To be thought on.
A friend has bought a formerly owned book on Buddhist tsewa—very roughly, tenderness/compassion, or openness, of the heart—and discovered inside an inscription from the author, and asked me to look into it. Some success had, but here's my thought: Is tsewa related to お世話 (o-sewa)? The kanji are ateji, used for their phonemes (se, wa, plus o honorific) rather than their meaning (world, speech); this suggests it's borrowed from another language. A prelim look into etymologies (here, here, here) says o-sewa's origin isn't clear; derivation from busyness or from "common talk" isn't convincing. Openness, compassion, and care seem to suit お世話 very well, and it certainly wouldn't be the first instance—far from the first—of imported Buddhist terms fitted to Japanese speech, or maybe to monastic writing.
Or maybe there's no connection at all.
(Maybe it's Guanyin manifesting again; I could use some compassion and self-care. I'll move the pen-and-ink portrait I recently found on my street to a more prominent position. おんあろりきゃそわか.)
No comments:
Post a Comment