As a deity name
Name 294 of the Vishnu Sahasranāma — Mahabharata (Anushasana Parva), as taught by Bhishma to Yudhishthira on his deathbed
As a Hindi name
क्या
initial interrogative particle
क्या · feminine,masculine
what?; such, what, how; used after a noun or तो to indicate something being not as great.
Śabdasāgara also records: शिव · विष्णु
a Hindi word, a tadbhava: evolved from the Sanskrit through Prakrit किम् — per Wiktionary’s etymology record
“Inherited from Sauraseni Prakrit 𑀓𑀺𑀁 (kiṃ), 𑀓𑀺 (ki), from Sanskrit किम् (kim, “what, which”). Compare Punjabi ਕੀ (kī), Gujarati કિયું (kiyũ), Marathi की (kī), Bengali কী (ki), Assamese কি (ki) or Kashmiri کیاہ.” — per Wiktionary’s etymology record
kim ind. (fr. 1. ki, originally nom. and acc. sg. n. of 2. ka, q.v.), what? how? whence? wherefore? why?
kim is much used as a particle of interrogation like the Lat. num, an, sometimes translatable by ‘whether?’ but oftener serving only like a note of interrogation to mark a question (e.g. kiṃ vyādhā vane 'smin saṃcaranti, ‘do hunters roam about in this wood?’ In an interrogation the verb, if uncompounded with a preposition, generally retains its accent after kim, Pāṇ. viii, 1, 44). To this sense may be referred the kim expressing inferiority, deficiency, &c. at the beginning of compounds (e.g. kiṃ-rājan, what sort of king? i.e. a bad king, Pāṇ. ii, 1, 64; v, 4, 70)
As a Sanskrit word
Meaning
initial interrogative particle (a Hindi word, a tadbhava: evolved from the Sanskrit through Prakrit किम्; per Wiktionary’s etymology record)
Scripturally attested Verified split — attested membersMultiple readings (3)Why this matches what you typed
This spelling is readable by grammar as kāma + hā — that reading is the link between what you typed and the meanings shown here, and the analysis below is verified against the dictionaries member by member.
Alternative readings
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Caveats
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