The etymology of Korean ssal ‘uncooked grain’ and pap ‘cooked grain’

Abstract

In this paper, I will provide etymological explanations for the two Korean words for ‘grain’: ssal ‘uncooked grain’ and pap ‘cooked grain.’ The word ssal ‘uncooked grain’ is a loanword from Middle Chinese bu-sat ‘Bodhisattva,’ linking the Buddhist holy figure to the type of food that has a sacred status in Korean culture. The support for this claim comes from the fact that (i) grains were sometimes associated with the Buddha’s body in Korea, and (ii) certain dialects of Japanese have also referred to rice—undoubtedly the most favored type of grain—as bosatsu ‘Bodhisattva’ or buppō-sama ‘Lord Buddha Dharma.’ Moreover, pap ‘cooked grain’ is most likely derived from the baby-talk term for ‘food,’ because cross-linguistically, baby-talk terms for ‘food’ or ‘to eat’ tend to be similar to /papa/ or /mama/, some of which shifted into the adult-talk term for food or a common type of food.