續一切經音義 4.111

4.111

Sound of the conch (luosheng 蠃聲: the first character has the fanqie [reading] luo + ge [luo]. The Qieyun says: "A kind of shellfish." The Erya says: "The small conch is called han." Guo Pu's commentary says: "The large ones are as big as a bushel, produced in the Southern Sea; they can be made into wine cups." The Shuowen [jiezi] says it takes 'insect' [as semantic component] and luo as phonetic. Vulgar script writes 螺, or sometimes 蠡; both forms are pronounced li or lu. We note that luo was originally the name of an ancient musical instrument blown to harmonize music; therefore scriptures frequently speak of 'conch sound', or 'Dharma conch', to represent the Dharma's sound universally heard by sentient beings).