一切經音義 11.93

11.93

Cats and rabbits: the upper character has the fanqie *mo* + *bao*. The Wu dialect south of the Yangtze River takes it as the character 苗, which is not adopted here. The *Zitong* states: 'The name of a beast.' Gu Yewang states: 'It resembles a tiger but is smaller; people domesticate and raise it to catch mice.' Its standard graph is written with 𮙥 (pronounced *zhi*) and 苗 as phonetic. The sūtra text writes it with the dog radical, which is an abbreviated form. The *Shuowen* lacks this character. The lower character has the fanqie *tu* + *gu*. Gu Yewang states: 'Rabbit fur can be used to make writing brushes.' The *Shuowen* states: 'The name of a beast. It depicts [the animal] crouching; the trailing dot depicts its tail. A rabbit’s head is the same as an elephant’s head, therefore the character 兔 has a reduced form of the elephant graph (象).'