Arhat

Arhat (pronounced ahr-huht)

(1) In Buddhism, a Buddhist (most usually a monk) who, through rigorous discipline and ascetic practices, has attained enlightenment and upon death passes to Nirvana.

(2) In Buddhism, a title accorded to sanctified Buddhists; a Buddhist saint.

(3) In Jainism, one of the stages of the ascetic's spiritual evolution, when all passions (anger, ego, deception, greed, attachment, hatred and ignorance) are destroyed (the derived terms are arhantam, arhathood & arhatship.

1865–1870: A transliteration of the Sanskrit अर्हत् (arhat) (arahant in Pāḷi) (worthy of worship; meriting respect), from arhati (he merits; he deserves), the construct being the verbal root arh (to deserve), from arah (meriting, deserving of), ahrana (having a claim; state of entitlement) & the past participle arhita (honored, worshipped); a doublet of arahant and the alternative spelling was Arhant (pronounced ahr-huhnt).  Arhat and Arhatship are nouns; the noun plural is Arhats.

A related state in Buddhism (notably Mahayana Buddhism) was Bodhisattva (pronounced boh-duh-suht-vuh).  The word was from the Sanskrit and Pāḷi, translating literally as “one whose essence is enlightenment”, the construct being bodhi (enlightenment) + sattva (essence).  Dating from the early nineteenth century, a Bodhisattva is a person who has attained prajna (Enlightenment) but who postpones Nirvana (ie remaining in earthly existence) in order to help others attain Enlightenment.  In some Buddhist sects, certain Bodhisattvas are treated as living saints and are the subjects of devotion, represented sometimes as divine in artworks (the practice controversial in some Buddhist circles).

Arhat appears in the Ṛigveda with in the sense of "deserving”.  Rigveda (or Rig Veda, Rgveda, Rg Veda & Rug Veda) was from the Sanskrit ऋग्वेद (ṛg-vedá) (veda of praise), the construct being ऋच् (ṛ́c) (praise, verse) + वेद (véda) (knowledge).  It was an ancient Indian Veda and sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (sūktas) and one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (śruti) known as the Vedas and today, apart for the largely extant Śakalya Shakha, only fragments remain.  The Rigveda is the oldest known of the Vedic Sanskrit texts which date from 1700-1100 BC.

In prayer: A Buddha statue and Lindsay Lohan.  In translation, arhat is sometimes rendered in English as arahat while in the Far East, the transliteration was often phonetic and in the Chinese 阿羅漢 (āluóhàn) it was often shortened to 羅漢 (luóhàn) and, via the Raj, this was picked up in English as Lohan or luohan whereas in Japanese the pronunciation of the Chinese characters was arakan (阿羅漢) or rakan (羅漢).