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阿吽 aun Om

This is a philological study of 阿吽 (aun), following two Sanskrit seed syllables from the esoteric canon to the open and closed mouths of the temple gate kings and the shrine lions, into the shared breath of two people acting as one, and into the English word Om.

Japanese Scroll of Om (aun) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Om (aun)

Om (aun) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

阿吽 (aun) transliterates two Sanskrit seed syllables, a and hūṃ: in the Japanese dictionaries, the sound made as the mouth opens and the sound made as it closes, and so the beginning and the end of all things. The two were separate letters in the Chinese canon and became one word in Japanese esoteric Buddhism in the twelfth century; by 1305 they named the open- and closed-mouthed guardian kings at a temple gate, and from the late seventeenth century the breath two people share when they move as one, 阿吽の呼吸. The Sanskrit oṃ is a different syllable, written 唵, which the canon sets before 阿吽 in the triad 唵阿吽; the one textual bridge between them is Kūkai 空海's reading of a, u and m inside the single syllable 吽. In English the equation of 阿吽 with Om first appears in a footnote of 1911 reporting a Japanese essay; from 1927 books on Japanese art gave Aum to the lion's open mouth, and from 1993 books on aikido made the word and the syllable one.

Overview

The sense. A Buddhist word from Sanskrit that became a common one. デジタル大辞泉 derives it 《梵語のaとhūṃの音写。「阿」は口を開いて出す音声、「吽」は口を閉じて出す音声》, a transliteration of Sanskrit a and hūṃ: 阿 is the sound made with the mouth open, 吽 the sound made with it closed, and gives four senses: the first and last of the twelve Siddham letters, and in esoteric Buddhism the beginning and end of all things; the pair of guardian kings and shrine lions, one with the mouth open and one with it closed; the out-breath and the in-breath; and any two things set against each other [1]. 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives five senses and dates them: the esoteric sense first, from the Noh play 安宅 of about 1516; the out-breath and in-breath from a puppet play of 1710; the paired figures; two things in contrast from about 1706; and the strain of the whole body in a held breath or a shout from 1723 [1]. Its idiom 阿吽の呼吸, the breath of a and hūṃ, is two or more people's timing in one act, first cited from a book of 1683 on the sumo wrestlers' crouch before the charge [2]. The English om is a sacred, mystical syllable used in prayer and meditation [3]. 阿吽 covers none of that on its own: the Japanese for the sacred syllable is 唵, on, which 大辞泉 derives from Sanskrit oṃ and describes as the syllable set at the head of mantras [4]. What 阿吽 covers and om does not is the pair: two sounds, two mouths, two breaths, a beginning and an end.

The words. 阿 writes Sanskrit a, the first vowel, and 吽 writes hūṃ, a seed syllable; neither character carries its Chinese meaning here. The reading is aun in every dictionary [1]. The dictionaries also write 阿呍 [1], and a Buddhist dictionary of 1912 notes that 吽 is also written 云 and has long been pronounced ウム, which it calls an error for フーム [5]. That pronunciation is old: Dōhan 道範 in 1251 analyzed 吽 into ウ, ン and ム, a sound from the throat, the tongue and the lips [6]. The design writes 阿吽.

The text in English. James Curtis Hepburn's dictionary has no entry for the word in its editions of 1867, 1872 and 1886 [7][8][9]. Kenkyūsha's dictionary of 1942 enters aun 阿呍 as Ahun, marked Sanskrit, inspiration and expiration; respiration; alpha and omega; two sides of a thing, with two wrestlers rising together [10]. The Daitō Buddhist dictionary of 1965 gives the esoteric sense and the guardian figures [11], and Kenkyūsha's edition of 1974 gives ahum; alpha and omega; inspiration and expiration, and for the lion dogs an open mouth and closed mouth [12]. JMdict today gives first Om; Aun; syllable representing the primordial trinity of Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, and second inspiration and expiration; respiration; alpha and omega [13]. Its first sense is what the Japanese encyclopedias say of 唵, not of 阿吽 [4]; its second is Kenkyūsha's of 1942.

The historical record

723, Vajrabodhi 金剛智, the 吽迦陀野儀軌, a ritual manual. The earliest dated use of the two characters together, inside a mantra: 唵跋折羅阿吽(二合), oṃ vajra a-hūṃ [14]. The string is two seed syllables in a formula, not a word, and 唵 stands before it.

