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The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Home › Library › Philology › One Grain, Ten Thousandfold — something small that grows very large, and the feeling that not the least thing may be wasted; a farmer's harvest, a blessing at the planting, and a lucky day

一粒万倍 ichiryū manbai One Grain, Ten Thousandfold — something small that grows very large, and the feeling that not the least thing may be wasted; a farmer's harvest, a blessing at the planting, and a lucky day

一粒万倍 (ichiryū manbai), one grain, ten thousandfold: the Japanese phrase for a small beginning that returns many times over, followed from the Buddhist canon and a Tang poem through the rice fields, almanacs and comic tales of Edo Japan to a macrobiotic motto in English.

Abstract

一粒万倍, ichiryū manbai, one grain, ten thousandfold, is the Japanese phrase for a small beginning that returns many times over. The dictionaries name a Buddhist sutra as its source, but the sutra has three of the four characters, as a minister's advice on how to get rich, and not the phrase; the seed that returns ten-thousandfold is older in the Buddhist canon as the merit of a gift, and in China the single grain belongs to a Tang poem whose farmer starves. The four characters are Japanese: the earliest witness the 日本国語大辞典 gives is the Jesuits' dictionary of 1603, with a farmer's harvest for its example, and they stand together in no Chinese text in the CBETA canon or Chinese Wikisource; and within a century they are a priest's prayer as a god's rice field is planted, the blessing the planting girls sing, the common people's word for the standing crop, and a lucky day in the printed almanac. Since then the phrase has been said of merit and of sin, of an able servant, of a kindness repaid, and in English, through macrobiotics, of gratitude without end.

Overview

The sense. The modern dictionaries give two senses. The 大辞泉 writes 一粒の種が万倍となって稲穂のように実るという意, one seed becomes ten thousand and bears like an ear of rice: 1. わずかなものが非常に大きく成長することのたとえ。また、少しでも粗末にできないという気持ちをも表す, a figure for something small growing very large; it also expresses the feeling that not the least thing may be wasted; 2. 稲の別名, another name for rice. The 日本国語大辞典 gives the same, with わずかなものから非常に多くの益をあげることのたとえ, a figure for drawing great gain from very little, and もったいない気持, the feeling that waste is a shame; the 四字熟語を知る辞典 adds 元来は、仏教で、たった一つの善根から多くの報いを得るという意味, originally, in Buddhism, the meaning that a single root of good brings many rewards [1]. A collection of sayings of 1900 already set the uses side by side: the phrase may be used 勸善の意に用うべく、懲惡の意に用うべく、儉を勸むるの意、費を戒むるの意、その他勉學行德などにも悉く用う可き, to encourage good, to deter evil, to urge thrift, to warn against waste, and for learning and virtue besides [2]. The witnesses below hold seven uses: the yield of a field; a blessing at the planting and at the harvest; merit, and sin, multiplied; a gift repaid many times; the waste of a grain as a shame; profit in farming and trade; and a day of the calendar. The day, 一粒万倍日, the 日本国語大辞典 defines as 一粒が万倍となって実るという吉日。開店や金貸しなど、事を始めるのに良い日とされ、借金をするのに悪い日とされる, a lucky day on which one grain bears ten-thousandfold, held good for beginning things, such as opening a shop or lending money, and bad for borrowing [3].

The words. 一粒 is a single grain, ichiryū, and the 日本国語大辞典's earliest example of it as a word is the 今昔物語集 of about 1120 [4]. 万倍 is ten thousand times. The reading is ichiryū manbai, いちりゅうまんばい, in the historical kana いちりふまんばい [1]; the 1646 print of the 太閤記 glosses the characters りうまんばい [5], a picture book of women's lives spells them 一りう万ばい [6], and a play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門 of about 1701 writes 一りうまんばい [7]. 一粒萬倍 and 一粒万倍 are one word in its older and newer form, and the 1646 太閤記 writes both on one page [5]. The day is written 一粒万倍日, 萬倍日, and in the oldest almanac found to carry it, among the National Diet Library's digitized almanacs, 万はい日 [8].

