Saturday, January 17, 2009

Sewa. Service. language of the world.

The sanskrit word Sewa or 'service' is present in the Japanese language as well. Not only does it retain the meaning but the pronunciation 'sewa' as well.

The kanji for sewa is even more interesting.
世話

The first character 'se' 世 is also the 'se' in 世界or world. 世also stands for 'generation' or 'age', being made up of 3 十 characters (the kanji for the number 10) if you look closely. (about 30 years is a generation and about 3 such generations (totalling about 90) live at a time.)

The 話 or 'wa' in sewa, made up of a mouth/speech 言 on the left and tongue on the right 舌 (which in turn has the character for thousand 千on the kanji for mouth 口 -thousand mouths saying the same thing make a 'tongue' - maybe as in mother tongue.) This radical etymology is a folk etymology and perhaps inaccurate - another precise explanation is in Shirakawa Shizuka sensei's works.

However, what strikes me as interesting is not the kanji etymology but the characters chosen for compound formation. Generation/Age/World + Language.
It suggests that if any language is to be used to communicate with, or to change the world, it must be service. 

Those who serve, lead and cause change. Service is a universal language.

No comments: