Last updated: Jun 17, 2026

Rādhākānta Deva, Śabdakalpadruma (`SKD`)

The Śabdakalpadruma ("the wishing-tree of words") is an encyclopedic Sanskrit→Sanskrit lexicon — a Sanskrit headword defined in Sanskrit — compiled by Rājā Rādhākānta Deva and his circle and published in Calcutta over seven volumes (1822–1858). It is the first indigenous-Indian large-scale lexicon of the modern Sanskrit-philological tradition, and within CDSL it marks a genre boundary: where Monier-Williams, Apte, and the Petersburg dictionaries are structured bilingual works, SKD and Vācaspatyam (VCP) are encyclopedic kośa works whose source-discipline lives in prose, not in tags.

At a glance


Code	`SKD` (GitHub repo `SKD`)
Full title	Śabdakalpadruma (the "wishing-tree of words")
Compiler	Rājā Rādhākānta Deva Bahādur
Devanāgarī edition	expanded & published by Varadāprasāda Vasu and his brother Haricaraṇa Vasu
Year / size	compiled Calcutta 1822–1858 · *7 kāṇḍas; the Vasu Devanāgarī edition (the one CDSL follows) is Śaka 1808 = 1886*
Direction	Sanskrit → Sanskrit (monolingual, encyclopedic)
Source	`csl-orig/v02/skd/`
Open	Basic · List · Advanced · Mobile
Data	Downloads · Scans
Front matter	skdpref.rst — the transcribed title pages, Publisher's Note, and Sanskrit preface
Profile	csl-atlas SKD profile — the structural and iti-citation analysis this page draws on
csl-doc	skd.rst

When to use it

Reach for SKD when you want Sanskrit's own lexical tradition rather than a European gloss: encyclopedic definitions, with senses, grammar, and authorities woven through Sanskrit prose, and quotations from the literary and prior-kośa canon. It is also the work the European dictionaries lean on — PWG cites SKD (as ŚKDR.) more than 20,000 times.

Pair it with Vācaspatyam (VCP), the other great Sanskrit→Sanskrit kośa.
For an English gloss of the same headword, cross-read Monier-Williams (MW).
Reading SKD requires comfortable Sanskrit — the entire entry is in Sanskrit.

From the author's preface (mukhabandhana)

The dictionary states its own purpose, method, and name in its Sanskrit preface. The English renderings below are condensed from the mukhabandhana, translated from the Devanāgarī front matter (transcription in csl-atlas).

Why it was made. Among the eighteen learned languages, Sanskrit is the speech of the gods — the most excellent, everywhere the same, honoured by all; in it the gods and seers composed the eighteen sciences. Yet in this land no single lexicon reveals the technical terms of those sciences — they are understood only through scattered commentaries; and the older verse synonym-collections, having no index, make a wanted word very hard to find. Weighing these defects, for the benefit of others (paropakāra), from my student days to the present, with great labour and the help of many scholars, I gathered words from every available lexicon and from the whole canon — Veda and Vedāṅga, grammar and prosody, astronomy, poetics, medicine, music, the darśanas, smṛti, purāṇa, tantra, even the crafts and cookery — and the roots from Vopadeva's Kavikalpadruma, and set them all in alphabetical order, in prose, for easy finding.

Its name. As whatever is asked of the heavenly wishing-tree (kalpadruma) is obtained, so whatever word one seeks at this earthly Śabdakalpadruma is found — hence the name. And because the work is figured as a tree, its seven divisions are called kāṇḍa (branches).

A note on order. The auspicious verses and contents stand after the body, not before: the first kāṇḍa had already been printed and given away to eager scholars at home and abroad before those verses were composed, so the preface was placed before the remaining kāṇḍas — the auspicious opening secured anyway by the word atha ("now") at the head of the work.

The lexicon was printed at the author's own expense and given away freely to scholars, kinsmen, and any who asked.

Reading an entry

SKD entries carry almost none of the angle-bracket markup the bilingual dictionaries use: there is no <lex> for grammar and no <ls> for citations. Instead:

Grammar is stated inline in Sanskrit (e.g. …iti puṁsi "thus, in the masculine").
Sources are named with the formula … iti <source> — literally "thus [says] <source>", which marks the preceding sense or quotation as drawn from the named work. This inline iti is the operative citation apparatus (about 1.7 per record, ~72,000 across the dictionary); it is what <ls> is in MW, but in prose.

The opening of the entry for the negative particle a (csl-orig/v02/skd/skd.txt, trimmed):

<L>2<pc>1-001-a<k1>a<k2>a
a¦, vya, aBAvaH . alpaH . nizeDaH . anukampA . iti medinI .
(naYo'yamakAraH zaqviDAn naYarTAn boDayati . yaTA, --
 “tatsAdfSyamaBAvaSca tadanyatvaM tadalpatA …” iti …)
<LEND>

In the source	Meaning
`a¦`	the headword a, then the `¦` bar into the body
`vya`	the gender mark — here `vya` = avyaya, "indeclinable" (the preface's scheme, below)
`aBAvaH . alpaH . nizeDaH . anukampA`	senses, in Sanskrit (absence, smallness, negation, compassion)
`iti medinI`	the citation formula — "thus [says] the Medinī", i.e. the Medinīkośa, a prior lexicon
`“…” iti`	a quoted verse, closed by `iti`

The reader who knows the iti-formula reads the source attribution straight off the page; a tag-based search for <ls> finds nothing, because the citation is part of the prose.

What the preface says about reading an entry

Because SKD's structure is otherwise unmarked, the author's own description of the layout is the best reading guide (from the mukhabandhana):

Order within an entry. Headword (nominative singular) → its gender (for a noun) or anubandha (for a root) → synonyms and vernacular equivalents → then the authority (pramāṇa); failing that, a usage (prayoga); failing that, the etymology (vyutpatti).

Gender abbreviations (the mark right after the headword):

Mark		Meaning
`पुं`	puṁ	masculine
`स्त्री`	strī	feminine
`क्ली`	klī	neuter
`त्रि`	tri	"of three genders" — common / adjectival
`व्य`	vya	indeclinable (avyaya) — as in the `a` entry above

Punctuation. A single daṇḍa । stands before a word's authority; a double daṇḍa ॥ closes a different-meaning word; a brace } groups synonyms that occur together; a flower-mark * opens a special sub-topic. (The print also prints the last word's first few letters at each column head, for quick lookup.)

What makes it distinctive

Monolingual and encyclopedic. ~42,500 records, with a mean entry roughly seven times the length of an MW entry — paragraphs of prose, not slot-and-block definitions.
The indigenous kośa tradition. SKD synthesises the earlier lexicons — Amarakośa, Medinīkośa, Hemacandra, Halāyudha, and others — and the literary canon.
Roots, not just words. Unlike earlier kośas, which collected only words, SKD folds in 1,754 verbal roots from Vopadeva's Kavikalpadruma dhātupāṭha, classed by gaṇa (the preface lists them) — so a word and the root it springs from sit in one work.
Made for the public good. The preface records that it was compiled over decades from the author's student days, printed at his own expense, and given away freely — a work of paropakāra.
A source for the Europeans. It is the chief indigenous lexicon PWG draws on.
A genre boundary for digital analysis. Because its apparatus is prose, tools built for tagged bilingual dictionaries do not transfer — see the csl-atlas SKD profile.

At a glance​

When to use it​

From the author's preface (mukhabandhana)​

Reading an entry​

What the preface says about reading an entry​

What makes it distinctive​

See also​