No More Learning

1. [? ] dreams (grass net over evening) 2. sun below horizon, 3. setting
moon (moon blind kitten)
4. [? ] people are graphed as ''lost families,'' ideogram in combination:
rascals, gypsies, or in phrase, take census of the people.
5. [? ] severe, cruel: eldest dog or animal
6. [? ] small boat or junk etc. of all the dark ships, greek and latin.
7. [? ] direct reverse to brightness, bud represented as grass over MING (sun
and moon) to shine. J
Tsang gives under a hundred J words the most known being JEN, man, and JE^N, circumflex, manhood. There are two clear ideas, or two sides of the generative heat, hard and the soft, masculinity, femininity, a considerable number of J come over directly in various gen- english or latin origin, generation, gentle, etc. ; the values ascribed to i, an, and, ung (activity) hold good in a number of cases.
P the divider, pair and peer
In several hundred P ideograms we find knife after knife, not the violent ax that says ''ch. '' PAN is the quiet equitable cut, the half. One does not expect a universal answer, the P idea shd/ be tested not as cut but as division, and as comparison. If PIH, North, is
? ? ? 218 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
written with a ladle or dipper, that may be sky sign, but does not give indication of sound. P as in part.
PA, P'A, PAI start us off with such neat fits into our scheme that one expects ructions further down the list. The sense of P is divided not cut. The knife radical is TAO and the radicals differ from the meaning of the sound root to good purpose, that is they permit the graph to make the distinction which the gesture or the visible implement can make in the pre-graph era, thus whether the partition is made by cutting or wrapping. Rake and harrow divide by even measurings, or approx even with primitive instruments.
Not only the Pa of eight and six, the evenly dividing numerals, but the agglutinated I and AN follow our conjectured line, I, unity, equitable.
PAI, white is, I think according to Aristotle, the colours united. Pai meaning plain white silk enters an interesting phrase ''the three pai,'' purple, black and yellow silk used as presents, the ceremony being as important as the actual colour. Spread out seems to escape our classification, hand and net over ning (to be able) but note the ulterior guide that Tsang offers us as to usage, this PAI means, to arrange, and pendulum (certainly the equitable divider).
Branch, PAI with water rad/ means also to appoint, to allot. Cypress is written tree- white, white it is not, but it is of all trees the most united, the most that is a single upright, the most neatly bundled.
P'AI we note is not PA'I and may shed light in several directions, it allows us to proceed on supposition that the A is separative and the I implies what ought to be. The FEI rad/ incorporated in 1 and 3 first with observant man rad/, and secondly with hand, shows two uprights with three prongs turned outward. With hand this gives, place in order, exclude, a line, a row. The PAN fit neatly, note that PAN, remove, transport is pictured separate by boat, the hand is combined with PAN, an affair, definitely not with ch'uan, and the shou rad/ being here a peaceable pole. And I think we might formulate, or almost frame the hypothesis that the IMPLEMENT is graphed, because it is what you can graph, whereas the action is sounded.
If that holds we have made considerable progress if not in tracing the process probably followed in creating the chinese language, at least in putting together a mnemonic gadget that might help occidental beginners, occidentals at the start of their chinese studies.
Full list of all cases wd/ require making a dictionary but the cases of PAN emphasize that values ascribed both to P and to AN, division serene, semicolons indicate that the meanings belong to different ideograms: board, plank; class, troops; slice, petals, carpels of an orange; beautiful eyes the black and white clearly divided.
Secondary derivative meanings, i. e. those growing from the implement can, with a little good will, be followed in Tsang or any other competent dictionary.
P'AN, I think the dissillable emphasizes or tends to verbal connotation, thus PAN half, P'AN to halve. PANG rather more so, class, party, assist. The only way you can divide by silk is to bind. PANG is used for bivalves, oysters and clams. P'ANG is onomatopoeic for the noise of stones crashing, and the association with that emphasis may give the meaning of heavy to the ''rainside,'' i. e. heavy rain P'ANG, etc.
PAO, to divide by wrapping A O, ab alto 1. shooting start, clearly from above
2. defend, guardian, feed.
