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As a specialized phono-semantic compound, 裟 (shā) uses the clothing radical 衣 at the bottom to indicate its meaning related to garments, with 沙 (shā) on top providing the sound. Created specifically for transliterating Buddhist Sanskrit terms, it has no independent meaning outside this religious context. It appears almost exclusively in the compound jiāshā, the phonetic rendering of Sanskrit kāṣāya, denoting the patched robes or cassocks worn by ordained Buddhist monks and nuns.