Shiksha
/ˈʃɪk.ʃə/noun
Education or instruction, especially in Sanskrit and many South Asian languages.
Did you know?In Sanskrit, *śikṣā* is also the name of one of the six Vedangas, the traditional disciplines needed to preserve Vedic sound and ritual exactly, because a single wrong pronunciation was thought to matter spiritually.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*seik-
“to split, cut, or separate”
Sanskrit
Skt
śikṣā
“instruction, training, study; one of the auxiliary Vedic disciplines concerned with correct pronunciation”
Prakrit / Middle Indo-Aryan
MIA
sikkhā
“learning, training, instruction”
Hindi / Bengali / other modern Indo-Aryan languages
Indic
śikṣā / shiksha
“education, instruction, learning”
Modern English
English
shiksha
“a borrowing used in English for education or spiritual instruction, especially in Indian contexts”
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