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.
Ezra-Pounds-Chinese-Friends-Stories-in-Letters
[?
] head inclined, 100 mow, and instant (ladle-head)
17. [? ] tattoo faces of criminals (capital black)
CHIO [? , ? , ? , ? ] and CHIU are extraneous to our verbs in CH, i. e. both to
location <(tumulus)> and to cut.
Of 3 CHIUNG, the first with a secondary meaning of peak wd/ seem to be <the
first> CHIU mound, tumulous plus NG
and the third CHIUNG [? ] is locative (far off, remote)
CHO 17 uniformally expressing the idea: to lay hold of with the pictogram whowing
what does or is done to, no connection with CH verbs be at, or cut [? ].
CHOU [? ]
The great dynastic name, given as verb: provide, extend, make a circuit; adjective:
enough, close, secret; bend, revolution, circumference. Certainly associated with idea of motion.
8
Cf. Confucius, 77: ''ideogram of the ax and the documents of the archives tied up in silk. ''
214 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
19 ideograms in a mutilated copy of Tsang picture as with grass indication: wrinkles mostly what lies close together, and in some cases what revolves. On the whole it seems to belong to our CH locative. Various CH'OU can be associated with the CH cut idea without great strain, and by ref/ to the pictograms. The first CH'O to stab, is a clear case.
CHU, to go out of
THE GREAT GENATIVE, root of a tree lying
above ground, BAMBOO (the radical)
A half hundred ideograms in the CHU list, a rule, a lord, to halt to go out of, several of
them clearly indication: origin, others baffling till we come to the clue in the 14th. ''root of a tree lying above ground,'' that picture unites the heteroclite for the eye. The bamboo radical indicates a particular result of root, something from which a thing goes, or on which it stays, a SOURCE. This CHU is definitely of the locative verb.
As with WEI, leather, we have apparently heteroclite meanings.
We have also in our own language traces of similar not-ambiguities. To hide, conceal, to give a hiding. The leather curtain, the lash, the thong that binds, the showing a whip to a dog in produce respect or fear. So with the 32nd CHU, beat down, build, erect, flap, the picture is dulcimer (bamboo radical) over a tree. The ambiguity of up, down, flap, are all equal to verb ''y to bamboo,'' i. e. to do what the bamboo does or is under for. The ''dulcimer'' includes ''work'' and a sign (I shd/ say for motion) that has no defined meaning as a separate ideogram. 41. punish, eradicate
CHU 2
We root in the ground to root up, and we are said to be rooted when we stop and stand firm.
The CHU list is too long to reproduce here, but the earnest reader can enjoy himself with it if he be so minded.
In tracing our CH conjugation we may even end with the idea that to ''be at'' or move, and to CUT have something in common. We ''cut along,'' we depart, part and split. The ax makes a clean cut and separates. An active and an intransitive CH are not inconceivable.
CHU ? , with the umlaut is not going to fit very neatly into scheme so far outlined. We find however a carpenter's square, utensil, arrange. If chu ? (umlaut) enters our scheme at all it must be pre- it must have to do with preparation. Someone else must determine whether the cauldron preceded the altar. In the boiled sacrifice they are the same. An element which Tsang gives as meaning: great, huge, combines with the arrow sign to make the carpenter's square. A saw is found lower in the list, also some saw tooth mountains. The saw may be onomatopoeic.
I leave chu ? with judgement suspended.
CHU ? however does seem, in 24 ideograms fairly consistent in indication either preparation or unpreparedness; the preparation distinguished in the pictograms to show whether the preparation is in the cook house or the field, or by the pestle, for unprepared perhaps I shd/ write irresolute, hesitant (feet rad/). Both CHU ? and CH'U ? umlaut seem heteroclite, all one can observe is that if the groups seem without nexus, the individual words also seem without very comprehensible centre to their divergent meaning ascribed to them singly. Whether one shd/ postulate various lost terminal
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 215
consonants, and leakages of meaning from other groups I do not know. I see nothing here to help define the CH verb.
CHUAN however seems fairly consistently to include the idea of turn, indicated definitely in 5 out of 13 ideograms, and for the most part directly relatable to either the CH of motion or of cutting.
Most of the 13 CH'UAN are clearly ''connect'' with pictogram of what (string, stream, beam) with a couple of violent exceptions, possibly emphasized chu'an, chu(boat) ang. CHU ? AN and CH'U ? AN <umlaut>, the first fairly heteroclite, the second definitely indicating curvature which is also indicated in the pictograms, two of 12 chu ? an and 6 of
11 chu ? an (small circle, wriggle of snake)
CHUANG, CH'UANG, idea of weight, strength, bed is frequent.
CHUE, CHUEH, CHU ? EH umlaut) CH'U ? EH (umlaut), this suffix EH is the latin ex,
horn, projection, husk
The chue is ambiguous in sound, but the pictogram contains ''out of. ''
Chu ? en and Ch'u ? en connect with the chu ? an and ch'u ? an.
CHUI
CHUI tempts to several false analogies: how do we connect sew, beat, hammer and
awl?
