恒河沙数
héng hé shā shù
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 恆河沙數
Too many to count, like the sand in the bed of the River Ganges. A bookish expression of Buddhist origin, used for things that exist in huge numbers, such as stars or living beings.
Nhiều như số cát sông Hằng: nhiều vô kể, không sao đếm xuể. Trong tiếng Trung đây là cách nói sách vở, gốc từ kinh Phật, dùng cho những thứ nhiều vô số như sao trời.
Register: literary
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 恒/恆 = hằng; etymology of “hằng hà sa số” = 恆河沙數 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “hằng hà sa số” (hang-ha-sa-so). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “恒河沙数” mean?
Too many to count, like the sand in the bed of the River Ganges. A bookish expression of Buddhist origin, used for things that exist in huge numbers, such as stars or living beings. Literally: the count of the Ganges' sands
Is “恒河沙数” formal or informal?
恒河沙数 is generally literary.