jiā
noun #17,353

Meanings

  1. 1 (phonetic character used in Buddhist transliterations)

Examples

Shìjiāmóuní shì Fójiào de chuàngshǐrén.
Shakyamuni is the founder of Buddhism.
Tā zàidú yīběn guānyú Jiā yè de shū.
He is reading a book about Kashyapa.

Tips

usage
appears almost exclusively in Buddhist transliterations: 释迦 (Shìjiā, Shakya), (Jiāyè, Kashyapa), (Jiānán, Canaan). It has no standalone meaning in modern Chinese.

Components

radical
chuò
walk; advance (motion radical)
Bottom-left walk radical, side-form of — a foot at a crossroads. The indexing radical, but here pure tradition rather than meaning: many transliteration characters chose to suggest 'come from afar,' fitting for imported Sanskrit names entering China along pilgrimage routes.
phonetic
jiā
to add
Upper-right supplies the sound jiā with no shift — a clean phonetic. has no meaning of its own; it exists almost entirely as a transliteration character for Sanskrit syllables in Buddhist texts (释迦 Shakya, Kashyapa). The phonetic does all the work here.

Stroke Order

jiā