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 219
3. recompose
4. precious,acoin. Theenfolds,andwrapsareshowninthegraphs. Sometimes
with humour, and suggest that the modus of formation of hail stones was known. Cannon contains horse, possibly with magnifying sense guessed at in our treatment of M. Whether the leopard is PAO from the division of colour in his pelt, I don't know, the wrapping claw suggests felinity in the graph.
P'AO as the preceding and possibly, more so, nothing to rebut, in the graph for plane we have both the knife and the curl (of the shavings) and the A O, ab alto; and also in foam with the water rad/ The lion's roar is mouth and roll, and I suppose properly onomatopoeic when spoken gruffly . . . PEH, North, we have already noted.
PEI, nothing to weaken our significance of the P, but a graph occurring repeatedly, as in indication of lower part that needs further study. EI needing analysis
Reins, two cords with wagon between them.
Up to Pei, the P was running almost too smoothly one cdn't believe that things wd/ run as neatly as that. Pei pejorative disturbs, and only in the first P'EI do we get a possible ''out,'' if the E equals a latin ex, then P'EI UNequal is all right, and the E considered as contradiction to 1's equity fits such meanings as bank up with earth, but bothers one in mate, equal, unite, though not in secondary. One must hang up EI for examination in conjunction with other starts.
On through 44 PI with nothing to derange conjecture as to meaning of P, but various puzzles, as for example, whether the pejorative and apparently contradictory, as against the equitable divisions, does not mean the ''divided from equity'' the which to be determined by gesture, graph or context.
The graph of PEI, low, beats me, unless it comes from draining a field, and ''cause'' to come from man attending to irrigation.
In some cases where the P association is obscure the graph sustains it by the twin moons, or some other.
In trying to get at the real meaning of a chinese sound the difficulty does not, in numerous cases, arise from my hooking together a lot of words that a prudent man would permit to stay separate. Nor does the tone solve all troubles of ambiguity.
MIAO temple, MIAO sprouts, MIAO blind are differentiated by tone, but blind and small are not. And in dozens of cases the ambiguity or direct contradiction is between the meaning ascribed to the same ideogram. As indeed we speak of something well laid out, or of laying him out.
MING brightness and MING darkness are both listed with even tone, though their ideograms are absolutely distinct. If we suppose that the sound holds it the idea wd/ seem to be that which they both can emerge from.
The four MIEH might seem more or less coherent, the EH being violently separative in destroy, the splints pictured in 2. the no, none, light minute, showing grass instead of bamboo, and 4 the same spikes following blood rad/ meaning stain with blood. But ten MIEN seem without nexus, the last, the rad/ meaning visage contains the absolute contradiction: front, to front, to face, to show the back. Is it possible that M sounds in the aggregate can have any such common basis of meaning as the fork that so persistently occurs in Y words?
? 220 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
The M words are discouragingly heteroclite. If they refer to any great category it must be of things like light that go on and off, that are and are not, or that, like the light, increase and diminish but do NOT branch, fork
repeated element set side by side, i. e. there must have been some idea of parity in division in the mind of whoever decided the graph before it reached us.
PI means lame, and demands that P signify separation from the I
But P'IEH also means lame, and is certainly clearer and more emphatic P----I---- EH which latter is certainly separative. There are among the intervening words cases that need examination, but PIEH, separate; and (2) down stroke to the left in writing, reject, are, as one wd/ expect strongly separative. The divisions implied by the 21 PIEN are, as wd/ be expected, more tranquil. Of course in the field of quite secondary and derivative meanings nothing is going to prevent a discrimination in ''law'' to branch off and mean the hurry of man when the law is after him. But the P significance will, I think, seem extraordinarily constant to anyone familiar with the vagaries of philogical associ- ations, and up to this point even more so than the implications of the forked twig of the Y. An appendix of details can be provided if any reader be conceived as having the patience to read it. There is one rogue of PIEN ''bring lower'' to connect with as yet undetermined group of ''low'' (graph quite different).
So far we seem to come upon, in a good deal of penumbra, the primitive mind sorting out things as related in the following opposites
hither and yon
light and dark
the hard and soft
the branching and converging
the wrapping and separating
There must be an up and down, a quiet and unquiet, and various other associations,
some of which we have hinted. In fact the anvil, and leather, which is perhaps all the reader can stand at one sitting. We have also noted the opposites In and OUT, and the dichotomy of oneness and twoness.
