhu → bhikṣu and deva are real Prakrit-Sanskrit pairs, and Buddhist texts use deva, brāhmaṇa and ariya in ethical senses. The Dhammapada has a whole chapter (Brāhmaṇavagga) saying a true Brahmin is defined by conduct, not birth.
• Devānaṃpiya is a real puzzle; later Buddhist commentary glosses it in various ways, and scholars do debate it.
• The Buddhist redefinition of terms is attested. Ariya as “noble” in the Eightfold Path sense and isi as “seer” are authentic Pali usages.
• Sarasvati as a river and goddess is attested in the Rigveda, but the discussion of its later evolution into a goddess of speech is a genuine historical topic.
• Pitṛ pakṣa and Navaratri do coincide with the post-monsoon season, and scholars discuss how seasonal festivals acquired different religious meanings.

Where it fails.

• Direction of borrowing. Most of these words are older in Sanskrit than in Pali. Deva, ṛṣi, īśvara, ātman, dharma, brāhmaṇa, ārya and sarasvatī all appear in the Rigveda and Upanishads, which linguistic and comparative evidence places well before Ashoka. Ārya is in the Rigveda and in Old Persian inscriptions (Darius calls himself ariya). Pali words are Middle Indo-Aryan developments from those forms. The pattern is the opposite of what Patel claims.
• Buddhist texts themselves use the “later” meanings. The Pali canon speaks of gods (devā) who live in heavens, of Brahma, of Sakka (Indra), and of rebirth among them, which cannot all be reduced to arhat monks. It also criticizes attā in the Upanishadic sense, which implies that the soul doctrine was already in circulation in the Buddha’s time.
• Etymologies by sound-play. Splitting sarasvatī into sura + sati, or tying Deoria to deva-ariya, is folk etymology. Sarasvatī is a river name from Old Iranian Harahvaitī (Avestan), a cognate that shows a shared Indo-Iranian origin and cannot be produced by a Pali back-formation.
• Pitṛ pakṣa and Durga Puja. No Buddhist text describes a “paternal fortnight” of meditation examinations. The Pali vassa retreat runs from the full moon of Asalha, and its end (pavāraṇā) is a ceremony of mutual invitation for correction, not a graded test. Brahmanical śrāddha is described in the Dharmasutras and Grihyasutras, which precede the Pala period. The Devi Mahatmya, a core Durga text, is usually dated about the 5th-6th century CE.
• Jizya and “Aryan” ancestry. There is no evidence of Brahmins being exempted from jizya on foreign-origin grounds; Brahmins were at times exempted as a class by some rulers, while Akbar abolished the tax, and Aurangzeb reimposed it. The Aryan-migration debate arose in 19th-century European scholarship, not in Mughal courts.
• Sanatana. Sanātana appears in the Rigveda and Upanishads, and sanantana in the Dhammapada reflects shared usage, not a Buddhist monopoly.

What can be taken from it

Patel is right that vocabulary is a battlefield: religious movements routinely redefine inherited words, and Buddhism did so deliberately with brāhmaṇa, ariya, deva and dhamma. That is a legitimate and well-studied point. His error is to treat this as a one-way theft by a single community, which requires reversing the documented chronology of the words. The record shows a shared Indo-Aryan vocabulary which Buddhists, Jains and Brahmanical thinkers each reinterpreted for their own purposes, often in conversation with one another.