Trailokya (Sanskrit: त्रैलोक्य; Kannada: ತ್ರೈಲೋಕ್ಯ; Pali: tiloka, Tibetan: khams gsum; Chinese: 三界; Vietnamese: Tam Giới) literally means "three worlds".[1][2][3] It can also refer to "three spheres,"[3] "three planes of existence,"[4] and "three realms".[4]
Conceptions of three worlds (tri-loka) appear in Hinduism and Jainism, as well as early Buddhist texts.
- ^ Monier-Williams (1899), p. 460, col. 1, entry for "[Tri-]loka" (retrieved at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/MWScanpdf/mw0460-trimala.pdf) and p. 462, col. 2, entry for "Trailoya" (retrieved at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/MWScanpdf/mw0462-tripu.pdf).
- ^ Rhys Davids & Stede (1921-25), p. 301, entry for "Ti-" (retrieved at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?p.1:129.pali[permanent dead link]). Here, tiloka is compared with tebhūmaka ("three planes").
- ^ a b Fischer-Schreiber et al. (1991), p. 230, entry for "Triloka". Here, synonyms for triloka include trailokya and traidhātuka.
- ^ a b Berzin (2008) renders khams-gsum (Wylie; Tibetan) and tridhatu (Sanskrit) as "three planes of existence" and states that it is "[s]ometimes called 'the three realms.'" Tridhatu is a synonym of triloka where dhatu may be rendered as "dimension" or "realm" and loka as "world" or even "planet."