Well,
Tousled Crow's rewriting of it is perfect: the original text is indeed a very strange way of spelling
Nam(u) Myô Hô Renge Kyô
å—無妙法蓮è¯çµŒ
This is a mantra used by the Nichiren sect of Buddhism here in Japan (I have a friend, a Nichiren monk, living very close to me). They chant this mantra over and over, often accompanying themselves on
(small or big) drums.
It literally means:
Hail to
(/Homage to/Honour to) the Sutra (called) "The Lotus of the Wonderful Teaching (of Buddha)."
In Sanskrit, this mantra is:
Namo Saddharma-pundarika-sutra
Which means:
Hail to the Sutra of the Lotus of the True Teaching.
(The Nichiren Sect has their own name for this sutra, because it's so important to them.)
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I must say, however, that I think
Tousled Crow's "translation" is instead a
very loose interpretation of this mantra.
This is perhaps one
interpretation of the
meaning of the mantra
(and perhaps not the most important meaning?), but I don't think we can call this a true
translation, when there are ways to say this in English
much closer to the original meaning in Sanskrit-Japanese...
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I think we should instead put the
simple translation in the Translation field, and then perhaps put her notes about the
meaning of the source text below, in the Remarks field.
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