Where does the Korean word 시달리다 come from?

ANSWER: India

The Korean word 시달리다 means “to suffer from,” “to be afflicted with,” or “to be harassed by.” It usually follows a noun that has either 에 (for things) or 에게 (for people and animals) attached to it. Dong-a’s Prime Dictionary gives the following usage examples:

• 병에 시달리다 suffer from disease
• 가난에 시달리는 사람 a person suffering from poverty, a poverty-stricken person
• 남편에게 시달리다 be mistreated by one’s husband
• 빚에 시달리다 be harassed by debts

Though I guess 시달리다 could be considered as an adapted pure Korean word, the word actually comes from the name of a forest in central India named “Sitavana,” which means “Cold (Sita) Forrest (Vana). In Chinese characters, the pronunciation of the Indian name is represented as 尸陀林 (시다림). The 림 (林) character in the Chinese means "forest." Anyway, this “Cold Forrest” (尸陀林 시다림), which I understand is also be a Buddhist term, was located outside the North Gate of a walled city in central India named Rajgir (王舍城 왕사성). The people there would take the corpses of those who died in the city into the Cold Forest and leave them there, making the forest a kind of public cemetery. 

Practicing Buddhist monks would go into the Cold Forrest, apparently, to give the dead there Buddhist funerals. It was obviously not a pleasant duty, but they did it in spite of the smell of the rotting corpses, the disease, and the carrion-eating birds. In other words, they suffered the hardships of that place as a way to cultivate their understanding of their religious teachings. 

So, that is supposedly the origin of the Korean word 시달리다 since, I guess, the noun form of 시달리다 would be 시달림, similar to the Chinese name for the forest. The story I told above is only my interpretation of what is written on the book page below. The page comes from a 552-page book written by a Mr. Lee Jae-un (이재운), who writes in the book about the origins of Korean words and phrases. If I could afford the 28,000 won asking price for the book, I would probably buy it because it looks pretty cool. But since I cannot afford it, I thought I would post about the book here, in case there are some here who can afford it. You can get more information (in Korean) on the book HERE.