Tang, the 守護國界主陀羅尼經, fascicle 9. The canon's own account of oṃ as three sounds: 陀羅尼母所謂唵字。所以者何？三字和合為唵字故，謂婀、烏、莾, the mother of dhāraṇīs is the syllable 唵; why? because three letters join to make it: a, u and m, and each is one of the Buddha's three bodies [15]. The Buddhist a-u-m is 唵.

Early Heian, Kūkai, the 吽字義, a treatise on the syllable hūṃ. Kūkai divides 吽 into four letters, 賀・阿・汚・麼, ha, a, u, ma, and for three of them quotes the 守護國界主陀羅尼經's account of the a, the u and the m of 唵, naming the sutra in the same passage: 阿字者是菩提心義 … 又法身義, the letter a means the mind of awakening … and the dharma body; 汚字報身義, the letter u means the reward body; 是麼字化身義, the letter m means the transformation body [16][15]. In his synthesis the four become four bodies: 此吽以四字成一字。所謂四字者阿訶汚麼。阿法身義。訶報身義。汚應身義。麼化身義, this 吽 makes one letter of four: a, ha, u and ma; a is the dharma body, ha the reward body, u the response body, ma the transformation body [16]. Yoshito Hakeda's English translation traces the m to the sutra's page on 唵 [17]. The treatise never writes the compound 阿吽. This is the one thread in the canon that joins 吽 to a-u-m: an analysis of 吽 alone, borrowing the account of 唵.

Song, Dānapāla 施護, a ritual for installing an image. 以唵阿吽三字安在像身三處 用唵字安頂上用阿字安口上用吽字安心上, place the three syllables 唵, 阿 and 吽 at three places on the image: 唵 on the crown, 阿 on the mouth, 吽 on the heart [18]. Oṃ and a-hūṃ stand side by side as different syllables.

Late Heian, Saisen 済暹 (1025–1115) and Kakuban 覚鑁 (1095–1144). Saisen writes of the Buddha's seed letters 是可爲阿吽等字者, these may be taken as letters such as 阿 and 吽 [19]. Kakuban, on the seed syllable of the deity Aizen, fixes the pair to the body: 開口閉唇之時。阿吽二字自生, when the mouth opens and the lips close, the two letters 阿 and 吽 arise of themselves [20]. A study of 1996 names this the first place where the two form a set pair [21].

1251, Dōhan, the 阿吽合觀, a meditation on the two letters. 一切時中出息阿字入息吽字 … 開口阿字本初不生合唇吽字遠離因緣, at all times the out-breath is the letter a and the in-breath the letter hūṃ … the open mouth is a, unborn from the beginning; the closed lips are hūṃ, far from cause and condition; and of the sounds, 阿ア喉イア舌ウア唇 吽ウ喉ン舌ム唇 [6]. The colophon dates it to the ninth month of 建長三年 [6]. Here the pair becomes the breath.

1283 and 1305, the lions and the gate kings. A Shingon text of 1283, the 秘蔵抄, says the lions to the left and right of the gods at every shrine are each the form of a and vaṃ, not a and hūṃ [21]. Mujū Ichien 無住一円's 雑談集 of 1305 [22] has the gate kings: 諸寺ニ二王ヲ立ル事。重々ノ習ヒコレ有リ。一リノ金剛ハ口ヲ開キ。一リノ金剛ハ口ヲ閉ヅ, there are layers of teaching about setting up two kings at every temple: one vajra-bearer opens his mouth, one shuts it. He gives the children's explanation first, that one king opens his mouth to drink Lake Biwa dry and the other says u and shuts it, and calls it the lowest of teachings; then the Siddham one, 劫盡ノ時梵王諸字ヲ呑失フニ, at the end of the kalpa, when Brahmā swallows all the letters, the two letters a and hūṃ alone remain at the left and right corners of the mouth; 都テ陰陽兩部ノ法門ノ下地ナリ, all of it is the ground of the teaching of the two realms, yin and yang [23][24]. The same study finds no document showing that the early paired lions were made to express 阿吽, and dates the pairing of open and closed lions with 阿吽 to Kamakura esoteric teaching [21].

1345, Kitabatake Chikafusa 北畠親房, writing as the monk 覚空, the 真言内證義. 阿の声、吽の声、全く別の声に非ず。一気の出入に随て自然に成声なるべし, the sound of a and the sound of hūṃ are not wholly different sounds; they become sound of themselves as one breath goes out and comes in [21].

