tanka

plural tankas

1. A form of Japanese verse in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 morae.

   Like haiku, tanka is a short, classical verse form that has attracted considerable attention in this century.

   1996, Makoto Ueda, Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   One tanka poet who directly influenced Kenji is Ishikawa takuboku, who lineated tanka—an extraordinary break with the tradition of writing tanka in one line.

   2007, Hiroaki Sato, Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, page 38

   The notion of rhyming in Japanese tanka poetry is applied differently from what we observe in the Western poetry tradition.

   2016, Noriko Iwasaki, Peter Sells, Kimi Akita, The Grammar of Japanese Mimetics, page 121

plural tankas

1. alternativeAlternative form of thangka (“Tibetan religious artwork”).

   He has hung up his tanka (Tibetan thaṅka, a religious painting that is usually mounted on fabric) on the wall and is sitting down to the left of it.

   1988, Victor H. Mair, Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis, page 123

   3 more examples

   In the practice of yoga certain functions which were previously subconscious become open to consciousness; this opening of the subconscious is well pictured in certain Tibetan tankas, or in Western art, in the Temptation of St. Anthony paintings by Bosch and Grünewald.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 224

   A powerful 17th to 18th century example of the endless cycle of rebirth is this primitively painted tanka called “The Wheel of Existence." It was displayed with alarming vividness at the entrance to most Tibetan temples.

   1981 January-April, News Tibet, volume 16, number 1, page 15

   Tashi is unable to establish himself yet as a tanka painter in Dharamsala, so he has taken a job at the Tibetan Library assisting other tanka painters.

   1997, Anne Maiden Brown, Edie Farwell, Dickey Nyerongsha, The Tibetan Art of Parenting: From Before Conception Through Early Childhood, page 8

plural tankas

1. alternativeAlternative form of Tanka (“an ethnic group of boat people living in China”).

   And when foreigners go and come from Whampoa to Canton, tanka-boats and boats with families must not be employed.

   1831, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia

   3 more examples

   At every landing place behind the hongs, (i. e. in the front of the factories,) where barbarians reside, they must not allow the tanka boats to anchor.

   1835, The Chinese Repository, page 392

   In Macao roads, where vessels usually stop before proceeding up to the Canton anchorage, the tanka boats are generally navigated by young girls, in competition with whom the old women meet with poor encouragement.

   1845, Miscellaneous Remarks Upon the Government, History, Religions, Literature, Agriculture, Arts, Trades, Manners, and Customs of the Chinese

   Speaking of an interesting group of people near Canton, he says : Both the Tanka (boat people) and Hakka (another ethnic group, distinct from the Cantonese, living on land) have distinctive dialects and differ in phvsique from The Cantonese.

   1927, Herbert Ernest Gregory, Report of the director for 1926, page 6

2. A kind of boat used in Guangdong, about 25 feet long and often rowed by Tanka women; junk.

   These craft, the tanka, were the homes of thousands of true seamen — people who rarely came ashore ;

   1967, Stan Hugill, Sailortown, page 56

   2 more examples

   Immediately on our nearing the harbour, a race took place among the amphibious damsels that inhabit the numerous sampans, tanka or egg-boats, which always lie within a short distance of the shore.

   1837, Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the eastern courts of CochinChina, Siam and Muscat

   The tanka is a small boat, almost as wide as long, and differing therein much from the sharp and narrow canoes of the Malays. The crew generally consists of an elderly woman, who sits or stands at the stern, rotating with a vigorous and experienced arm the long oar which is the great propeller of all boats in the Celestial Empire.

   1866, William Ainsworth, All Around the World

plural tankas · alternative taka · alternative tucka

1. historicalA coin and unit of currency of varying value, formerly used in parts of India and Central Asia.

   The last of the gifts was fifteen horses with velvet and jewelled trappings and one hundred thousand tankas in cash.

   1997, Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold, HarperCollins, published 2013, page 42

   2 more examples

   In Uzbek Turan Shah Rukh's tanka remained the standard silver coin and weighed an average of slightly more than 5 g throughout the sixteenth century.

   1994, Stephen Frederic Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750, page 29

   A major shift in the usage of silver and billion coinage came about in the second quarter of the fourteenth century when Muḥammad Tughluq, after striking the ṭanka of 169.8 grains in the beginning, replaced it with a coin of lower weight (144 grains) called ‘adli, which was then treated as the standard ṭanka.

   2011, Najaf Haider, edited by Irfan Habib, Economic History of Medieval India, 1200-1500, Vol. VIII part 1, p. 152

plural Tankas · alternative tanka · alternative Hanyu Pinyin danjia · alternative obsolete Tan-kea · alternative obsolete tankia

1. A member of a group of people in southern China who traditionally live on junks.