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裟 (shā) is a phono-semantic compound: the clothing radical 衣 at the bottom places it in the semantic field of garments, while 沙 (shā) above supplies the pronunciation. Created to transcribe Sanskrit Buddhist terms, it has no independent meaning. It now appears almost exclusively as the second character in jiāshā (袈裟), a transliteration of kāṣāya, the patched robes of Buddhist monks and nuns.
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