I think the clue is in the simple radical for short tailed bird. The bird has a sharp beak
and pecks, some hammers look not unlike certain birds. The thread and (? ) four stitches is the pictorial explanation of what happens with that particular piercing. Clay walls are hammered together but I do not think this is the primary association between the divergent senses of the sound chui.
CHUI belongs in the leather and root class. The verbal sense carries over quite clearly into at least three ch'ui: to beat, and two kinds of mallet, differentiated in ideograms.
The CHUN and CH'UN groups (lips and spring) are independent and extraneous from our locative or cut conjugations but CHU ? N umlaut has clear indication of place above, latin super or altus, as with the water rad/ deep sea, italian mare alto. The third chun, even, equal must be taken as ''level up to'' and chun water level or plumb-line is one wd/ say its relation. The verbal sense of the 15th chun can only be traced thru its noun, hornless deer (bind, seize, collect). But superior, ruler, high (with mountain rad/) etc. belong, I shd/ say without question to our verb CH.
CH'UN umlaut might seem scattered were it not for the graphic signs. Grain heaped in an enclosure; the chief place above the sheep; the dress on the noble; granary, flock and skirt for a lady.
CHUNG we have already located as the perpendicular axis potently locative, the weight that draws to the centre, with ch'ung.
The single CH'OU is an eloquent picture of grind with the teeth (teeth and foot), and augur to bore a hole.
Let us now return to our omitted CH forms.
CHE^ circumflex, 19 ideograms
1. wise (hand, ax, mouth) clear cut, know intuitively cutting clean into.
The sense of cut (CH) is clear in a number of cases, in others the pictogram indicates the primitive association with cutting (five axes, a knife). The wagon rad/ is given two sounds che^ and chu ? umlaut, and the ideograms with two signs assigned them always
216 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
raise doubts. There is however a conjunction of wagon and cut in No. 1 & 17, the track of the wheels, a cut in primitive life as distinct from the hoof-prints. Among the meanings of 18, cover, hide, screen, intercept. The sound gives a general sense, the pictogram indicates the particular (more or less) object acting or acted upon. Various che take their sense from the wagon, indicated in their graphs. In four CH'E^ circumflex we have four very nice illustrations of cut and of e^ as ex.
No. 1 remove and through, cuts both ways.
2. pull, drag, haul, tear (remove by wagon) I think the original sounds for ax
and cart have melted together
3. remove, reject.
4. clear water, connecting with the ''through'' sense in No. 1 as indicated by
similar ideogramic adjunct to the radical. THREE CHEN
1. pregnant;2. even,uniform,placeevenlycf/chunwater-levelorplumbline;3. pillow, cross bar at back of a carriage.
29 CHE^N circumflex, EUDAIMON, the ANVIL
The list looks heteroclite enough at the start.
1. (chen in index, shen in its own page in Tsang) men and horses in large
company, crowd.
2. heart rad/ fearful
3. to rouse, restore, terrify, save (a hand that moves up or down? )
4. pour, add, deliberate.
5. I, me, we, subtle, incipient (pictogram, moon and eight over heaven)
6. kind of tree, target.
7. hazel
8. sink deep
9. curious, jewel, treasure.
10. examine
11. boundary, raised paths, terminate.
13. truth, immortality, pure (the eye looking straight)
14. ANVIL, stone and divination sign
15. propitious, spirit and the great sign of CHANGES, the shell and the direction
16. the steelyard (up, down, cf/3)
17. needle, to probe (bamboo rad/)
18. gentry, the literati, graduation, the girdle, to bind. (she^n in text che^n in
index)
19. utmost, highest, attain
20. look at, examine
21. UNCORRUPTED,thegreatsigninIKing,theshellanddivinationsign,the
carapace and a direction.
22. rich, wealthy, to give.
23. bar behind carriage, to move, turn (indicated in pictogram)
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 217
24. deep in wine
25. pin, needle (metal rad/) sting, probe, pierce.
26. a mart, a great trading town, to repress, to keep in subjugation, to ward off
an evil influence.
27. ideogram mound and wagon: rank and file, battalion, set in array
28. ToSHAKE,VIBRATIONthe51stsignoftheCHANGES. Hereisourkey,to
couple with ANVIL
29. bird like a secretary falcon.
One is tempted to connect Chun with the CH of location, or motion, and up and down with the steel-yard.
But the predominant number of meanings of the sound, which is even onomatopoeic, if you like, centre round the anvil, the hammer of Thor falling upon it.
Che^n is the thundering heaven and CHIEN the calm or the righteous.
Even we say a horse chestnut for something larger that looks like a chestnut, and bull has similar connotations.
Again the old rule of english philology that the oldest words are those that have diametricly opposite meanings that is, that need gesture to indicate which way they depart from a median.
There are M. graphs that do NOT indicate any reason for their pronunciation. It takes no wild fantasy to get sheep over big meaning excellent. This ideogram is pronounced as mei, as for the lure of a lady's eyebrow, and the meaning fills up and extends over the space between graph and sound.
It is not our job to say what our precursors ought to have done, but we can try to find out why they did it.
