སྤྲུལ་སྐུ

Tibetan

Etymology

སྤྲུལ (sprul, “to juggle, to make phantoms appear, to change, to transform”) +‎ སྐུ (sku, “body; the person of Buddha; image, statue of Buddha”). Short for སྤྲུལ་པའི་སྐུ (sprul pa'i sku) or སྤྲུལ་པ་སྐུ (sprul pa sku).

Equivalent to Sanskrit निर्माणकाय (nirmāṇakāya), Chinese 應身, 化身, Mongolian хувилгаан (xuvilgaan).

Pronunciation

• Old Tibetan: /*sprul.sku/
• Lhasa: /ʈ͡ʂyː˥˥.ku˥˥/

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• Old Tibetan:
  • IPA^(key): /*sprul.sku/ (reconstructed)
• Ü-Tsang
  • Tibetan pinyin: zhue^f-gu^f
  • (Lhasa) IPA^(key): /ʈ͡ʂyː˥˥.ku˥˥/

Noun

སྤྲུལ་སྐུ • (sprul sku)

1. Tulku (a concept in Tibetan Buddhism); "emanation body", reincarnation