宝

Related characters

 * ( of 宝)

Glyph origin
. Officially adopted as the simplified form of in the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme  in 1956.

Kanji

 * 1) precious objects
 * 2) worldly goods
 * 3) valuable possessions

Etymology
From. First cited to the  of 759. From.

Samuel Martin analyzes this as a compound of +. However, this is semantically problematic, as such a compound would ordinarily refer to "the heights" as a location, and there is no clear means of deriving the sense of "treasure" from the proposed component parts.

Some sources derive this as a compound of 🇰🇲, from the way people value thriving paddy fields as a unique kind of treasure. However, the sense of "from" for does not appear until roughly the, more recent than the first appearance of takara, making this a folk etymology.

Noun

 * 1)  treasure

Hanja

 * 1) jewel