China and the Chinese | Page 7

[wo] "I, me"; [wo] "I, my," and [yáng] "sheep," suggesting the obligation to respect another man's flocks = [yì] "duty toward one's neighbour"; [dà] "large" and [yáng] "sheep" = [mei] "beautiful"; and [shàn], "virtuous," also has "sheep" as a component part,--why we do not very satisfactorily make out, except that of course the sheep would play an important r?le among early pastoral tribes. The idea conveyed by what we call the conjunction "and" is expressed in Chinese by an ideogram, viz. [jí], which was originally the picture of a hand, seizing what might be the tail of the coat of a man preceding, scilicet following.
The third and greatest step in the art of writing was reached when the Chinese, who had been trying to make one character do for several similar-sounding words of different meanings, suddenly bethought themselves of distinguishing these several similar-sounding words by adding to the original character employed some other character indicative of the special sense in which each was to be understood. Thus, in speech the sound ting meant "the sting of an insect," and was appropriately pictured by what is now written [ding].
There were, however, other words also expressed by the sound ting, such as "a boil," "the top or tip," "to command," "a nail," "an ingot," and "to arrange." These would be distinguished in speech by the tones and suffixes, as already described; but in writing, if [ding] were used for all alike, confusion would of necessity arise. To remedy this, it occurred to some one in very early ages to make [ding], and other similar pictures of things or ideas, serve as what we now call Phonetics, i.e. the part which suggests the sound of the character, and to add in each case an indicator of the special sense intended to be conveyed. Thus, taking [ding] as the phonetic base, in order to express ting, "a boil," the indicator for "disease," [chuáng], was added, making [ding]; for ting, "the top," the indicator for "head," [yè], was added, making [ding]; for "to command," the symbol for "mouth," [kou] was added, making [ding]; for "nail," and also for "ingot," the symbol for "metal," [jin], was added, making [ding]; and for "to arrange," the symbol for "speech," [yán], was added, making [ding]. We thus obtain five new words, which, so far as the written language is concerned, are easily distinguishable one from another, namely, ting "a sting," disease-ting = "a boil," head-ting = "the top," mouth-ting = "to command," metal-ting = "a nail," speech-ting = "to arrange." In like manner, the words for "mouth," "to rap," and "a button," were all pronounced k'ou. Having got [kou] k'ou as the picture of a mouth, that was taken as the phonetic base, and to express "to rap," the symbol for "hand," [shou] or [CJK:624C], was added, making [kòu]; while to express "button," the symbol for "metal," [jin] was added, making [kòu]. So that we have k'ou = "mouth," hand-k'ou = "to rap," and metal-k'ou = "button."
Let us take a picture of an idea. We have [dong] tung = the sun seen through the trees,--"the east." When the early Chinese wished to write down tung "to freeze," they simply took the already existing [dong] as the phonetic base, and added to it "an icicle," [bing], thus [dòng]. And when they wanted to write down tung "a beam," instead of "icicle," they put the obvious indicator [mù] "wood," thus [dòng].
We have now got the two portions into which the vast majority of Chinese characters can be easily resolved.
There is first the phonetic base, itself a character originally intended to represent some thing or idea, and then borrowed to represent other things and ideas similarly pronounced; and secondly, the indicator, another character added to the phonetic base in order to distinguish between the various things and ideas for which the same phonetic base was used.
All characters, however, do not yield at once to the application of our rule. [yao] yao "to will, to want," is composed of [xi] "west" and [nü] "woman." What has western woman to do with the sign of the future? In the days before writing, the Chinese called the waist of the body yao. By and by they wrote [yao], a rude picture of man with his arms akimbo and his legs crossed, thus accentuating the narrower portion, the waist. Then, when it was necessary to write down yao, "to will," they simply borrowed the already existing word for "waist." In later times, when writing became more exact, they took the indicator [yuè] "flesh," and added it wherever the idea of waist had to be conveyed. And thus [yao] it is still written, while yao, "to will, to want," has usurped the character originally invented for "waist."
In some of their own identifications native Chinese scholars have often