Huizinga (1944/1955) in discussing some of play's roots etymologically, notes:

Sanskrit too has at least our verbal roots  for the play-concept.  The most general word for playing is kridati, denoting the play of animals, children and grown-ups.  Like the word “play” in the Germanic languages it also serves for the movement of wind and waves.  It can mean hopping, skipping, or dancing in general without being expressly related to playing in particular.  In these latter connotations it approximates to the root nrt, which covers the whole field of the dance and dramatic performances.  Next there is divyati, meaning primarily gambling, dicing, but also playing in the sense of joking, jesting, trifling, making mock of.  the original meaning appears to be throwing, casting; but there is a further connection with shining and radiance.  Then, the root las (whence vilasa) comhines the meaning of shining, sudden appearance, sudden noise, blazing up, moving to and fro, playing and “pursuing” and occupation (as in the German “etwas treiben”). Lastly, the noun lila, with its denominatiove verb lilayati (the primary sense of which is probably rocking, swinging), expresses all the light, aerial, frivolous, effortless and insignificant sides of playing.  Over and above this, however, lila is used in the sense of “as if”, to denote “seeming”, “imitation”, the “appearance” of things, as in the English “like”, “likeness” or German “gleich”, Gleicnhis”. . . .  In all these denominations of play the semantic starting point seems to be the idea of rapid movement—a connection found in many other languages. (pp. 31-32)

The extraordinary earnestness and profound gravity of the Japanese ideal of life is masked by the fashionable fiction that everything is only play.  Like the chevalerie of the Christian Middle Ages, Japanese bushido took shape almost entirely in the play-sphere and was enacted in play-forms.  The language still preserves this conception in the asobase-kotoba (literally play language) or polite speech, the mode of address used in conversation with persons of higher rank.  The polite form for “you arrive in Tokio” is, literally “you play arrival in Tokio”; and for “I hear that your father is dead”, “I hear that your father has played dying.”  In other words, the revered person is imagined as living in an elevated sphere where only pleasure or condescention moves to action. (pp. 34-35)