The text in English. The phrase enters a Japanese-English dictionary in Brinkley's of 1896, as ten thousand fold for a grain of rice and, figuratively, a very munificient retribution for a little act of kindness, so spelled [9]; a Japanese-made dictionary of 1904 gives one grain produces a myriad fold [10]. Before English it reached French, in the 1862 translation of the Jesuit dictionary: Dix mille pour un [11]. From 1965 the phrase reaches English most often as the macrobiotic motto one grain, ten thousand grains, from Sakurazawa Yukikazu 桜沢如一 (1893–1966), who wrote in English as Georges Ohsawa [12][13]. JMdict today gives a single seed can eventually produce a great harvest; even the smallest beginning can generate a greatest profit; watch the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves [14].

The historical record

Undated, catalogued under the Later Han. 大方便佛報恩經, the sutra of the Buddha's skillful means for repaying kindness, chapter 惡友品, the bad friend. Its translator is unknown, and the canon records it 失譯人名在後漢錄, translator's name lost, listed in the record of the Later Han [15]. This is the text the dictionaries name as the source [1]. Prince Shanyou 善友 has given away two thirds of his father's treasury in alms, and resolves to find wealth of his own to give: 我今應當自求財寶，給足眾生, I must now seek treasure for myself, and give all beings enough. He asks his ministers 夫求財利，何業最勝？, of all the ways to seek wealth and profit, which is best? [15]:

中有第一大臣言：『世間求利，莫先耕田者，種一萬倍。』

Among them the first minister said: "Of the ways the world seeks profit, none comes before plowing a field: sow one, and it is ten-thousandfold." A second minister says herding, and a third says the sea, where a wish-granting jewel 摩尼寶珠 would let him give all beings what they want, and the prince answers 唯此為快耳, only this will do, and goes to sea against his father's tears [15]. The ten-thousandfold is the first answer of three, about profit, and the one the prince does not take; and the wealth he asks for is wealth to give away. The Song, Yuan and Ming canons read 種一得萬倍, sow one and get ten-thousandfold [15]. The four characters 一粒萬倍 are not in the sutra.

Fourth and fifth centuries. The seed of merit in the canon. In 佛說罪福報應經, the sutra of the retribution of merit and sin, translated by Guṇabhadra 求那跋陀羅 (394–468) [16][17], the Buddha asks Ānanda 阿難 how many seeds were sown to grow a banyan, and Ānanda answers 種一枚核，稍稍漸大收子無限, one seed was sown; little by little it grew, and the seed it yields is without limit. The Buddha answers 施一得萬倍，言不虛也, give one and get ten-thousandfold: the saying is not empty, and puts it in a verse: 賢者好布施，天人自扶將，施一得萬倍，安樂壽命長, the wise delight in giving, and gods and men support them; give one and get ten-thousandfold, with ease and a long life [16]. The same four words, 施一得萬倍, stand in 佛說摩訶剎頭經, translated by Shengjian 聖堅 in the Western Qin, of giving to the community of monks [18]. The canon multiplies sin by the same figure: 佛說罵意經, attributed to An Shigao 安世高 of the Later Han, says 又起一意有百劫殃，譬如種穀百倍萬倍, again, one thought raised brings a hundred kalpas of misfortune, as sown grain returns a hundredfold, ten-thousandfold [19]. The 增壹阿含經 makes a scale of it, 施畜生食者，獲福百倍 … 施持戒人食者，獲福萬倍, who feeds an animal gains merit a hundredfold … who feeds one who keeps the precepts gains merit ten-thousandfold [20]; and the 大智度論, translated by Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什, counts among the impure kinds of giving 貪報故施，作是念：「我施少物，千萬倍報。」, giving out of greed for the return, thinking: I give a little and get it back ten million times [21]. The seed and the ten-thousandfold of merit are together in the canon a thousand years before the four characters are known in Japan, and so is the warning against giving for the yield.