About 1516, the Noh play 安宅. The mountain ascetics 出で入る息に阿吽の二字を唱へ, chant the two letters 阿吽 with the breath going out and coming in: the 日国's earliest example of the word [1].

1644 to 1648, 1662, 1666 and 1667, the name in common use. A kyōgen of the 正保 era, 二王, says 二王にはかならずあうんがなふてかなわぬ、口をあきもふさぎもせい, a pair of kings must have their a and un: open your mouth, and shut it too [21]. Asai Ryōi 浅井了意's guidebook 江戸名所記 of 1662 [25], on the stone kings before the great Buddha at Shiba: 門前の二王は、これ陰陽阿吽の相をあらはし, the two kings before the gate show the aspect of yin and yang, of a and hūṃ [26]. A comic poem of 1666 under Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師's name ends 阿吽の二字のあるに任せて, leaving it to the two letters 阿吽 [21]. Nakagawa Kiun 中川喜雲's guide to Kyoto of 1667, at the temple 頂妙寺: 二王門には東ハ持國西ハ毘沙門阿吽之像, at the gate of the two kings, Jikokuten on the east and Bishamon on the west, figures of 阿吽 [27].

1683, the sumo crouch. 相撲の仕切に、阿吽の呼吸を合はす, in the sumo crouch, the wrestlers match the breath of a and hūṃ: the 日国's earliest example of the idiom for two people's shared timing [2].

1688, the Zen phrase book 禪林句集, in its headnoted edition. The book carries the line of the patriarch Prajñātāra 般若多羅, who told a king that he did not read sutras because 入息不居陰界、出息不渉萬緣, my in-breath does not dwell in the realm of the skandhas, my out-breath does not wade into the myriad conditions, and that this was the sutra he turned [28]. The headnote of 1688 glosses it: 内不居五陰界外不渉萬緣也是ヲ阿吽之二字共云, inside not dwelling in the five skandhas, outside not wading into the myriad conditions; this is also called the two letters 阿吽 [29]; the print of 1889 keeps the note [30]. The word enters the Zen phrase books as a name for the breath.

1710 and 1718, the stage. A puppet play of 1710 has あうんの息もきへきへと, the breath of a and un fading away, and one of 1718 あうんの二王にことならず, no different from the two kings of a and un [1][31].

1712, Terajima Ryōan 寺島良安, the encyclopedia 和漢三才図会. Of the two figures at a temple gate, one open-mouthed with the vajra and one closed-mouthed with the hand open: 是男體而象陰陽阿吽之義矣, these are male forms, and they figure the sense of yin and yang, of a and hūṃ [32]. The guidebook's phrase of 1662, fifty years on.

1871, the dictionary 語彙. あうん, marked as Sanskrit, 人の息の出入をいふ, said of a person's breath going out and coming in [33].

1909, the 浩々洞 group, 佛教辞典. 阿は口を開きて發する音聲にして字音の初、吽は口を閉づるときの音聲にして字音の終なり, a is the sound uttered with the mouth open, the beginning of a syllable's sound; hūṃ the sound when the mouth closes, its end; hence the esoteric beginning and end of all things, and the kings at the middle gate and the lions carved on the pillars, one open and one closed, この二字を表すといふ, are said to express these two letters [34]. The study of 1996 traces to this entry the sense in which 吽 is called the last letter: 吽 is in neither Siddham series of fifty or forty-two letters, and the older sense, 諸声の終, the end of every sound, was the end of a syllable, which the later dictionaries turned into the last letter of the alphabet [21].

1912, 藤井宣正 and 島地大等, the 仏教辞林. The two letters, この二字を、寺門の左右に立てる二人の金剛力士に適用して、【阿吽の二王】といふ。向拜の兩柱に刻出する二獅子もまた同意に基く, applied to the two vajra-bearers standing left and right of a temple gate, they are called the two kings of 阿吽; the two lions carved on the pillars of a shrine's porch rest on the same idea; the out-breath is the breath of a, the in-breath that of hūṃ, 相撲道に阿吽の呼吸を合はすといふが如きこれなり, as when the sumo world speaks of matching the breath of a and hūṃ [5].

