Tricky words: One day in prison, a thousand years outside

First of all, let's discuss the word "prison" , a Sino-Vietnamese word, originating from the word 囚 (qiú) in Chinese.

The character "prison" (囚) first appeared in the ancient text "Three-body Stone Classic" carved during the Cao Wei Dynasty. This text, also known as the "Zhengshui Stone Classic" or "Wei Stone Classic" , is a stone stele that records the "Book of Documents" and the "Spring and Autumn Annals" in small seal script and clerical script.

The word prison (囚) today is written from the Kai Shu, forming an ideogram, combining two characters: vi (囗: surround) and nhan.

(人: person). The character vi (囗) looks like a prison, imprisoning people (人) inside. This character has a variant written as 𡆥.

According to the Originals of Li Xueqin and Zhao Ping'an, the original meaning of prison is to imprison. This is clearly stated in the Sai Trong Chi Menh (Book of Documents) . When used as a noun, this character refers to a prisoner, a person being held in custody (Li Ji. Nguyet Lenh) and later expanded its meaning to "crime of a criminal" (Han Wu Gu Su) . In addition, prison also means "captured enemy" (Zuo Zhuan. Xuan Gong Shi Nien) ; "encircle" ( Han Shu. Mai Thua Zhuan) or "restrict, limit" ( Dong Nhat by Meng Jiao of the Tang Dynasty).

Now, let's go back in time to learn the saying "One day in prison is worth a thousand years outside".

From the first half of the 20th century, in the poem Tu ca nguyet lieu (Four months gone) by President Ho Chi Minh, there were two opening lines as follows: Nhat nhat tu thien thu tai ngoai; Co nhan chi thoai bat sai ngoa (One day in prison, a thousand years outside; The ancients' words are not wrong), excerpted from Prison Diary . Thus, Uncle Ho said that " Nhat nhat tu thien thu tai ngoai " was a saying of the ancients and not composed by him.

From 1914 to 1915, poet Phan Chau Trinh was imprisoned by the French colonialists in Santé prison in Paris for about 10 months. During his time in prison, he composed the Santé poetry collection in Quoc Ngu script, including a poem titled Nhat nhat tai tu thien thu tai ngoai . However, this sentence was not composed by Phan Chau Trinh, because in 1877, 37 years earlier, the book Dictionarium anamitico-latinum (Anamitico-Latin Dictionary ) by Taberd Constans, edited and supplemented by JS Theurel, showed the sentence Nhat nhat tai tu thien thu tai ngoai (in the "prison" section, p.508).

Currently, we only know that the phrase "Nhất nhật tại tửp thiên thu hàng ô ô " corresponds to the Chinese phrase 一日在囚千秋在外, but there is no document stating where this phrase originated from or who composed it. We only know that the concepts of nhat nhật (one day) and thiên thu (thousand years) are words that refer to physical time, used to describe the psychological time in the prisoner's state of mind.

In Japanese, there is an idiom called "one day, three autumns" (一日三秋, ichinichisanshuu), which also refers to psychological time. However, unlike the prisoner, this idiom represents the longing of a lover, "one day feels like three autumns."

Finally, it should be said that the idiom "one day three autumns" used by the Japanese originated from China, specifically from the phrase "One day without seeing each other is as long as three autumns" (一日不見,如三秋兮), which means "one day without seeing each other is as long as three autumns" - quoted from the poem "Thai Cat" in Wang Feng (Book of Songs) .

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/lat-leo-chu-nghia-nhat-nhat-tai-tu-thien-thu-tai-ngoai-18525041821071343.htm