Before 846. Li Shen 李紳 (died 846), 憫農, Pity the farmer. The first of two poems by a Tang official [22][23]:

春種一粒粟，秋收萬顆子。四海無閒田，農夫猶餓死。

In spring he sows one grain of millet; in autumn he reaps ten thousand. No field in the four seas lies idle, and still the farmer dies of hunger. The one grain and the ten thousand are here, as a farmer's yield, and the poem turns on who eats it. The four characters 一粒萬倍 stand together in no Chinese text in the CBETA canon or in Chinese Wikisource [15][22].

Mid-eleventh century. Fujiwara no Akihira 藤原明衡 (died 1066), 新猿樂記, A new account of the monkey music. A record of the late Heian period in Chinese prose: after a performance of the comic art of 猿楽, it lists the family of one spectator, member by member, and through them the trades, skills and goods of the capital, among them farming; the dictionaries date it from about 1052 to the Kōhei years, 1058–1065, or leave it undated [24]. Of the husband of the third daughter, a great farmer, it says, of what he sows in his gardens and fields [25]:

麥大豆大角豆小角豆粟黍薭蕎麥胡麻員盡登熟。春以一粒雖散地面。秌以萬倍。■納藏內。

Wheat, soybeans, cowpeas, adzuki, the millets, buckwheat and sesame: every one ripens. Though in spring he scatters a single grain on the ground, in autumn, ten-thousandfold, he stores it in the granary. The edition sets a filled block before 納, for a character it does not print. The one grain and the ten-thousandfold together, in Japan, some five centuries before the 日本国語大辞典's first witness of the four characters, and of a farmer.

By 1161. Wang Rixiu 王日休, 龍舒增廣淨土文, a Pure Land tract, book one. The tract is dated by its own preface: 張孝祥 writes that he first saw it in the autumn of 紹興辛巳, 1161, 始見其淨土文, and dated his preface the first day of the tenth month, 十月旦 [26]. Wang Rixiu sets Li Shen's line to work as a proof of karma: 唯種時少、收獲時多，故作善惡時甚小，受禍福之報甚大，故云「春種一粒粟。秋收萬顆子。」人生為善惡，果報還如此, only, the sowing is small and the harvest great; so the doing of good and evil is very small, and the return of fortune and misfortune very great. That is why it is said: "In spring he sows one grain of millet; in autumn he reaps ten thousand." A human life doing good and evil reaps its fruit in the same way [26]. Good and evil both multiply. Wang Rixiu joins the farmer's grain to a reading the canon had held since the fifth century.

1603–1604. The 日葡辞書, the Jesuits' dictionary of Japanese into Portuguese, printed at Nagasaki. The 日本国語大辞典 cites it for the four characters, and it is the earliest dated witness of the phrase it gives [1][27]. Its entry reads, in the French translation of 1862 [11]: Itchirioû manbai, イチリウ マンバイ. Dix mille pour un, ten thousand for one; and its example, Itchirioû manbaino miwo torou, イチリウ マンバイノ ミヲ トル, that is, 一粒万倍の実を取る, Recevoir un fruit, ou profit de mille ou dix mille pour un grain de semence, to receive a fruit, or profit, of a thousand or ten thousand for one grain of seed. The phrase in the spoken Japanese of 1603 is a farmer's harvest.

1625 and 1646. Oze Hoan 小瀬甫庵 (1564–1640), 太閤記, a life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The preface is dated 1625 [28], and the 1646 print carries the phrase in a passage on how law is made to stand, of men, not grain [5]:

一粒萬倍となることきの才智

A talent like one grain become ten-thousandfold; and two columns on, 是一粒万倍と成才智なり, this is the talent that becomes one grain ten-thousandfold. The talent is that of a single able steward raised to office: rather than many laws, 不如能奉行一人挙用ゐんには, nothing is better than to raise up one able steward, and the good returns many times over. The print glosses the first 粒萬倍 りうまんばい.

