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In Brave 10, when a character goes to use a spell's incantation or uses a
chant for a secret technique, the subtitles don't have any English words in it
(I am referring to the home release by NISA, not fansubs). However, it does
sound like they are saying something in Japanese. An example of this is in
episode 2 when Hanzo Hattori goes to use Pure Flame Samadhi on Saizo.

I am wondering, what language are the spells/chants being said in? Or did they
just throw random characters together?


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What language are the spells/chants in?


> **What language is it?**

That's Japanese. It's not ordinary contemporary Japanese, though, but rather
_Buddhist_ Japanese, which has some unusual qualities that make it rather
unlike contemporary spoken Japanese.

* * *

> **Why isn't it translated?**

Buddhist texts in Japanese are strange things. As the informed reader is
aware, Buddhism originated in India, and as such, many of the foundational
texts of Buddhism were originally written in Sanskrit. When Buddhism moved
into China, those Sanskrit texts were translated into whatever the
contemporary form of Classical Chinese was. Eventually, those texts made their
way from China into Japan.

I'm glossing over a lot of details here to get to the important point: most
Japanese Buddhist terminology was first introduced around the 6th century CE.
Since these were loanwords from Chinese (many of which were in turn loans from
Sanskrit), they used Sino-Japanese pronunciations (that is, [_on_
readings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyomi#On.27yomi_.28Sino-
Japanese_reading.29), and in particular, [_go-on_
readings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-on)). Buddhist terminology has
changed relatively little since.

Modern Japanese consists primarily of 1.) native words (e.g. _kun_ readings);
2.) non-Sinitic loanwords (e.g. borrowings from English); or 3.) Sinitic
loanwords that _postdate_ the 6th century (that is, the _kan-on_ and _tō-on_
readings). _go-on_ vocabulary (like Buddhist words) are relatively scarce in
the contemporary Japanese language, and the average speaker is unlikely to be
particularly familiar with many _go-on_ words.

Making things more difficult still is the fact that Japanese Buddhist texts
are often straight-up Chinese texts simply being read in Japanese
pronunciations, making it difficult for someone without training in reading
Buddhist texts to understand what is being spoken.

So that's probably why it wasn't translated - it was too difficult for whoever
was on hand. It's certainly _possible_ to translate whatever was said (see
below), but I guess it wasn't worth the trouble for the people at NISA. See
also footnote4. Anyway, that's enough of that digression.

* * *

> **What is he actually saying?**

If my ears are working today, what Hattori Hanzo says in episode 2 is:

> オン ソンバ ニソンバ ウン バザラ ウン パッタ  
>  on sonba nisonba un bazara un patta

Now, what does this mean? Heck if I know - I certainly don't know how to read
Japanese Buddhist texts. Luckily, the internet has answers for us. This is
apparently the mantra1 (in Japanese, _shingon_ ) for a being called
[降三世明王](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%99%8D%E4%B8%89%E4%B8%96%E6%98%8E%E7%8E%8B)
( _Gouzanze Myouou_ ; Skt. Trailokyavijaya)2, one of the five [Wisdom
Kings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_King).

The Sanskrit equivalent of this chant appears to be:3

> om sumbha nisumbha hum vajra hum phat4

I'm not going to attempt to translate this, because my Sanskrit is far too
weak for that, but some of the relevant things to know are:
[Sumbha](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumbha_and_Nisumbha) is an alternate
name (or epithet or something like that) for _Gouzanze Myouou_ , as is
Vajrahumkara, here contracted to Vajra. Nisumbha is the name of the other
asura that appears in stories detailing the exploits of Sumbha. "Om" is of
course the sacred syllable [Om](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om). The rest I'm
honestly not sure about, but I'm sure a better-educated person would be able
to translate this.

* * *

# Notes

* If you find this sort of thing interesting, take a look at the [Buddhism proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45110/buddhism?referrer=lddPQFmsNQbyJ6AWfccLUw2) over at Area51! They need more committers!

1 Full text for the mantrams of the other Wisdom Kings
[here](http://www3.plala.or.jp/zbh421331/page017.html), I think.

2 See also [this JAANUS
article](http://www.aisf.or.jp/%7Ejaanus/deta/g/gouzanzemyouou.htm).

3 According to [this guy](http://youkaimura.freeforums.org/gonzanze-myo-
o-t142.html#p1219) and also the article on
[_shingon_](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9C%9F%E8%A8%80#.E6.98.8E.E7.8E.8B)
on Japanese Wikipedia.

4 The astute reader will observe the startling similarity of the Sanskrit
version of the mantra to the Japanese version, this despite Sanskrit and
Japanese having no genetic relationship to one another. This is another reason
why Buddhist mantras in particular are difficult to understand - they are
often just plain Sanskrit processed through Chinese without translation and
then readapted to fit Japanese phonology, and as such are often devoid of any
actual Japanese words.


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