The register rules: Bodhidharma
The internet spells Bodhidharma more ways than one, and only one of them is the name the sources wrote. This is the register's ruling — canonical, fallback, contested, and false, each in its proper place.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Bodhidharma
- Original script: 菩提達磨
- Pantheon: Chinese
- Convention: pinyin with tone marks — tones shown, ǖ kept distinct from u
- False forms on record: 1
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 97 of 597
The Canonical Form
The name is attested as 菩提達磨, as Transmission of the Lamp (Jingde Record of the Transmission) and Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku), case 1 record. On the evidence, it means "Dharma of awakening". The canonical transliteration is Bodhidharma.
No diacritics are required here: the canonical form is the exactness of the spelling itself, the form pinyin with tone marks — tones shown, ǖ kept distinct from u demands.
Where the Flattened Form Stands
The plain form bodhidharma differs from the canonical Bodhidharma only by convention of display — case, not content. It is acceptable everywhere: in legacy systems, in plain-text citation, in the DNS itself. What is not acceptable is what follows in the register: respellings that change the letters, not just their case.
The Register of False Forms
False form 1: bodidarma
Origin: the anglicized respelling — the name written the way English guesses it sounds.
Violation: rewrites attested consonant clusters to fit English spelling habits; every cluster simplified this way erases a letter the sources write.
The Contested Forms
No alternate form of this name carries documented scholarly support in the lexicon's record. The convention here — pinyin with tone marks — tones shown, ǖ kept distinct from u — produces exactly one defensible transliteration: Bodhidharma. Forms that differ from it are not contested; they are simply wrong.
The Convention's Own History
Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: pinyin with tone marks — tones shown, ǖ kept distinct from u. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.
What the Address Bar Allows
IDNA 2008 permits the letters these restorations use — macrons, acutes, underdots, thorn, ogonek, the lot — and the DNS carries them as punycode (`xn--` labels). Two honest constraints remain. First, registrar inventory: the protocol permits a character; the registrar's stock decides whether the exact domain can be bought today. Second, combined marks: forms like Apṓllōn (acute stacked on a macron) are philologically ideal yet effectively untypeable on phones and unsupported across much of the registration system.
That is why the rulebook keeps a fallback hierarchy — full restoration first, then the circumflex when the source carries one, then the macron-only academic standard, then an attested variant, and only as a last resort the plain ASCII form. Every step down the ladder is still defensible; nothing on the ladder is a wrong mark. A fallback is a choice among attested forms. A false form is not on the ladder at all.
Where the Name Stood First
His supposed grave at Kongxiangsi in the Pagoda Forest of Shaolin carries the earliest memorials; the Shaolin steles of the Tang dynasty name him. The Daruma doll’s manufacture is a modern industry, but the blank-eyed scowl descends from the Muromachi portraits. The temple on the web is the newest of these addresses — the first one that fits in a pocket.
The Verdict
The register rules for Bodhidharma, and the ruling is checkable: every mark sourced, every violation stated, every borderline form given its honest standing. bodhidharma carries the name freely — it differs only in display, and the register says so without reservation. Anything else in circulation has its origin and its failure recorded above. That is the whole of the law on this name — and the temple at /bodhidharma/ enforces it.
The docket for this ruling: 1 false form ruled against, bodidarma first on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 4 cited sources — Transmission of the Lamp (Jingde Record of the Transmission), Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku), case 1, Shaolin monastery tradition and the Yi Jin Jing.
The Register Continues
This is one of 597 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.
Continue the register — previous entry: Bodhisattva (read it) · next entry: Bragi (read it).
The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.