1662 and 1680. The planting of the rice field of the god of Sumiyoshi. The 住吉御田植 is the planting of the field of the 住吉 shrine in Osaka, a part the courtesans once played, そのかみは高州の傾城の役として, in former days it was the role of the courtesans of Takasu. Nakagawa Kiun 中川喜雲 (1636–1705), in his guide 案内者 of 1662, describes the rite [29]:

神主は車にて田の畔に来り車をたてゝ幣をとり一粒万倍の祈念あり

The chief priest comes by carriage to the edge of the field, stops the carriage, takes up the sacred wand, and prays for one grain ten-thousandfold. Then the shrine's people come out. Ikkiken Dōya 一無軒道冶's guide to Osaka, 難波鑑, of 1680, takes the passage over: 幣をとり。一粒万倍の祈念あり。社人おほく出立て。早苗をはこびわたし。田歌おもしろくうたひける, takes up the wand and prays for one grain ten-thousandfold; the shrine's people come out, carry the seedlings across, and sing the field songs merrily [30]. The phrase as the prayer spoken over a god's field at the planting.

1669, 1682 and 1683. The day in the almanac. The almanac of the 諏訪 shrine of Aizu-Wakamatsu, 会津暦, one of the provincial calendars of Edo Japan [31], in its volume for 寛文九年, 1669, printed in 1668, carries among its notes on the days 万はい日, the ten-thousandfold day, beside 大明日 よめ取 出行よし, a day of great brightness, good for taking a bride and setting out [8]. The calendar for 天和二年, 1682, carries 万はい日 beside 大みやう日 [32], and the Aizu almanac for 天和三年, 1683, ちふく日 · 万はい日 · わう亡日 [33]. The day is in a printed almanac by 1669. The medieval almanac lore knows 萬倍 as an hour, not a day: the 簠簋内伝, a book of calendar divination ascribed to Abe no Seimei 安倍晴明 and made in the fourteenth century [34], names an hour 幸時萬倍, the lucky hour, ten-thousandfold [35], and a commentary on it gives the arithmetic: the day has twice the power, the lunar mansion four times, the planet eight times, and 時ニ萬倍ノ力, the hour ten thousand times the power [36].

1673. 子孫鑑, a samurai house code. Among its rules on hawking and hunting: 作毛ふむ事かたく … 下民の言葉に一粒万倍と云也, the standing crop is on no account to be trampled … in the common people's own word, it is one grain ten-thousandfold [37]. The phrase is the people's, and it is the reason the lord spares a seedling.

1685. Chikamatsu, 賢女の手習并新暦, A wise woman's writing lesson, and the new calendar. Staged in 1685 [38], the year the 貞享暦, the Jōkyō calendar, came into use [39], the play opens on a catalogue of the new almanac's days [40]:

年に輝く天赦日靜けき風の吹く日に霞の衣鬼宿日民のおさめは萬はい日、御代にかしづく大明日、神によしとや伊勢曆三島曆の文字太き

The day of heaven's pardon shining in the year; on a day of still wind, the day of the ghost mansion in robes of mist; for the people's harvest, the ten-thousandfold day; serving the reign, the day of great brightness; good for the gods, they say, in the bold letters of the Ise and Mishima almanacs. The day belongs to the people's harvest.

1695. Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣, 和国百女, A hundred women of Japan. A picture book of women at their occupations. Over a picture of the planting girls, 早乙女, in sedge hats in the field and a man carrying the seedlings on a pole, the text says of them [6]:

出たち一りう万ばいのことぶきをのべてうたをうたい

They go out, and offering the blessing of one grain ten-thousandfold, they sing. The words before it, on how they go out, are past certain reading in this hand. The colophon carries 正月吉辰 and the painter's name with the place for the year left blank [41]; Moronobu died in 1694 [42], and the catalogue of ukiyo-e artists, 浮世絵類考, gives the book as 和國百女 元錄八年板, printed 1695 [43]. The phrase as the planting girls' blessing.

