Bhoja, Nāmamālikā (NMMB)
NMMB is the Nāmamālikā ("garland of names") attributed to King Bhoja — a compact
synonym dictionary (kośa) in verse, in the same genre as
Abhidhānacintāmaṇi (ABCH) and Abhidhānaratnamālā (ARMH). It groups the
synonyms of a concept together, arranged in three subject sections (prakaraṇa).
It is the newest addition to the CDSL collection (June 2026), digitized by the
sanskrit-kosha project.
At a glance
| Code | NMMB (source in csl-orig/v02/nmmb; no separate repo) |
| Full title | Nāmamālikā (title page: Bhoja-saṃgṛhītā Nāmamālikā, "the Nāmamālikā compiled by Bhoja") |
| Author | Attributed to Bhoja |
| Edition | Ed. E. D. Kulkarni & V. D. Gokhale, Deccan College, Poona 1955 (Sources of Indo-Aryan Lexicography 18) |
| Size | ~40 pages · 506 synonym groups |
| Type | Synonym kośa (Sanskrit, in verse) |
| Accents | No |
| Source | csl-orig/v02/nmmb/ |
| Open | Basic · List · Advanced · Mobile |
| Data | Downloads |
Unlike most CDSL dictionaries, NMMB's web application lives under a 2026 path
(/scans/NMMBScan/2026/web/…), not the usual 2020. There is no csl-doc page for it yet.
When to use it
Reach for NMMB to see how the medieval kośa tradition lists the names of a concept —
it answers "what are the Sanskrit words for X?" in three thematic sweeps (heaven, sky, earth).
For meanings in English use Monier-Williams (MW); for the larger classical synonym
kośas see ABCH and ARMH, and the encyclopedic SKD /
VCP.
Looking up a word
Open the Basic display, pick your input/output transliteration (see Encoding & Transliteration), and type a word — you land in the synonym group that contains it. See Search & Display.
Reading an entry
Each entry is a synonym group (<syns>) for one concept, followed by the verse lines
that state them. The very first entry — the names of svarga (heaven), from
csl-orig/v02/nmmb/nmmb.txt:
<L>1<pc>0001
<eid>1<syns>svarga-puM,nAka-puM,trilokAgrya-puM,suDAvAsa-puM,buDAlaya-puM,mandAkinIDara-puM,divya-puM,Kapura-klI,meruSfNgAgranagara-klI,DArADarapaTasTita-klI
svarge nAkatrilokAgryasuDAvAsabuDAlayAH .
mandAkinIDaro divyaH KapuraM taM napuMsakam .. 2 ..
;l{0005}
meruSfNgAgranagaraM DArADarapaTasTitam .
<LEND>
| In the source | Meaning |
|---|---|
<L>1<pc>0001 | Cologne record id 1, on printed page 1 |
<eid>1 | the entry (synonym-group) id |
<syns>svarga-puM,nAka-puM,… | the synonyms extracted from the verse, each tagged with gender (-puM masculine, -klI neuter) |
svarge nAka…napuMsakam .. 2 .. | the original verse (numbered) stating those synonyms — note it even says taṃ napuṃsakam, "that one is neuter" |
;l{0005} | a print line-number marker (page markers are ;p{…}, section titles ;k{…}) |
See Data Formats for the markup reference.
What makes it distinctive
- A pocket kośa. Three prakaraṇas — svargādi- (heaven &c.), gaganādi- (sky &c.), bhūmyādi-nāmadheya-prakaraṇa (earth &c.) — 506 groups in ~40 pages, against ABCH's six kāṇḍas.
- Headwords are an editorial layer. The
<syns>headword lists were first drafted with AI tools (dharmamitra.org) and then manually corrected by Dr. Dhaval Patel against the word-index appendix of the printed book (per the source metadata) — the verse text itself is the Sansknet digitization, proofread by Navya Sahiti Kasturi. - A kosha-project import. Digitized under the sanskrit-kosha/kosha project (GNU GPL v3.0, funded by the Shree Ramkrishna Knowledge Foundation) and added to CDSL in June 2026.
Headword key conventions
NMMB is a synonym thesaurus, not an alphabetical headword dictionary. There is no single
<k1> key per entry — search matches the synonyms listed inside <syns>. Entries are grouped
by subject section (;k{…} gives the prakaraṇa name); each group is identified by a
sequential <eid> number.
| Convention | Marker / form | Example | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject section | ;k{…} | ;k{svargAdinAmaDeyaprakaraRam} | The thematic prakaraṇa (here "names of heaven &c.") |
| Entry id | <eid>N | <eid>1 | Identifies the synonym group, not an alphabetical key |
| Synonym list | <syns>word-gender, … | svarga-puM,nAka-puM,…,Kapura-klI | Gender codes: -puM masc., -strI fem., -klI neut. |
| Page / line markers | ;p{…} / ;l{…} | ;l{0005} | Print page and line numbers of the 1955 edition |
| Search | Search on any synonym to find its group | type nAka to reach the svarga entry | There is no single alphabetical headword to look up |
Abbreviations
No machine-readable abbreviation list yet; the legend lives in the scanned front matter.
See also
- Abhidhānacintāmaṇi (ABCH) (with its supplement and gleanings) · Abhidhānaratnamālā (ARMH) — the classic synonym kośas
- SKD / VCP — the large modern kośas
- The full catalog