塵も積もれば山となる chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru Even dust if piled can become a mountain

塵も積もれば山となる is about many small things, kept up, adding up to something great. Dust is the least particle of anything, and enough of it makes a mountain. The proverb counts on number, not on one small thing growing great by its nature. What the small things are has changed, among them learning and virtue, the growth of poetry, savings lent out and coins, and the proverb has kept the shape and let the content go. Whether it is for a long project, a savings jar or a daily practice is yours.

Fine dust piled into a mountain is a simile in a Buddhist commentary put into Chinese in the early fifth century, and Bai Juyi's couplet 千里始足下、高山起微塵 is the line a Muromachi commentary and a Meiji one set behind Tsurayuki's preface to the Kokinshū of 905. The dictionary of record gives a Noh play's line, which it dates about 1430, as the saying's first instance, and in 1627 a tract on getting rich prints it of savings lent out at interest.

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