'''Amara Sinha''' (c. [[375|AD 375]]) was a [[Sanskrit]] [[grammar]]ian and [[poet]], of whose personal history hardly anything is known.

He is said to have been "one of the nine gems that adorned the throne of [[Vikramaditya]]," and according to the evidence of Hsuan Tsang, this is the [[Chandragupta Vikramaditya]] ([[Chandragupta II]]) that flourished about AD 375.

Amara seems to have been a [[Buddhist]]; and an early tradition asserts that his works, with one exception, were destroyed during the persecution carried on by the orthodox [[Brahmin]]s in the [[5th century]]. The exception is the celebrated ''Amara-Kosha'' (''Treasury of Amara''), a vocabulary of Sanskrit roots, in three books, and hence sometimes called ''Trikanda'' or the "Tripartite."

It contains 10,000 words, and is arranged, like other works of its class, in metre, to aid the memory. The first chapter of the ''Kosha'' was printed at [[Rome]] in Tamil character in 1798. An edition of the entire work, with English notes and an index by [[Henry Thomas Colebrooke|HT Colebrooke]], appeared at [[Serampore]] in 1808. The Sanskrit text was printed at [[Calcutta]] in 1831. A French translation by ALA Loiseleur-Deslongchamps as published at Paris in 1839.

==References==
*{{1911}}

==External links==
*[http://sanskrit.gde.to/doc_z_misc_amarakosha.html Amarakosha Sanskrit text]

[[Category:Year of birth unknown]]
[[Category:Year of death unknown]]
[[Category:Indian Buddhists]]
[[Category:Indian poets]]