1944, Adachi Kō 足立康, the essay 狛犬の返辭, in 日本彫刻史の研究. A reply to a school primer that taught the shrine dogs as 阿吽. Adachi sets the early pieces against the teaching: a pair of the Fujiwara period at 大寶神社 in Ōmi opens its right mouth, a pair of the same period at 八幡神社 in Yamato its left, the Kamakura pair at Tōdai-ji opens both, and a pair at 出羽神社 closes both. He concludes that 一對の狛犬に於ける口の開閉は必ずしも阿吽の說を表すものではなく、一對の獅子形を造るときの意匠上の要求から來たものであらう, the opening and closing of the mouths in a pair of lion dogs does not necessarily express the doctrine of 阿吽, and probably came from the design's need when a pair of lions is made, and that in the sumo phrase 阿吽には宗教的意味はなく、その發音上の立場から「呼吸」への枕言葉になつたものにすぎない, 阿吽 has no religious meaning and has merely become, by its sound, a pillow-word for "breath" [35].

What is not a source. 唵, oṃ, is the syllable 阿吽 is most often confused with, and the canon keeps it apart [4][15][18]. Alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, is the English dictionaries' pairing from 1942, by analogy with the beginning and the end [10]. Yin and yang, 陰陽, is the Japanese writers' own pairing for the two figures from 1305 [23][26][32]. Each is a comparison, not a source of the word.

The word in English

1867, 1872 and 1886, James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary and its second and third editions. No entry: each edition runs from ATTO to AWA with nothing between [7][8][9].

1911, Arthur Lloyd, The Creed of Half Japan, page 38, note 3. In an argument that the Shingon formula Abarakakia is the Gnostic Abraxas, Lloyd reports a Japanese essay: He says that the whole word is sometimes abbreviated by taking the first syllable A and the last syllable un, thus making A-un (= om) [36]. The earliest known English statement of the equation. Whether = om is the Japanese author's or Lloyd's, the note does not say.

1911, E. A. Gordon, The Lotus Gospel, page 376. At a Tendai shrine at Yoshino she notes the Sanskrit characters A-Un, and writes that This "Un" is the "hun," the final syllable in the Tibetan prayer, "Om mani padme hun" [37]. She hears Un as hūṃ, the end of the mantra that begins with Om.

1914, Alice Getty, The Gods of Northern Buddhism, page 152. The gate kings as the deities Aizen and Fudō: Rāga is represented by the sound 'a' and his statues have the mouth open; Acala is represented by the sound 'hūṃ', and his statues have the mouth closed. A table in her note, from a Japanese source she names as the Myōkyōjōchinshō, sets them out: mouth open and closed, germ a and hūṃ [38]. The pair, rightly, and no Om.

1927, 1934 and 1958, Katherine Ball, Will H. Edmunds and Egerton Ryerson: Aum on the lions. Ball's Decorative Motives of Oriental Art, of the shrine pair: For the open mouth of Koma-inu is supposed to say "Aum," which was derived from the first of the Sanskrit vowels, and the closed mouth of the Kara-shishi, "um," or the last of these vowels, together "The Beginning and The Completion" of all Faith and Salvation, a description she gives to authorities of oriental literature without naming one [39]. Edmunds's handbook of subjects in Chinese and Japanese art, 1934: The open mouth expresses the first Sanscrit vowel Aum, while the closed mouth expresses the last vowel Um, the Alpha and Omega of Faith and Worship [40]. Ryerson's The Netsuke of Japan, 1958: one with open mouth said to be uttering the first Sanscrit vowel Aum, and the other with mouth closed saying Um, the last letter of the alphabet [41]. Each follows the words of the one before, and none writes 阿吽. The first vowel a has become Aum, and 吽 has become Um.

1942, Takenobu Yoshitarō, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, page 66. Ahun, inspiration and expiration, alpha and omega, two sides of a thing [10].

1952, the Kōyasan University translation bureau, the 吽字義 in English, part 2. Kūkai's own school renders 吽 as Hum: The letter A is the first of the Sanskrit alphabet and the word Hum is the last [42]. The dictionaries' last letter, in English.

1965, Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary, Daitō Shuppansha, page 12. A-un: the syllable a is the unborn essence and un its wisdom, the seed syllables of Mahāvairocana in the two realms, and the guardian kings and the stone lions always show one of the images with the mouth open as if pronouncing a and the other with the mouth closed as if saying un [11]. Always is the claim the historians of sculpture had disputed [35].

1967, Jean Herbert, Shintô: At the Fountain-head of Japan. Seven priests chant fifty times the Aun-no-kokyu, which bears a striking resemblance to the Hindu AUM [43]. A resemblance, not an identity.

