Akharas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Communal gathering places or lineages of Hindu ascetics or warriors, often associated with specific spiritual traditions and martial training within Indian culture
2. Organized congregations or sects of Hindu monks and fighters, known for combining religious devotion with physical discipline and communal living
3. Distinct assemblies or groups of Hindu holy men and martial practitioners, recognized for their spiritual teachings and combat skills in traditional Indian contexts

Etymology: The Sanskrit "akṣavāṭa" meant an enclosure for dice-playing, built from "akṣa", "dice" or "axle", and "vāṭa", "enclosure". Over the centuries the word shrank in form and shifted in sense: Prakrit forms like "akkhāḍaya" and then Hindi "akhāṛā" kept the idea of a walled ground or arena, and in Hindi it came to mean a wrestling pit or gymnasium where practitioners trained. The English word is borrowed directly from Hindi, so the dice-house origin survives only in the older Sanskrit compound. The sense of a place of contest did not stay confined to wrestling. Akhara came to name the training grounds of martial and devotional communities, and by extension the organized groups that trained and lived there. Those groups, the sects of ascetic holy men and armed fighters, are what the plural "akharas" now usually names in English. The plural is simply the Hindi form with an English "s" added, a common pattern for borrowed nouns.

Synonyms: wrestling arenas, training centers