Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary (BHS)
BHS is Volume II (the Dictionary) of Franklin Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit
Grammar and Dictionary (1953). It is the specialist reference for Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit
— the non-classical Sanskrit of the Buddhist texts (the Mahāvastu, Saddharmapuṇḍarīka,
Divyāvadāna, Lalitavistara, and others), full of forms a classical dictionary won't list.
Its hallmark is that almost every entry triangulates the word against Pali and classical
Sanskrit. Glosses are in English.
At a glance
| Code | BHS (GitHub repo BHS) |
| Full title | Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary, Vol. II: Dictionary |
| Author | Franklin Edgerton |
| Year / size | 1953 · ~634 pages |
| Direction | Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit → English |
| Accents | No |
| Source | csl-orig/v02/bhs/ |
| Open | Basic · List · Advanced · Mobile |
| Data | Downloads |
| csl-doc | bhs.rst (front matter / abbreviations) |
BHS is the dictionary half of a two-volume work; Volume I is Edgerton's Grammar.
Many entries cross-reference it with a section sign — e.g. 〔§ 23.17〕 points to a paragraph
of the Grammar, not to a text passage. CDSL digitizes the Dictionary (Vol. II).
When to use it
Reach for BHS when you are reading Buddhist Sanskrit and a word, form, or meaning isn't
in Monier-Williams — or looks like a Sanskritized Pali/Prakrit form. It is not a
general classical dictionary; for that use:
- Monier-Williams (MW) — the broad classical reference.
- Apte (AP90/AP) — classical reading with numbered senses.
Use BHS alongside them: it tells you whether a form is shared with Pali, how it relates
to a classical Sanskrit counterpart, and where it occurs in the Buddhist canon.
Looking up a word
Open the Basic display, choose your input/output transliteration (see Encoding & Transliteration), and type the headword. The List and Advanced displays browse the index and search inside entries — see Search & Display.
Reading an entry
BHS sets headwords and Sanskrit in {@…@} (bold), English glosses in {%…%} (italic), tags
languages with <lang> and literary sources with <ls>, and puts the citation locus in
〔 〕 brackets. The entry akampiya "unshakable" (csl-orig/v02/bhs/bhs.txt):
<L>14<pc>001,2<k1>akampiya<k2>akampiya
{@akampiya@}¦, <lex>adj.</lex> (= <lang>Pali</lang> <ab>id.</ab>, <lang>Skt.</lang> ˚pya), {%unshakable%}: <ls>Gv</ls> 〔25.21〕 (<ab>vs</ab>).
| In the source | Meaning |
|---|---|
<pc>001,2 | page-column reference (p. 1, col. 2) |
{@akampiya@} | the headword — the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit form (search key <k1> is SLP1) |
<lex>adj.</lex> | grammatical category (adjective) |
(= <lang>Pali</lang> id., <lang>Skt.</lang> ˚pya) | the cognate triangulation: identical in Pali; the classical Sanskrit form would be akampya (˚pya abbreviates the differing ending) |
{%unshakable%} | the English gloss |
<ls>Gv</ls> 〔25.21〕 | a Buddhist-text citation — here the Gaṇḍavyūha — with the locus (page.line) in 〔 〕 |
(<ab>vs</ab>) | the passage is in verse (vs), as opposed to prose |
See Data Formats for the full markup reference, and the
csl-doc page
for Edgerton's text abbreviations (e.g. Mv = Mahāvastu, SP = Saddharmapuṇḍarīka).
What makes it distinctive
- Pali / Sanskrit triangulation. Nearly every entry marks whether the form is shared with
Pali (
= Pali …) and how it maps to classical Sanskrit — the core scholarly value. - Indexes the Buddhist canon. Citations point into the Mahāvastu, Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, Divyāvadāna, Mahāvyutpatti, and many more, by abbreviation + locus.
- Records non-classical forms. Headwords, meanings, and morphology that MW and Apte omit because they fall outside classical usage.
- Bound to a Grammar. The
〔§ …〕references send you to Vol. I (the Grammar) for the phonological/morphological explanation.
See also
- Monier-Williams (MW) · Apte (AP90) — the classical references
- The full catalog of all 42 dictionaries
- Abbreviations & Citations — how to cite a dictionary
- csl-doc bhs.rst