1972 and 2004, Yoshito Hakeda and Rolf W. Giebel, Kūkai's treatise in English. Both title it The Meanings of the Word Hūṃ. Hakeda: The one word Hūṃ consists of four parts, that is, A H Ū M. The letter A symbolizes the Dharmakaya [17]. Giebel: Hūṃ is a single letter composed of four letters, and these four letters are A, Ha, U, and Ma [44]. The a, u and m are inside 吽, and neither translator calls it Om.

1973, Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍, Karate-dō Kyōhan, translated by Tsutomu Ohshima. Under a plate of the Tōdai-ji guardian kings, one symbolizes the A of A-un [45]. No Om.

1974, Masuda Kō, editor, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, page 59. ahum; alpha and omega; inspiration and expiration, and an open mouth and closed mouth [12].

1993, 1995 and 2001, John Stevens, three books on aikido. The Essence of Aikido, page 25: Morihei often spoke of the 阿吽 A-UN breath. A-UN is the Japanese pronunciation of the Sanskrit AUM (OM), the sum of all sounds [46]. The Secrets of Aikido prints 吽 rightly under a plate of the two Siddham letters, A and UN (pronounced HŪṂ in Sanskrit), on page 49, and on page 146 has Ueshiba's chant followed by the A-UN kototama, voiced as OṂ [47]. The Philosophy of Aikido, page 47: Master Ueshiba often spoke of aun no kokyu. Aun is the Japanese equivalent of om, the ultimate sound of all Yogic and Tantric systems [48]. The identity, stated without a source, and once beside the right Sanskrit for 吽.

1996, Brian Bocking, A Popular Dictionary of Shintō. Under Aun no kokyū: Aun is the mystic (Sanskrit) syllable 'aum'. It is repeated fifty times [49]. The fifty repetitions are the chant Herbert described, and his resemblance has become an identity.

2002, Jeff Garrison and others, Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms, page 469. Under ōmu, the parrot, of the sect Aum Shinrikyo: this ōmu is not of the natural world, deriving instead from the two phonemes that comprise the universal mantra written "om" in the roman alphabet and aun in Japanese [50]. The identity in a dictionary of Japanese.

2013, Linda Holiday, Journey to the Heart of Aikido, page 246. The book's own bracket glosses A-un as the Japanese transliteration of the Sanskrit aum or om, and goes on: represents the totality of the breath: exhalation and inhalation [51]. The identity again, beside the breath.

Today. JMdict gives Om; Aun first [13]. Jack Halpern's Kodansha Kanji Dictionary of 2013 gives alpha and omega; inhalation and exhalation, and no Om [52]. The design is sold as Om (aun), with the line Om, the sacred syllable of Buddhism and the house's explanation The Japanese word 阿吽 is "Om" or "Aum" the sacred syllable in Buddhism. The title follows the aikido books and JMdict; the Japanese dictionaries and the canon give a and hūṃ, and write oṃ as 唵. This history's gloss differs from the title because 阿吽 is two syllables and a pair, which Om is not. A rendering must keep the two: the open mouth and the closed, the breath out and the breath in.

A reading

I read 阿吽 as a pair first and a mystery second. Everything the word has meant in Japanese comes from there being two of something: two letters, two mouths, two breaths, two kings, two lions, two wrestlers. Kakuban's sentence is the hinge, and I take it literally: open the mouth and a is there; close the lips and hūṃ is there. The esoteric doctrine of beginning and end is built on that plain fact about the body, and so is the children's story Mujū heard, of a king who drinks the lake and a king who says u. By the time the guidebooks of the 1660s call the gate kings 阿吽, the word no longer needs a teacher; it needs only two faces, one open and one shut. Adachi's dissent is right about the sculptures and does not touch the word. The carvers may have wanted variety, as he says, and still the people who looked at the pair saw 阿吽 in it, and named it so, for four hundred years.