YA in its simplicity is the forked stick or crotch that has come down in our own Y, what opens also shuts and the main radical in 16 ideograms is ''teeth'' verbal sense being: what the teeth do, as in Ode ''we are the king's claws and teeth'' it extends to the law court, and a bird's ''open and shut'' is the neat beak. The buds come out like bright teeth.
YAI, the toothed cliff, precipice 2: to suffer, procrastinate videlicet to Y, to diverge. YANG, the great UP, etc.
1. YANG [? ], to look up
2. [? ] pretend, dissemble, man and sheep (problem, divagate or trace of
early mask, VERY early, in fact the ram mask not the commonplace.
3. [? ] MIDDLE, listed under the Ta (great) radical and having no connec- tion with its significance, can it be an inverted Y with an indication of
grasp, or bind at the join? i. e. quite emphatically an indication of middle. 4. [? ] discontented, uneasy (heart plus the preceding)
5. [? ] illness. Permissible to ask if the upper component is variant on sheep,
which it resembles or if it is a Y on one bar crossed by two others.
CH M M J
Y
P
6. 7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
20.
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 221
[? ] RAISE, lift, battle -ax, high forehead.
[? ] Rising sun
[? ] aspen
[? ] KIND, sort, pattern, style, again the embedded Y pictured as in 5 [? ] misfortune, bad phase of moon plus middle
[? ] wide spread, disturbed, water plus idem
[? ] ocean water sheep, vast, wide spread
[? ] smelt, fire-spread, or fire plus the components of I (change) are divided by a bar.
[? ] itch (disease names outside general considerations)
[? ] young shoots of grain
[? ] SHEEP or GOAT, the Y of the horns thoroughly visible.
[? ] male, sun, south or sunny side (spread) of hill north bank of river. [? ] martingale, leather and middle
[? ] to be tossed about, winnow, set forth, publish wind rad/ with sun bar and not sun, I i. e. the change sign plus the horizontal divider.
[? ]tobear,nourish,bringtosupport,tame,develop,itch,somethinglikea
sheep but with forked bottom as well as top Y, over the eat sign.
We have in Y a good deal to indicate fork out, a little to support the notion that yang indicates upness. The change sign with added stroke does not occur save in composition. How far is the Y idea going to carry into other Y compounds? It appears graphicly in
only one pictogram of YAO
unless one wants to see an inverted Y cut off, in 1 and 3 bent distorted, weak and (3)
fresh looking, young, tender pleasing, untimely, calamity: which wd seem rather like forcing the meaning m as almost anything might be cut off by the upper thorn stroke.
2. is the great Yao, high, eminent, lofty.
4. bewitching, phantom, I can't rule out a long chance that sign I may be the
dowser's twig.
5. handsome, witching, elfs, fairies
6. lofty mountains, wife's parents.
7. the Yao mountains in Honan.
8. high peaks
9. RADICAL small, tiny
10. feudal labour of serfs
11. yao OR chiao, boundary, go round.
12. drag, pull, pluck a flower, snap off, pictogram hand-tiny-strength (dels
aussors entrecims [''from the high forked tips'' (Arnaut Daniel/EP)]) 13. move, shake, wave, trouble, discomposed.
14. the very poetic ideogram sun, wings, bird light of the sun, glorious 15. (OR miao) tree over sun, obscure, mystery
16. viands, mixed
222 18.
19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27.
28.
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
beautiful stone, gem, green jasper, as adjective with pond means a fairy pond
profound, secluded, obscure: little strength under a cave.
kiln, pit for burning bricks: fire and barred Y under cave roof or cover. ideograminindexbutnotinT'stext,lowerelementasinYaostoneandserf lobour (10)
glorious, light of orient sun rising, with wings
loins, waist (sense of middle conveyed in pictogram)
bale out (hand scooping up from hollow vessel)
desire, meet, coerce necessary, essential. HSI (West) rad/ over woman, which appears as component in loins (23)
medicinal herbs, administer idem
yao OR nu ?
eh (umlaut) tiger rad/ harsh, cruel, calamity oppress. (? ono- matopoeic, as of course the triumphant greeting of the sunrise could be in different emotional tone). rusticditty,falsereport,eveningmoonoverclaydishcomponentasin10,13, yao stone, 22.
distant, foot and tracks rad/ with rt/component as in 28.
invite, interrupt when in the way
29.
