Diya (दीपम्) and the lamp

By Baldmichael Theresoluteprotector’sson

I read this article the other day by K Anil Roy.

I was struck by the word diyas meaning ‘the lamps’.

Looking at the word I immediately thought of the word ‘days’. Of course a day can be a period of about 24 hours here on earth (it is strictly the passage of a period of light followed by a period of darkness).

But day is as opposed to night and day is light like the light from a lamp.

Wikipedia has some useful information.

A diya, diyo, deya,[1] deeya, dia, divaa, deepa, deepam, deep, deepak or saaki (Sanskrit: दीपम्, romanized: Dīpam) is an oil lamp made from clay or mud with a cotton wick dipped in oil or ghee. These lamps are commonly used in the Indian subcontinent and they hold sacred prominence in Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Jain prayers as well as religious rituals, ceremonies and festivals including Diwali.

From

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diya_(lamp)

There are obviously a lot of Romanised word variations, and apart from saaki start similarly ‘de’ or ‘di’.

It is hopefully obvious from the sound that ‘de’ or ‘di’ are like ‘the’ where the d becomes ‘th’. In German we would have ‘danke’ for ‘thanks’ for example.

Diya, diyo, deya, deeya, dia

The endings here are all largely similar and the ‘ya’ is like the ‘ja’ in German meaning ‘yes’.

A ‘yes’ is a positive and is representative of a light as opposed to ‘no’ which is representative of darkness.

So in essence we have ‘the yes’ or ‘the light’ or as translated ‘the lamp’.

Diva

The ‘va’ here is related to va in French as in ‘il va’, ‘he goes’. The implications are that light helps you to go, to travel as without light one cannot see where you are going.

However, diva as a word means essentially ‘goddess’.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diva#Etymology

So the sense is in a being bringing light. Note also that va is an abbreviation for Virginia as in the state in the USA, and that this was named after Elizabeth I of England, known as ‘The virgin queen’.

Deepa, deepam, deep, deepak

Again the dee is ‘the’. The ‘p’ or ‘pa’ is related to ‘papa’ meaning ‘father’.

It is also related to ‘ap’ meaning ‘son of’ in Welsh.

So we can have ‘dee-p-am’, ‘the father am’ or ‘the son am’. The son sounds like ‘sun’, a light giver and a son is ‘the light’ as it were of a father.

The ‘k’ represents ‘head’ such as ‘Kopf’ in German. So one has ‘dee-pa-k’, ‘the son of the head’.

Saaki

I note with interest that saaki in Yoruba, an African language, means ‘king’.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saaki

There is the sense that the king is the light of his people, or at least should be. Louis XIV of France was known as the Sun King.

In Japanese a related word is ‘saki’, from咲 (sa) meaning “blossom” and 希 (ki) meaning “hope” according to this link.

https://www.behindthename.com/name/saki

This gives the meaning of a blossoming hope, similar to a light in a dark place enabling you to find what you are looking for.

Anagrams

I decided to anagram diyas to see what we can glean. These are full anagrams.

Daisy – this is a flower and used as a girl’s name. It sounds like ‘day see’

Ai Syd – ai means ‘yes’ as in ‘aye’, for example in parliament in the UK have the ‘ayes’ and the ‘noes’. Ai sounds like ‘eye’.

Syd can be considered thus phonetically: s-why-dee. Add ‘ai’ at the beginning and you can get phonetically ‘eyes wide’.

When your eyes are wide you can see as opposed to when you close them and things are dark.

Note syd derives from ‘sid’ and is said to mean “spacious, wide”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sidney#English

Is day – self-explanatory

I days – self-explanatory

In Spanish

Y días – meaning ‘and days’ according to Google Translate

Summary and final thoughts

So there you have it. I could go further but that will suffice for today.

Here in the northern hemisphere we approach the solstice when the days will start to grow lighter again and we can look forward to the spring once winter has passed.

In the meantime we continue to light lamps of all sorts to ‘lighten our darkness’. Not just the physical lights of course but also spiritual lights, the light of truth.

In India you light your diyas, your lamps, your ‘day sees’ so that you can remember the day, the light which enables you to dispel the shadows that can make us fearful, especially as children.

We are all at one level children of God but many reject His Fatherhood. As is written of Jesus Christ:

“He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”

And in these dark chaotic covid times those of us who follow Jesus remember this:

“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Look out for the sign of Baldmichael, he will be back!

P.S. For more on language try TAPPER’S BAR in my World Menu. Just use your browser’s ‘find’ button to get to it quickly once on the page.