After 1694. 初音草咄大鑑, a collection of comic tales, the tale 山鳩に耳あり, The doves have ears. A farmer reads in the almanac that the day is good for sowing [44]:

貞享暦にたねまきによし一粒万倍日とあるを見すまし。畠をうち種をまきけるに。隣の百姓野に出けるが。

Seeing that the Jōkyō almanac said the day was good for sowing, a one-grain-ten-thousandfold day, he tilled his field and sowed. The farmer next door came out to his field and calls to him, けふハ何をまくぞ, what are you sowing today? The first farmer beckons him over, あく聲が高いぞ, not so loud!, and the neighbor creeps closer, expecting some rare seed from abroad, to be told: 別の物でハない。けふハ大豆をまくが, it's nothing special; I'm sowing beans today, but he thought the doves might hear. The copy carries no date; another tale in the book, 極楽の豊年, A paradise of plenty, opens 元禄酉戌の比, around the years of the cock and the dog of Genroku, which are 1693 and 1694 [45]. By the 1690s the day was common enough in the almanac to be a joke.

1697. Miyazaki Yasusada 宮崎安貞, 農業全書, The complete book of farming. The oldest systematic book of farming printed in Japan [46], in its book on the five grains, of millet, that it is surpassingly fruitful: 誠に一粒万倍とも云つべき。ならびなき上穀なり, truly it may be called one grain ten-thousandfold, a grain of the first rank without equal [47]. The phrase is already a saying to be quoted.

About 1701. Chikamatsu, 天鼓, the puppet play The heavenly drum. The New Year 萬歲 of the first act carries a planting refrain, ほにほがさいて一りうまんばい, ear upon ear in flower, one grain ten-thousandfold [7]. The play's modern editor quotes the fuller form, 當年はかのとの巳年、上の田も下の田も、穗に穗がさいて一粒萬倍, this year is the year of the junior metal snake; in the upper field and the lower, ear upon ear in flower, one grain ten-thousandfold, dates the play to 1701 by the year it names, and notes that it was not new then but a retitling of 丹州千年狐, an older play of Kagajō 加賀掾 [48][49].

1760. Hakuin 白隠 (1685–1768), おたふく女郎粉引歌, a song for women grinding flour. One of the Zen master's sermons in plain kana [50], dated 1760 by the 日本国語大辞典 [51], turns the phrase on sin [52]:

自業自得の罪科はのがれず。心の田地に蒔置く種じやで。萠切り生出て一粒萬倍。無間の苦患を受けねばならない

There is no escape from the guilt of what one has done oneself. It is seed sown in the field of the heart; it sprouts and grows, one grain ten-thousandfold, and one must suffer the pains of the unceasing hell. The canon's multiplied sin, in a work song.

1786. Kawai Gen 川合元 (1728–1804), 一粒万倍 穂に穂, One grain ten-thousandfold: ear upon ear. A farm manual of Bitchū, illustrated by Maruyama Ōkyo 円山応挙 [53]. The phrase stands on the cover as the title's first line, above 穂に穂, the planting refrain's ear upon ear [54], and the book teaches sowing as an act of devotion: the seed is to be let down in the mind of one making an offering to the god of the earth, praying that it flourish, and no grain is to go unsown [55].

Before 1834. Mizuno Nanboku 水野南北 (1757–1834), on restraint in eating. Nanboku read faces for a living [56]. In a book of his teaching edited by Tanahashi Ayako 棚橋絢子 and printed in 1893, food a person could eat and does not is not lost: おのづから天地に延びひろごり。一粒萬倍となりて。己れに運り來れるもの, of itself it spreads out through heaven and earth, becomes one grain ten-thousandfold, and comes round back to oneself [57]. The phrase as restraint repaid by heaven.

1841. 増補懐宝永代藏, a household almanac of days and tides. After 商事に吉日, lucky days for trade, it lists ○一粒万倍日 with the rule by month, 正月 for the days of the ox and the horse [58]. The day has a place among the days for business.