30.
31. lock or key
32. general name for kites, sparrow-hawks etc.
The conjectured AO, high, is clearly present in a number of these YAO; the idea middle is present in others.
omitted no. 17: mix.
YEH? ? dark as the devil's oxter?
leaf, arm-pits, profession, dimpled cheek, carry food to labourers in the field, choke;
can there be any focus or nexus in 19 YEH?
The first YEH: and, still, also, besides a simple graph of something that might be a
tent flap, or by stretch of imagination the flap of an arm is sleeve (such as primitive man does not wear? )
yeh 2.
You can take leaf as lateral, if you like, and the ideogram given in dictionaries as ''leaf '' you can, as well, take as shade. There are 4 yeh that fit gathering under armpit, or 5 if you count no. 1.
No. 9 contains the embedded Y and a gloriously divided top, a tree with fork: occupation, profession, the divided parts above the organic or organized tree. And from the sense of merit, listed among this yeh's meanings, you can, with perhaps excessive phantasy, suppose a title of honour. The dimpled cheek seems to start as a disagreeable black soot, found again in one of the yen.
And the YEH rad/ meaning head also means page of a book. Will the remaining 17 word sounds starting with Y shed any light on this one? Is EH separative indicating what branches off from, as leaf from forked twig or arm from body? This wd/ satisfy the 9th pictogram in the yeh list.
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 223
59 YEN for ire and fire.
At least if there is any nexus between these YEN it wd/ seem to be in the fire sign, the pictogram indicating how this is applied, whether for banquet or for the ''2 accensio sanguinis circum cor. ''
It wd/ be rash to say that for beneath every Y word in chinese there is the idea of the forked sign, in this case the forked tongues of the flame, the words from the mouth. Nevertheless where two diametrically opposite meanings are given for one ideogram, or where the same components appear as is two YEN on the heart radical, differentiated only by the radical being given in two different forms, one must look for an idea that BOTH could come out of.
In the first of two YI, we have: rush together, disperse (the second is a fish hawk or the cackling of geese).
YIA is a river bank. YO indicates music and jollity, the most used showing a tree bursting into the fine white teeth of its blossom. The 4 pictograms indicate whether a winged foot or a flute serve as joy's exponent.
The YEN and the YIN
the word and the tone
35 Yin which apparently run from lewd to gums, yet do not present great difficulty to
unification. YIN 16 is ''warm genial aura, breath of nature, generative influence of heaven ''ideogram air and cause (man in enclosure) 2 and the abbreviated pictures pretty well guide one as to direction and modus of this influence with the forked Y idea coming to the surface now and again.
YIN is emphaticly the INNER, it is the partner of the YANG the feminine as against the masculine, but always the inner, the YIN (tone) is the build up over the sun yin 29 (treasure or silver) if we take it the hidden. The 12th ideogram is given the alternative sound of AN, peaceful, composed.
6, 17, 18, lewd, soak, sink are all nicely and satiricly pictured.
Note that the YIN shade is dark because inner as in contrast to the outer PEH (north) cold and darkness. And looking at the points of the compass we must follow associations of suavity of the South; NG the energetic or active sun coming up from the earth in the East, HSI in relation with the low gentle light of the sunset. With P in the North, and the operant pivot CHUNG in the centre (the chinese give these as the FIVE points of their compass, a symptom of their solid sense as distinct from the infamies passing for intelligence in the occident.
I think we shd. probably translate NE^NG circumflex as the capacity to do a thing quietly and K'e^ (circumflex) to imply simply the requisite energy for an operation.
As to the humours of the ideographers painting YIN: the husband's house, relation by marriage, shows a female with a man in a box (or at least enclosed, I dare say the corral is the more ancient form of enclosure).
