What color is saffron?
The paper today repeated something I've lots of lately - since they've been in the news - which is that Burmese Buddhist monks wear "saffron- colored robes".I had always thought "saffron" was yellow. Looking it up the dictionary, I see:
1 or saffron crocus : a crocus (Crocus sativus) with purple flowers widely cultivated throughout southern Europe for the drug and dyestuff that it yieldsSo why are these robes being called "saffron"?
2 : a deep orange-colored substance consisting of the aromatic pungent dried stigmas of saffron and used to color and flavor foods and formerly as a dyestuff and as a stimulant antispasmodic emmenagogue in medicine
3 or saffron yellow : a moderate orange to orange yellow
(Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (26 Oct. 2007).)
Labels: language, miscellaneous
3 Comments:
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At 9:16 PM, October 26, 2007
fev had this to say...
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At 12:06 PM, October 27, 2011
Anonymous had this to say...
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At 1:08 AM, January 26, 2012
Hendon Harris had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Because ... people don't really know what "saffron" is, but they know monks in faraway places wear "saffron robes," and they trust what they think they know, rather than what they see and can look up?
Hard to say where in the process that would have gotten into the text.* For some interesting sorta-related tales, see Mort Rosenblum's "Coups and Earthquakes."
* Though it sounds like a fun meme: Add "in their saffron-colored robes" to the titles of all the songs on vinyl in your collection.
The color of the robes you might see is actually a deep dark orange, rather than the bright Florida orange color European and North American cultures normally associate. (Not all Burmese (now called Myanmar) Buddhists wear that color.) The dominant Therevda Buddhists NUNS wear pink, but that can range from a lite pink to a dark pink. In RGB Colour space orange is 255,102,0 (FF6600). Buddhist Orange is 227,86,4. If you start there, and have access to the HSV controls, reducing V reduces the apparent brightness of a color toward the color black by proportionately reducing the R G and B values. Why do that? Because the dying process used natural vegetation, which tends to be darker/richer.
What color is saffron? Thats a great question. It ranges from "the mellow yellow" of Donovan's song to the orange like
color worn by the Buddhist monks in many places all over the world.
That shade of saffron is called "deep saffron" and one shade
lighter is called "Rajah"
The saffron plant was originally cultivated in Greece which coincidently was where Buddhism was
very strong in its early days.
Google: "Saffron" & "Buddhist Saffron Draping"
Here's a real saffron mystery.
Google: "Church Rock Utah Images"
At the bottom of that rock formation is a saffron border. Is
that just a coincidence on a rock
that looks so similar to the upper portion of Phra That Na Dun and so many other Buddhist shrines that are continually draped to this day? What do you think?
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