1856. The stage, and spilled sake. The 日本国語大辞典's earliest example of the phrase in use is a kabuki play of 1856, 夢結蝶鳥追: 「おととととと、こぼれるわえ、一粒万倍万倍」とこぼれし酒を額へつけ, "Oh, oh, oh, it's spilling! One grain ten-thousandfold, ten-thousandfold!" and he dabs the spilled sake on his forehead [1]. Sake is rice, and to waste a drop is a shame; the phrase is the word that turns the waste into a blessing.

1887 and 1898. Repaid ten-thousandfold. In the 1887 print of the 真書太閤記, the long popular life of Hideyoshi, the boy Hiyoshimaru is given a bowl of barley rice by the midwife who delivered him, and promises that when he rises in the world he will 一粒萬倍にして返し申べし, repay it one grain ten-thousandfold, and she laughs at him [59]. The revelations of the founder of Tenrikyō, おさしづ, in the volume of the collected edition for 1898, say 不自由すれは不自由は一粒萬倍にしてかやす, if you go without, the going without is returned one grain ten-thousandfold [60]. The phrase 一粒萬倍にして返す, to repay ten-thousandfold, is the sense the English motto carries.

1889–1910. The Meiji dictionaries. The 言海 of 1889–1891 gives the two senses still given today and names no source: 一粒ノ種、殖エテ、萬倍ノ粒トナル。(多クハ稻ニイフ) and 轉ジテ、僅ナル物、殖エテ、許多トナル, one seed multiplies and becomes ten thousand grains (said mostly of rice); and by extension, a small thing multiplies and becomes a great many [61]. The 世諺叢談 of 1900 quotes the sutra's 種一萬倍 at length and then Wang Rixiu's tract with Li Shen's line, joining the two Chinese texts [62]. The 俚諺辞典 of 1906 makes merit the meaning and the sutra the source: 一粒の種を蒔きて澤山の果を得る義。小善根の結果無量の幸福を受くることをいふ, the sense of sowing one seed and getting abundant fruit; it is said of receiving boundless happiness as the result of a small root of good [63]; that is the reading the 四字熟語を知る辞典 calls the original one [1]. The 諺語大辞典 of 1910 gives three sources in this order and no gloss: Chikamatsu's 天鼓, 上の田も下の田も、穗に穗がさいて, breaking off with a dash; the 新猿楽記, 春以一粒雖散地面、秋以萬倍納藏内; and the 報恩經 [64].

1943. Sakurazawa, 食物と人生, Food and life, chapter 一粒萬倍の功德, the merit of one grain ten-thousandfold. Sakurazawa treats an aged priest of the Shingon school who has never eaten fish; the priest recovers, and then brings him tobacco by the twenty and thirty at every visit [13]:

『いやいつか一本アンタのタバコを頂戴しましたからナア』『だつてあれはタツタ一本です』『いや一粒萬倍といふからナア』

"Well, once I had one of your cigarettes, you know." "But that was only one!" "Well, they do say one grain ten-thousandfold." Sakurazawa writes that this third blow blew his brains to splinters. The phrase as a gift repaid, which is what his motto in English renders.

After 1949. The lucky day. In 2013 a column on the science of psychic claims in the magazine 上方芸能, 霊感を科学する, is titled アベノミクスか、一粒万倍日か, Abenomics, or a one-grain-ten-thousandfold day? [65].

What is not a source. The 報恩經 is the source the dictionaries give [1], and it is the source of the sowing image, 種一萬倍; it is not the source of the four characters, which it does not have. Li Shen's poem is the Chinese grain and the farmer's, and it has 一粒 and 萬 but not the four characters. The medieval 簠簋内伝's ten-thousandfold hour is an hour [35]; the day is first found, among the National Diet Library's digitized almanacs, in the printed almanacs of the seventeenth century.