We must watch the je^n (or ge^n) in composed YIN 6, lewd, 17 soak, 32 long drenched in rain. Here the graph is clear; whereas in 18 & 23 there appears to be a WANG (king) under the HSI of the sunset. More than one foreigner has the decorum of the chinese, their reticence. I do not know whether the Je^n has any relationship with the primitive altar signs now rendered ''moreover. ''
224 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
YIN is the south bank of the river, as against YANG the North side (vide supra) the ideograms for YIN to be pregnant (7) and 22, abundance can almost be read by their pictured syllables NAI, to be, with the child inside it, and nai to be more in the dish or over it. The pictogram for YIN, heir, posterity suggests a matriarchal epoch.
YING, the radiance, resonance
The ideograms are the earliest comment we have on the mentality which inherited the chinese phonetic associations. The word vibration may seem alien to cave man mentality, but the ideogram for YIN (tone) is a build up, an orderly build up over the sun.
YING No. 1 is ''the melody of many birds,'' birds calling, a simple mnemonic device for the american wd/ be to associate YING, with sing and ring. YIN tone is the ideogramicly the runs resonance. 26 YING ideograms show five with the doubled fire root above a base, two cases of the inverted Y (middle) and seven cases of the shell rad/ doubled in the upper position. The branching off sense of the forked twig inheres in most cases, specified by the graph. The dictionary word in english may not be our idea of a branch off or convergence, thus YING 2, a grave or cemetery might strain our ingenuity in finding either a Y or a radiance were it not for the graph the double fire over covered earth, anyone's guess whether this is phosphorescent hob goblin, animistic awe or trace of corpse burning. But the idea of YING as specified in generalization is present, as it is in 18 fringe, tassel, 20, glow-worm.
YING 3 concubine, 4, an infant, a suckling, here the nu ? (umlaut) female surmounted by the two opulent shells in primitive maternity, and the lactic emanation. Other YING give shadow, reflection (not the Odes, where it occurs for reflected image in water), 8 mid sun, dazzle, reflection 6 influence. 17 the awn of grain follows 16 tassel, profit, go out to welcome. 11 ocean is a graph indicating mermaids, and in combination Fairy land named in the dictionary. Column or pillar is ideogramicly spelled Tree plus YIN, to be more above the ''dish'' base depicted.
Encampment, 12 is the doubled fire over two connected squares of a plan, and the oriole shows the double fire in upper position. 10 is cherries, the Y might be the forked stems, and with mouth it? ? Tsang notes ''cherry lips. ''
If all the YING do not accord with our present way of considering radiation or Y division, most of 26 ideograms can help us in figuring out how they ''got that way'' and what sort of fringe is intended. Onomatopoeic attractions stretch fundamental associ- ations, i. e. apparent exceptions can sometimes be easily accounted for in this way, as the very learned Karlgren often indicates in his gloss to the Shih, in particular cases. 9
YU, the hand's Y closes.
The hand, that by tradition grips the moon (or, quite possibly, a moon clouded piece fat-covered meat) is present, upper left, in 10 of 40 YU, though the hasty looker might miss it in 10, more, especially blame, murmur (ascribed to a radical under which Tsang lists only three words)
YU the simple prolongation or protuberance of the central upright line from the field rad/ differs in tone from YU, to have, although tonal changes often FAIL to occur where today's western reader would think they were most needed to prevent phonetic ambiguity.
Another curious, and possibly QUITE irrelevant fact is that the sequence of graphed radicals often seems to result in the change of aspect of our conjectural phonetic radicals at
9
Bernhard Karlgren, Glosses on the Book of Odes (Stockholm: BMFEA, 1964).
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 225
some definite point in the list of homophones so that all or most of one lot are above the division line. This may be pure chance or an hallucination of the present commentor.
1. YU [? ], aid, man rad/ and right or gripping hand
2. [? ] man plus have, or as one chooses, man and hand gripping? meat,
meaning to wait on.
3. [? ] Man standing beside the 15th YU, meaning melancholy, but here the
combination given as abundance, distinguished actor.
4. agree (ger/ stimmt) i. e. it grips
5. [? ] more, again
6. [? ] friend, graphed by hand above the preceding, but the tone is that
have (17th YU) evidently the grip, hand clasp, predominates in primitive idea of friendship, whatever or rather whenever the polite bow over one's own clasped hands supervened.
7. [? ] the right (as in right hand, the gripping hand, cf. YU 1. the hand that holds the weapon the TSO hand, with the work rad/ being that used one supposes in artisanship where both hands are needed.
