480531170

as depicting one person leaning against
another, giving ‘intimate’. The meaning ‘nun’
reflects the use of for its sound value to
write the final syllable of a loanword deriving
from Sanskrit bhiksunī ‘nun’. KJ1970:694;
TA1965:759-61; SS1984:668-9. Suggest taking
as sitting figure.
Mnemonic: CORPSE SITTING UP IS THAT OF
A NUN
1820
弐
NI
two
L1
6 strokes
NIJŪtwenty
NISENtwo thousand
NIMAN’EN 20,000 yen
Bronze () ; seal () . There are various
shapes or forms for this graph. According to
Katō, in ancient times counting was done in a
concrete way by counting objects. One of the
early ways of writing ‘two’ was , consisting
of 65 ‘two’ combined with 545 ‘weapon
handle’ or ‘stake’. Bronze forms include one
with an element for a broad-bladed halberd
above ‘two’ and what is typically taken to
be 10 ‘shell (currency), shellfish’, the latter
possibly in a phonetic role with associated
sense ‘distribute’ or ‘increase’ (Katō), though
Gu takes that shape to not be but 1746
(‘tripod vessel’). As Gu observes, in the earliest
stages of the script the two graphs were
similar in shape (at least in some occurrences),
leading – in his view – to being erroneously
rendered in seal script as . The rationale
for the top horizontal stroke in is not fully
clear, but it may be that , an early variant of
‘one’, was itself sometimes written in a variant
form with the short horizontal stroke at
the top left of instead of the lower left, and
at a later point in time was added to the
lower left to indicate ‘two’, thereby resulting
in the shape . In modern Japanese usage,
was not officially adopted in place of
until the promulgation of the Tōyō kanji List
in 1946. Complex graphs for numerals such
as instead of are often used in legal and
financial documents to prevent fraudulent
alterations. GY2008:772; MS1995:v1:464-
6,v2:1230-31,1516-18; KJ1970:39; OT1968:1.
Mnemonic: TWO STAKE-LIKE HALBERDS
1821
匂
niou/i/wasu/waseru
smell
L1
4 strokes
nioibukurosachet
nioiaburaperfumed hair oil
nioiSHŌBUfragrant orris
Graph of the kokuji type, i.e. made in Japan. In
one view (Ogawa), its origins trace back to
as a variant of 1037 ‘rhyme, tone’, a graph
the meanings of which include ‘elegance,
taste, charm’, leading to it being read in an
earlier stage of Japanese as nioi (id.). In
another view (Mizukami), however, is felt
to be an extended sense deriving from the
independent CO graph ‘equal, go round,
extend across’ (and presumably ‘permeate’).
The former seems more persuasive. Either
way, underwent minor shape change
in Japan, resulting in evolving as kokuji.
OT1968:131,1100; MS1995:146-7. Take as
person sitting in corner.
Mnemonic: SMELLY PERSON HAS TO SIT IN
CORNER
The Remaining 1130 Characters 543