India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c8.s7.30

c8.s7.30

MAHĀ-HAILIHILA—*Hailihila* and *mahā-hailihila* are words of unknown meaning and origin, mentioned by Pāṇini as special names of some article (VI.3.38). The word is not explained in any Sanskrit dictionary, nor is there any instance of its being used in literature. It appears that *hailihila* was a Semitic word appearing in a sanskritised form, as the name of a poison which was imported from the West. In Arabic *halāhila* means deadly poison (cf. Hebrew *halūl*, deadly poison). Steingass derives without reason the Arabic word from Skt. *halāhala* (F. Steingass, *Persian-English Dictionary*, p. 1506). The Skt. word itself is exotic as shown by its variant spellings, e.g. *hālāhala*, *halāhala*, *hālahala*, *hālahāla*, *hāhala*, *hāhāla* (Monier-Williams, *A Sanskrit-English Dictionary*, 1899 revised edition, p. 1293). Pāṇini's *hailihila* seems to come nearest to the original Semitic form of the word, which may have been Armaic, the international language of trade and commerce in the Achaemenian world from Syria to Gandhāra. Pāṇini refers to poisons in genesal called *visha* and to the third degree methods of liquidating particular persons marked out as *vishya* by the administering of poison.