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

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

Tips

culture
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
lín
forest; grove
Top - two trees giving 'forest, grove'. In 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 by tradition, taken from the trees in .
phonetic
fán
ordinary; mould
Bottom 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 (sail), (alum), and (vanadium). In it is purely sound-bearing; the Buddhist flavor lives in the grove imagery above.

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

Stroke Order

Fàn