The phrase in English

1862. Léon Pagès, Dictionnaire japonais-français, p. 436. The Jesuit dictionary of 1603 in French: Itchirioû manbai … Dix mille pour un, with the example Recevoir un fruit, ou profit de mille ou dix mille pour un grain de semence [11]. The farmer's sense, and the earliest European rendering known from the Internet Archive's and Google Books' full texts.

1867 and 1872. Hepburn. The first edition of Hepburn's Japanese and English Dictionary and its second have no entry for the phrase [66][67].

1896. F. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary. Ichiryū-mambai, いちりふまんばい, 一粒万倍, Ten thousand fold for a grain of rice; and, under the book's mark for a figurative sense, a very munificient retribution for a little act of kindness [9], so spelled. The earliest English entry in the Internet Archive's and the National Diet Library's full texts, with both Hepburns read at the image, and it already gives the figurative sense as the reward of kindness.

1904. Sakuma Nobuyasu 佐久間信恭, 和英中辞林. Under bai, 倍: 一粒萬倍。One grain produces a myriad fold [10].

1963. The Japan Times, 9 July 1963. calendar mentions a specially lucky day called ichiryu-manbai (one grain 10,000 times) [68]. The day in English.

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, pp. 111–112. Ichi ryū nambai: "One grain, ten thousand fold." A figurative expression used to denote a munificent recompense for a small act of kindness, set just after the proverb of the rich man's ten thousand lanterns and the poor man's one, whose note ends on the widow's mite of Mark 12:41–44 [69]. Nambai is a misprint for mambai, and munificent recompense for a small act of kindness is Brinkley's sense in Brinkley's words.

1965. Georges Ohsawa, Zen Macrobiotics. you should live the biological law: From one grain, ten thousand grains. All vegetables and animals return …, and "One grain, ten thousand grains" is the biological law of this world [12]. Ohsawa's English makes the phrase a law of return, for each grain she has received, and asks the reader to live by it: the repayment the priest makes with his tobacco.

1977. Michio Kushi, The Book of Macrobiotics. A section under Principles of Economy headed One Grain — Ten Thousand Grains, and the phrase as a spirit of endless gratitude and love [70]. From here the motto runs on through the macrobiotic literature in English.

Today: JMdict gives a single seed can eventually produce a great harvest; even the smallest beginning can generate a greatest profit; watch the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves [14]. A greatest profit is an error for a great profit, and the English proverb about pennies is thrift, one of the phrase's uses and not its sense. One grain, ten thousandfold renders the four characters word for word. What a rendering must keep is that the grain is sown: the phrase is about what is put into the ground, or given, and what comes back.

A reading

The phrase is Japanese, and it is older than its four characters. The canon had the seed that returns ten-thousandfold as the merit of a gift by the fifth century, and the same figure for an evil thought, and a warning that to give for the return is to give impurely; Li Shen had the farmer's grain, and the farmer starving; a Heian writer had his great farmer sowing one grain in spring and storing ten-thousandfold in autumn. What the Japanese made of these was a phrase of the field. In the earliest witnesses it is the harvest a farmer takes, the prayer a priest speaks over a god's rice as it is planted, the blessing the planting girls sing, the people's own word for why a lord's hunt must not trample the crop, and the day in the almanac good for sowing. Merit, repayment and profit grow out of that ground, and some dictionaries of the twentieth century, reading back to the sutra, put the merit first and called it the original sense; the witnesses put the field first. I read the phrase as a blessing spoken at a beginning. Most of the early uses stand at the planting, when what will come of the grain is not yet known: the priest prays for the ten-thousandfold, he does not count it. That is also why the phrase carries its warnings. Hakuin's seed in the field of the heart grows by the same law as the farmer's, and the comic farmer who whispers so the doves won't hear has understood that a lucky day does not sow the beans. The 1673 house code gives the phrase its best gloss: a single trampled seedling is ten thousand grains lost, so tread carefully at the beginning. Sakurazawa's priest, returning tobacco by the thirty for one cigarette, had the last word on the gift.

Notes

References

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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Not yet reviewed.