Dâsas

Dasa (Dāsa) is a Sanskrit word found in ancient Indian texts such as the Rigveda and Arthasastra. The term may mean "enemy" or "servant," but Dasa or Das can also have the following connotations: "servant of God", "devotee," "votary" or "one who has surrendered to God." Dasa may be a suffix of a given name to indicate a "servant" of a revered person or a particular deity. Dasa, in some contexts, is also related to dasyu and asura, which have been translated by some scholars as "demon", "harmful supernatural forces," "slave," "servant," or "barbarian," depending on the context in which the word is used. Dāsa first appears in Vedic texts from the second millennium BCE. There is no consensus on its origins. Karl Heinrich Tzschucke in 1806, in his translations of the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela, noted etymological and phonological parallels between dasa and the ethnonyms of the Dahae – Persian داها; Sanskrit Dasa; Latin Dahae; Greek Δάοι Daoi, Δάαι, Δᾶαι Daai and Δάσαι Dasai – a people who lived on the south-eastern shores of the Caspian Sea in ancient times (and from whom modern Dehestan/Dehistan takes its name). Monier Monier-Williams in 1899, stated that the meaning of dasa varies contextually and means "mysterious forces", "savages", "barbarians" or "demons" in the earliest layer of Vedic literature – in other contexts, is a self-effacing way to refer oneself as "worshipper" or "devotee aiming to honor a deity", or a "servant of god". In later Indian literature, according to Monier-Williams, usage of dasa is used to refer to "a knowing man, or a knower of the universal spirit". In the latter sense, dāsa is masculine, while the feminine equivalent is dāsi. Some early 20th Century translations, such as P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar(1912), translate dasa as "slave". Kangle in 1960, and others suggest that, depending on the context, dasa may be translated as "enemy", "servant" or "religious devotee".