58 Part I: Land and Language
form, brahmi, meant “of Brahma,” God. In early Japan, when writing was first
borrowed from China, “its very words were pregnant with spiritual power,
called ‘word-mana’ (kotodama)” (Horton 1992). When early writers began writ-
ing Japanese rather than just reading and copying Chinese, it was to write Jap-
anese poetry once chanted orally and infused with kotodama. And about China,
Chiang Yee writes:
In every district of a Chinese city, and even in the smallest village, there is a
little pagoda built for the burning of waste paper bearing writing. This we
call Hsi-Tzu-T’a—Pagoda of Compassionating the Characters. For we
respect characters so highly that we cannot bear them to be trampled under
foot or thrown away into some distasteful place. (Yee 1973)Box 2.1 “Written Symbol” Is Its NameGreatly may I be forgiven for my intention to call forth a story.
And where dwells the story?
There is a god unsupported by the divine mother earth,
Unsheltered by the sky,
Unilluminated by the sun, moon, stars, or constellations.
Yes, Lord, you dwell in the void, and are situated thus:
You reside in a golden jewel,
Regaled on a golden palanquin,
Umbrellaed by a floating lotus.
There approached in audience by all the gods of the cardinal directions...
There, there are the young palm leaves, the one lontar,
Which, when taken and split apart, carefully measured are the lengths and widths.
It is this which is brought to life with hasta, gangga, uwira, tanu.
And what are the things so named?
Hasta means “hand”
Gangga means “water”
Uwira means “writing instrument”
Ta r u means “ink.”
What is that which is called “ink”?
That is the name for
And none other than
The smoke of the oil lamp,
Collected on the bark of the kepuh-tree,
On a base of copper leaf.
It is these things which are gathered together
And given shape on leaf.
“Written symbol” is its name,
Of one substance and different soundings.
Source: Translation from a Balinese text by Mary Zurbuchen, quoted in A. L. Becker, Beyond
Translation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.