Subject: aum shinri kyo

content - length : 1513 what is aum ? the japanese police are currently investigating a religious sect called " aum shinri kyo " in relation to last week 's gas attack on the tokyo subway . aum shinri kyo has been translated as " sublime truth " in the press . with my limited knowledge of japanese , i know that shinri can be glossed as ' truth ' and kyo is a sino - japanese morpheme found at the end of the names of many if not most religions . aum , however , is a bit of a puzzler . japanese phonology only allows syllable-final [ m ] as an allophone of / n / before labial consonants , which is not the case here . does anyone know what this aum means , where it comes from , and if it is pronounced with a final [ m ] by speakers of japanese ? david p . baxter urbana , illinois dbaxter @ uxa . cso . uiuc . edu
