ព្រះ

Khmer

Etymology

From Old Khmer vraḥ (“to be holy, sacred, divine; celestial or holy being”), of disputed origin.

Most dictionaries attribute the source of the Old Khmer as ultimately Sanskrit वर (vara, “best; excellent; foremost; holy; precious; top; valuable; etc”), although some authors maintain that it is an autochthonous Mon-Khmer word, for example Shorto (2006), who reconstructed Proto-Mon-Khmer *brah (“divine being”). Pain (2014)[1] disagreed with both theories, proposing that the Old Khmer originates as a reduced form of Sanskrit ब्राह्मण (brāhmaṇa, “relating to a Brahmin; divine”).

Compare Burmese ဘုရား (bhu.ra:); Telugu వరము (varamu), వరుడు (varuḍu); Thai พร (pɔɔn).

Pronunciation
Orthographic and Phonemic ព្រះ
b̥rḥ
WT romanisation prĕəh
(standard) IPA(key) /prĕəh/

Noun

ព្រះ • (prĕəh)

  1. Buddha
  2. God
  3. Lord
  4. count or earl (title)

Derived terms

Descendants

See also

References
  1. Frederic Pain (2014), “Brāhmaṇa as an honorific in ’Indianized’ Southeast Asia: A Linguistic Approach”, on Archive Ouverte HAL.
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