She probably has no clue what the three characters 猛威勝 on her t-shirt meant, nor the fact there are mirrored.
Update: August 24, 2008 - Reader BH pointed out that Sinful is a brand of women apparel & this particular shirt is available for US$40.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sinful
I was showing a visiting friend parts of northern Arizona over the weekend, when we encountered this young lady at Sedona.
She probably has no clue what the three characters 猛威勝 on her t-shirt meant, nor the fact there are mirrored.
Update: August 24, 2008 - Reader BH pointed out that Sinful is a brand of women apparel & this particular shirt is available for US$40.
She probably has no clue what the three characters 猛威勝 on her t-shirt meant, nor the fact there are mirrored.
Update: August 24, 2008 - Reader BH pointed out that Sinful is a brand of women apparel & this particular shirt is available for US$40.
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So, I take it that they don't mean "sinful." Care to enlighten me?
ReplyDeleteI notice that the other characters printed on her shirt (this time the right way around) are excerpts from the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra.
ReplyDelete”Furious victory"?
ReplyDeleteSinful is the brand of her shirt. It is the female version of Affliction brand shirts. Here's the website: http://www.afflictionclothing.com/
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, this is part of a line from volume 189 of the massive 宋史 (History of the Song Dynasty), the full text of which appears here. The original line is:
ReplyDelete宣猛威勝.
The T-shirt seems to be missing the first character (宣) of this line.
I wasn't able to find a full translation of this, and my classical Chinese is not very good so I hesitate to hazard a guess as to its meaning. Maybe someone else can translate it.
-Alan
Massive victory through publicizing cruelty? Is that the idea?
ReplyDeleteCertainly Chris is right about the background lines from the Heart Sutra. John S.
Yes, I think part of the background text is from the Heart Sutra, but another part is from 西遊記 or the "Journey to the West." A notable snippet is 色即是空, which means something like "sex is empty." This quote is widely cited and has even become a movie title.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can tell, all of this text is just a mishmash of snippets of text from various Chinese classics.
-Alan
Oops! It seems that the text snippet 色即是空 only appears in the 西遊記 as a quote of the Heart Sutra, so Chris seems right after all.
ReplyDeleteSilly me! I really know little about Buddhism, and I hope I havn't offended anyone by translating this 色即是空 as "sex is empty." But that is what it could literally mean in one interpretation.
Other more scholarly translations of the Heart Sutra render this bit as "Form itself is emptiness."
Perhaps it is just me, but I find it somewhat more interesting to wonder if those monks were pondering the emptiness of sex...
It would certainly make a better T-shirt!
-Alan
Or "Impressive victory through a display of cruelty"?
ReplyDeleteAs for the scripture lines in the background, if 色 ('form', 'sex', 'color', 'desire') here refers to all forms, then "sex" is an included meaning, as is "Donald Duck."
On the other hand, Gaozi told Mencius "食色性也" ("Eating and lusting--that's 'nature'!"), and Waley translated it with a reference to "food and colors."
John S.
Why were these three backward characters over the Heart Sutra in Chinese[all of these characters aren't mirrored]? To add to the confusion, Why did "Sinful" replace 宣 from the original 宣猛威勝 on top of the next three characters?: First character, 猛"meng" = fierce, second character = 威 "wei" = powerful, or authoritative, & last character 勝 "sheng" = victory, victorious? Does all forms mean "backwards or mirrored forms as well?"
ReplyDelete色即是空 eh...I think I have seen this as a wall scroll on the hit anime series Crayon Shin-chan...at the tokonoma wall of the Nohara home.
ReplyDelete色即是空, 空即是色. Here 空 = sunyata in Sanskrit which means "emptiness","void" or something intangible, while 色 means "form" or something tangible. 色 in Buddhism doesn't mean "sex" or "lust".色 is used as the opposite of 空 in Buddhism.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad this was pointed out. It's something that has always annoyed me about Sinful and Affliction. I like Sinful's shirts. I only own one as they're too expensive for regular t-shirts. The sales people at Buckle always try to get me to buy one with Chinese on it when I come in. I guess because I'm half Asian? I tell them I don't wear stuff in a language I can't speak or at least easily translate. "Oh! But the people who design the shirts speak whatever language is printed on there! They know what it says! It doesn't say anything stupid!" OK...
ReplyDelete