8. [? ] park, the enclosed having, to pen up.
9. [? ] excuse, indulgent, the covered hand.
10. [? ]moreover,andtheideogramisnottobemistakenforacombination
of legs running, the upper left element is the hand. The only case so far where tonal change seems to some sort of orders is in the YU 5, 10, i. e. this one and 17, have.
The little Commercial Press dictionary translates YU 10 as best,10 still more, so that in the order 17, 5, 10 we wd/ have a sort of progress; have, more, still more (if not a superlative best, at least degrees of have. )
11. [? ] youth, delicate, graph: little strength.
12. [? ] umbrageous, space between peaks of mountain filled with ''small''
(leaves)
13. stack of grain graph showing it under cover (thatch) and stacked round a
Y inverted, as suggest at least Tyrolese customs whatever may have been
modus in early China)
14. [? ] far, sorry
15. [? ] melancholy
16. [? ] go on water, quickly, to a distant place. 17. [? ] HAVE
18. the reed of a loom
YU 4
21. [? ] a lattice
22. [? ] plan, like, a monkey
10
Chinese-English Dictionary, ed. Zhang Tiemin et al. (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1933). EP's copy (with the inscription: ''To my friend Ezra Pound, From Lyons, Milan January 1938'') is kept at the Burke Library of Hamilton College.
226 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
23. [? ] plan, meaning same as preceding, save that the sign is not used to mean monkey, i. e. like, simulacrum. The graph is in fact, the headman and his dog.
24. [? ] follow, means, enter by, pass thru graph FIELD with projection.
27. elaborate graph given to mean clouds in three colours, flee in alarm
28. [? ] protect, spirit or descending light and right (hand) 29. flourish, luxuriant, a ditty.
evening moon and silk (cords) over clay bowl (of musical instrument)
30. [? ] weeds
31. 32. long for, watch
33. [? ] lead on, seduce, word rad/ and weed component
34. flatter, containing inverted Y
35. far distant, distort the foot and trench rad/ carrying the to or thru Yu ?
umlaut three stroke sign
36. [ ? ] saunter idly
37. [? ] post office etc. mound plus suspend
38. [? ] one of the 12 branches, ripe, mellow, graph looks like a bottle, and is
composed of HSI (west) plus one horizontal stroke)
39. [? ] enamel, glossy
40. [? ] ash colour, black rad/ and little strength.
Out of 40 YU we have a number of cases where the Y of the gripping hand is clearly
present, others where the meaning is clarified by the graph, and still others that it wd/ be decidedly rash to pronounce on until we have made further examination, both of the tone groups and of varied components
YU ? (umlaut) 78 characters
Can any communication be made with 78 homophones, or can 78 words have a common basis? Before we start feeling superior to man in the animalistic phases, remember that we say aye aye! and pronounce it ''I,'' we speak of in of the ins and out and of an inn.
The 78 YU ? , umlaut, have clear tonal divisions jewel, rain, fish, wings, I, give etc. are not all sounded identically BUT the tonal distinctions do NOT fall into the divisions you or I make were we inventing a new esperanto on a logical basis.
We are in fact, in the case of YU ? , umlaut, faced with one of these very early grunts that need gesture to show its meaning, or, in later phase, the pictogram or other written sign. And, in the main, YU ? umlaut is far from being our worst monkey puzzle. Me, give, in, at thru, I myself (Nos. 1, 2, 3) are all explicable homophones if we are speaking and making a gesture. A group of YU umlaut begin with 4 which is listed under the jen (man) rad/ but is clearly graphed ju (yo enter). this rad/ is clearly graphed in various compound ideograms and with similar components, moon (flesh) knife, or two chevron stood on end and pointing left, which seems to be used loosely for the knife element elsewhere) sometimes in crowded compound the little top projection to the left of the ju seems to have been obliterated.
Sometimes the graph indicates what sort of interior is intended. In the slang of at least three languages and indication of interior (videlicet ''inside,'' ''dedans'' ''dentro'' are used as
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 227
polite symonyms for jail. On dit ''je ne voudrais pas vous dire, Monsieur, mais . . . il . . . eh .