m. (gaRavṛṣādi-) creature, living being, man, person, race (p/añca j/anās-,"the five races"equalsp kṛṣṭ/ayas-), people, subjects (the sg. used collectively exempli gratia, 'for example'd/aivya-or divy/ā j-,"divine race", the gods collectively ; mahat j-,many people ;often in fine compositi or 'at the end of a compound' denoting one person or a number of persons collectively, exempli gratia, 'for example'preṣya--, bandhu--, sakhī--etc., qq. vv.;with names of peoples ; ayaṃ-janaḥ-,"this person, these persons", I, we etc.; eṣa j-,id . ) etc.
ján-a, m. mankind, ii. 35, 15; iii. 59, 9; iv. 51, 1; v. 11, 1; pl. men, people, i. 35, 5; ii. 12, 1-14; iii. 59, 1. 8; iv. 51, 11; vii. 49, 3; 61, 5; 63, 2. 4; x. 14, 1 [jan generate; cp. Lat. gen-us, Gk. γέν-ος, Eng.kin].
m. creature; man; person; race, tribe; people, subjects; folks, -kind (often --°ree; with coll. mg.); low person; this person; ayam --, esha --, or asau --,=we, I, my lover here.
Besides meaning * man’ as an individual, with a tendency to the collective sense, commonly denotes a * people ’ or tribe ’ in the Rigveda and later. Thus, the five tribes ’(Panca Janāh or Janāsah) are frequently referred to, and in one hymn of the Rigveda the people of Yadu ’ (yādva jana) and the Yadus (yādvāh) are synonymous. Again, the king (rājan) is described as protector (gopā) of the people (janasya),’and there are other references to king and Jana. The people of the Bharatas (bhārata jana) is also mentioned ; there is no ground to assume with Hopkins that Jana in this case means a clan or horde (Grāma), as distinguished from a people. It is difficult to say exactly how a people was divided. Zimmer argues from a passage in the Rigveda that a people was divided into cantons (Viś), cantons into joint families or clans, or village communities (Grāma, Vrjana), and these again into single families. He thinks that the four divisions are reflected in the passage in question by Jana, Viś, Janman, and Putrālj, or sons, and argues that each village community was originally founded on relationship. But it is very doubtful whether this precise division of the people can be pressed. The division of the Jana into several Viś may be regarded as probable, for it is supported by the evidence of another passage of the Rigveda, which mentions the Viś as a unit of the fighting men, and thus shows that, as in Homeric times and in ancient Germany, relationship was deemed a good principle of military arrangement. But the subdivision of the Viś into several Gramas is very doubtful. Zimmer admits that neither Grāma nor Vrjana11 has the special sense of a subdivision of the Viś when used for war, for both words only denote generally an armed host. He finds other designations of the village host in Vrā12 and in Vrāja,13 but it is sufficient to say that the former passage is of extremely doubtful import,14 and that the latter has no reference to war at all. It is therefore impossible to state in what exact relation the Grāma in Vedic times stood to the Viś or to the family (Kula or Gotra). The confusion is increased by the vagueness of the sense of both Grāma and Viś. If the latter be regarded as a local division, then no doubt the Grāma must have been a part of a district; but if a Viś was a unit of relationship, then a Grāma may have contained families of different Viśes, or may have sometimes coincided with a Viś, or have contained only a part of a Viś. But in any case the original state of affairs must have been greatly modified by the rise of the system of caste, and the substitu¬tion of a hierarchical for a political point of view. The elements of the people were represented by the family—either as an individual family inhabiting one home (Kula), and con¬sisting often, no doubt, of a joint family of brothers, or as a patriarchal family of sons who still lived with their father—and by the clan, the later Gotra, which included all those who claimed a common ancestor. The Gotra may be regarded as roughly corresponding to the Latin gens and the Greek yevos, and possibly the Viś may be the equivalent of the curia and φprjτpη, and the Jana of the tribus and φυXov or φv\η.i These three divisions may also be seen in the Viś, Zantu, and Daqyu of the Iranian world, where the use of Viś suggests that in the Indian Viś a relationship based on blood rather than locality is meant—and perhaps even in the vicus, pagus, and ciυitas of the old German polity described in the Germania of Tacitus. The family in some form appears as the third element of the Jana in a passage of the Rigveda, where the house {grha) is contrasted with the Jana and the Viś. Possibly, too, another passage contrasts the adhvam, or family sacrifice, with that of the Jana or Viś, rather than, as Zimmer thinks, the village with the two larger units. But it is significant of the particu¬larism of the Vedic Indians that while the king maintained a fire which might be regarded as the sacred fire of the tribe, there is no sure trace of any intermediate cult between that of the king and that of the individual householder. The real elements in the state are the Gotra and the Jana, just as ultimately the gens and tribtis, the γei>oç and ψv\ov, are alone important. It may be that Viś sometimes represents in the older texts what later was known as the Gotra. See Viś. This appears clearly when the constitution of society in the Brāhmana period is considered. The tribe or people still exists, and is presupposed, but the division into Viś disappears. The real division is now the separate castes (Varna), but the numerous sections into which each of them is divided appear to be based in part on the ancient Gotra.
noun (masculine) a common person (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
living being (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
man (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
name of a man (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
people (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
person (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
race (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
subjects (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
the person nearest to the speaker (Monier-Williams, Sir M. (1988))
[gramm.] the root jan Frequency rank 211/72933
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