Om is another matter, and I hold two things together. The equation has no Japanese dictionary and no canon text under it. The canon writes oṃ as 唵 and sets it before 阿吽 as a third syllable, 唵阿吽, head, mouth and heart. And yet the equation is not a blunder from nowhere. Kūkai found a, u and m inside 吽 by reading it with the sutra's account of 唵, and the dictionaries of the twentieth century taught that a is the first sound and 吽 the last, which is exactly what English writers had said of Aum since the Upaniṣads reached them. Two teachings of the whole of sound met in one breath, and the resemblance Herbert heard in 1967 is real. The English books then did the rest by ear. An English reader could have had the pair right in 1914, from Getty's table of a and hūṃ. Instead the art books from 1927 on heard the first vowel as Aum and 吽 as Um, and passed the two sounds from book to book without the word, and the books on aikido gave Om back to the word. What the resemblance does not make is a translation. A buyer who reads Om on this design should know that the Japanese word says two things where Om says one, and that the two are a mouth opening and a mouth closing.

Notes

Sources not seen

『通俗仏教疑問解答集』, 通俗仏教館, 1896–1900, in volumes by 高田道見 (National Diet Library pids 816878–816880) and by 桐村覺豊 (1899), served to readers in Japan only: the collection whose title Arthur Lloyd gives as 佛教疑問解答集, in which he read the article on Abarakakia he reports [36], identified by its title and dates as the only collection of that name in the National Diet Library's catalogue before 1911; which volume holds the article is not known. It would settle whether A-un (= om) is the Japanese author's equation or Lloyd's gloss on it.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「阿吽」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ), 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/阿吽-24038
  2. 「阿吽の呼吸」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/阿吽の呼吸-176852
  3. "om", Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/om
  4. 「唵」, デジタル大辞泉, 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ), 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/唵-455649
  5. 藤井宣正 著, 島地大等 補『仏教辞林』, 明治書院, 1912, s.v. あうん. National Diet Library pid 969136, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/969136/1/27
  6. 道範「阿吽合觀」, in 『阿字観秘決集』, 1912. National Diet Library pid 819152, scans 14–15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/819152/1/14
  7. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary; with an English and Japanese Index, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1867, p. 21. Internet Archive japaneseenglishd00hepb. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb
  8. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, 2nd ed., American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1872, p. 25. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepb_0. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepb_0
  9. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, 3rd ed., Maruya, Tokyo, 1886, p. 29; the printing of 1888 at the Internet Archive, japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  10. Takenobu Yoshitarō, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1942, p. 66, s.v. aun.
  11. Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary, Daitō Shuppansha, 1965, p. 12, s.v. A-un.
  12. Kō Masuda, editor, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, Kenkyusha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 59, s.v. a'un.
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  19. 済暹『弁顯密二教論懸鏡抄』, Taishō 77, no. 2434, p. 474b14–15, at the SAT Daizōkyō Text Database. https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/T2434_.77.0472a23:0475a23.cit
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  21. 片岡了「仏教語の一般語彙化——阿吽と阿伽陀の例——」, 文藝論叢, 大谷大学, 1996, pp. 91–101. https://otani.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/2000621
  22. 「雑談集」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/雑談集-552876
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  24. 『古事類苑』 宗教部, 1912, quoting the 雑談集. National Diet Library pid 1874249, scan 100. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1874249/1/100
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  29. 『増補首書 禪林句集』, 貞享五年 (1688), 京師 小川多左衞門, Kobe University Library copy, canvas 92, at the 国書データベース. https://doi.org/10.20730/100272428
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  45. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-dō Kyōhan, translated by Tsutomu Ohshima, Kodansha, 1973, frontispiece plates.
  46. John Stevens, The Essence of Aikido: Spiritual Teachings of Morihei Ueshiba, Kodansha International, 1993, p. 25.
  47. John Stevens, The Secrets of Aikido, Shambhala, Boston, 1995, pp. 49 and 146.
  48. John Stevens, The Philosophy of Aikido, Kodansha International, 2001, p. 47.
  49. Brian Bocking, A Popular Dictionary of Shintō, Curzon Press, Richmond, 1996, s.v. Aun no kokyū. Internet Archive populardictionar0000bock_j3l8, by loan. https://archive.org/details/populardictionar0000bock_j3l8?q=%22Aun+is+the+mystic%22
  50. Jeff Garrison, Kayoko Kimiya, George Wallace and Masahiko Goshi, Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms, Kodansha International, 2002, pp. 468–469, s.v. ōmu.
  51. Linda Holiday, Journey to the Heart of Aikido: The Teachings of Motomichi Anno Sensei, Blue Snake Books, 2013, p. 246.
  52. Jack Halpern, editor, The Kodansha Kanji Dictionary, Kodansha, 2013, p. 189, entry 0408, 阿.

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.

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