梵

Fàn
noun #19,085

Meanings

  1. 1 Sanskrit
  2. 2 Brahma (Hindu deity)
  3. 3 abbrev. for Vatican (梵蒂冈)
  4. 4 abbrev. for Brahmanism (梵教)

Examples

HSK 7-9
Zhè bù jīngdiǎn yuánběn shì yòng Fànwén xiěchéng de.
This classic text was originally written in Sanskrit.
HSK 7-9
Fàndìgāng shì shìjiè shàng zuì xiǎo de guójiā zhīyī.
The Vatican is one of the smallest countries in the world.

Tips

culture
梵 is a transliteration component tied to Buddhist and Hindu terminology. It appears in 梵文 (Sanskrit), 梵蒂冈 (Vatican), and 梵天 (Brahma, the Hindu god of creation).

Components

semantic
林 lín
forest; grove
Top 林 - two 木 trees giving 'forest, grove'. In 梵 it evokes the lush jungles of India where Sanskrit hymns were chanted; the original sense was 'plants growing thick', from which monks chose the character to transliterate Brahma. Indexed under Kangxi #75 木 by tradition, taken from the trees in 林.
phonetic
凡 fán
ordinary; mould
Bottom 凡 supplies the sound directly - fán matches the whole reading. It originally pictured a casting mould, the source of 'all, every, mundane'. The same phonetic feeds 帆 (sail), 矾 (alum), and 钒 (vanadium). In 梵 it is purely sound-bearing; the Buddhist flavor lives in the grove imagery above.

Filed under radical 木 (mù, #75) by convention. 木 is not a separate component in 梵, so no strokes are highlighted.

Stroke Order

梵 Fàn