Understanding of the character 叉


I see the character 叉 in a lot of words that do not seem to have anything in
common:

> [夜叉]{やしゃ}
>
> [三叉路]{さんさろ}
>
> [叉焼]{チャーシュー}
>
> [音叉]{おんさ}

Is there any commonality here? What does 叉 represent? (Is the Chinese meaning
different than the Japanese meaning?)




It looks like these are all related to the meaning "fork", except for 夜叉,
which appears to use the character for its sound.

  * 三叉路 The road _forks_ , going three ways
  * 音叉 A tuning _fork_
  * 叉焼 (Meat) roasted on a _fork_ [(Wikipedia link)](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC#.E4.B8.AD.E5.9B.BD.E3.81.AE.E5.8F.89.E7.84.BC%5d)

It appears that 夜叉 is a phonetic transcription of Yakṣa [(Wikipedia
link)](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%9C%E5%8F%89), using 叉 for its
sound. I don't know why those characters were chosen specifically.




It looks like these are all related to the meaning "fork", except for 夜叉,
which appears to use the character for its sound.

  * 三叉路 The road _forks_ , going three ways
  * 音叉 A tuning _fork_
  * 叉焼 (Meat) roasted on a _fork_ [(Wikipedia link)](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC#.E4.B8.AD.E5.9B.BD.E3.81.AE.E5.8F.89.E7.84.BC%5d)

It appears that 夜叉 is a phonetic transcription of Yakṣa [(Wikipedia
link)](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%9C%E5%8F%89), using 叉 for its
sound. I don't know why those characters were chosen specifically.

