About
A phono-semantic compound, 袈 uses the 衣 (clothing) radical at the bottom to indicate a garment, while 加 on top provides the pronunciation. It was coined to transliterate the Sanskrit word kāṣāya, referring to the traditional robes of Buddhist monks. The character appears almost exclusively in the disyllabic compound 袈裟 (jiāshā), which denotes the patchwork outer robe of a Buddhist ascetic. Because it was created for religious translation during Buddhism's introduction to China, it carries no older, unrelated native meanings. Its structure simply pairs a clothing classifier with a phonetic that matches the foreign syllable.
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