The character shown is pronounced "man" in Japanese. It means "ten thousand."
In their way of counting, the Japanese (and Chinese) have a ten thousand's unit. "man" is never used alone, it's always used with another number to indicate how many groups of ten thousand. So, 10,000 of something is ichi man ( 一万 ), 20,000 of something is ni man ( 二万 ), and 100,000 of something is juu man ( 十万 ). This can sometimes cause some confusion when translating numbers.
In ancient times, "ten thousand things" referred to a bewilderingly large number. Ichi man no koto. 一万の事。
Cook Ding's Kitchen has just recently had it's 10,000th hit.
Awsome on the 10K hit! Congrats :)
ReplyDeletelook at the ideogram and wonder about how it manifests man. either it's someone bending over, back on their heels, or it is a person with a hat, holding out a scroll.
ReplyDeleteit is my understanding that the 10,000 things was/is(?) also represents all-that-is. now i'm wondering if it means all humans? or perhaps everything in the human world?
i wonder what the symbol is for all in the heavenly world, or all under heaven? 10,000 tian?
ten thousand crossed with ten thousand (the symbol for 100,000) makes sense.
congrats on the 10k hits. 20,000 eyes have looked upon your site ;)
The symbol that it is derived from is associated by it's sound. The symbol itself doesn't seem to have so much significance.
ReplyDeleteThink: a bewilderingly large number of things.
congrats
ReplyDelete