MENG circumflex is uniformally dark in 4 cases.
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.
17. [? ] tattoo faces of criminals (capital black)
CHIO [? , ? , ? , ? ] and CHIU are extraneous to our verbs in CH, i. e. both to
location <(tumulus)> and to cut.
Of 3 CHIUNG, the first with a secondary meaning of peak wd/ seem to be <the
first> CHIU mound, tumulous plus NG
and the third CHIUNG [? ] is locative (far off, remote)
CHO 17 uniformally expressing the idea: to lay hold of with the pictogram whowing
what does or is done to, no connection with CH verbs be at, or cut [? ].
CHOU [? ]
The great dynastic name, given as verb: provide, extend, make a circuit; adjective:
enough, close, secret; bend, revolution, circumference. Certainly associated with idea of motion.
8
Cf. Confucius, 77: ''ideogram of the ax and the documents of the archives tied up in silk. ''
214 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
19 ideograms in a mutilated copy of Tsang picture as with grass indication: wrinkles mostly what lies close together, and in some cases what revolves. On the whole it seems to belong to our CH locative. Various CH'OU can be associated with the CH cut idea without great strain, and by ref/ to the pictograms. The first CH'O to stab, is a clear case.
CHU, to go out of
THE GREAT GENATIVE, root of a tree lying
above ground, BAMBOO (the radical)
A half hundred ideograms in the CHU list, a rule, a lord, to halt to go out of, several of
them clearly indication: origin, others baffling till we come to the clue in the 14th. ''root of a tree lying above ground,'' that picture unites the heteroclite for the eye. The bamboo radical indicates a particular result of root, something from which a thing goes, or on which it stays, a SOURCE. This CHU is definitely of the locative verb.
As with WEI, leather, we have apparently heteroclite meanings.
We have also in our own language traces of similar not-ambiguities. To hide, conceal, to give a hiding. The leather curtain, the lash, the thong that binds, the showing a whip to a dog in produce respect or fear. So with the 32nd CHU, beat down, build, erect, flap, the picture is dulcimer (bamboo radical) over a tree. The ambiguity of up, down, flap, are all equal to verb ''y to bamboo,'' i. e. to do what the bamboo does or is under for. The ''dulcimer'' includes ''work'' and a sign (I shd/ say for motion) that has no defined meaning as a separate ideogram. 41. punish, eradicate
CHU 2
We root in the ground to root up, and we are said to be rooted when we stop and stand firm.
The CHU list is too long to reproduce here, but the earnest reader can enjoy himself with it if he be so minded.
In tracing our CH conjugation we may even end with the idea that to ''be at'' or move, and to CUT have something in common. We ''cut along,'' we depart, part and split. The ax makes a clean cut and separates. An active and an intransitive CH are not inconceivable.
CHU ? , with the umlaut is not going to fit very neatly into scheme so far outlined. We find however a carpenter's square, utensil, arrange. If chu ? (umlaut) enters our scheme at all it must be pre- it must have to do with preparation. Someone else must determine whether the cauldron preceded the altar. In the boiled sacrifice they are the same. An element which Tsang gives as meaning: great, huge, combines with the arrow sign to make the carpenter's square. A saw is found lower in the list, also some saw tooth mountains. The saw may be onomatopoeic.
I leave chu ? with judgement suspended.
CHU ? however does seem, in 24 ideograms fairly consistent in indication either preparation or unpreparedness; the preparation distinguished in the pictograms to show whether the preparation is in the cook house or the field, or by the pestle, for unprepared perhaps I shd/ write irresolute, hesitant (feet rad/). Both CHU ? and CH'U ? umlaut seem heteroclite, all one can observe is that if the groups seem without nexus, the individual words also seem without very comprehensible centre to their divergent meaning ascribed to them singly. Whether one shd/ postulate various lost terminal
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 215
consonants, and leakages of meaning from other groups I do not know. I see nothing here to help define the CH verb.
CHUAN however seems fairly consistently to include the idea of turn, indicated definitely in 5 out of 13 ideograms, and for the most part directly relatable to either the CH of motion or of cutting.
Most of the 13 CH'UAN are clearly ''connect'' with pictogram of what (string, stream, beam) with a couple of violent exceptions, possibly emphasized chu'an, chu(boat) ang. CHU ? AN and CH'U ? AN <umlaut>, the first fairly heteroclite, the second definitely indicating curvature which is also indicated in the pictograms, two of 12 chu ? an and 6 of
11 chu ? an (small circle, wriggle of snake)
CHUANG, CH'UANG, idea of weight, strength, bed is frequent.
CHUE, CHUEH, CHU ? EH umlaut) CH'U ? EH (umlaut), this suffix EH is the latin ex,
horn, projection, husk
The chue is ambiguous in sound, but the pictogram contains ''out of. ''
Chu ? en and Ch'u ? en connect with the chu ? an and ch'u ? an.
CHUI
CHUI tempts to several false analogies: how do we connect sew, beat, hammer and
awl?
I think the clue is in the simple radical for short tailed bird. The bird has a sharp beak
and pecks, some hammers look not unlike certain birds. The thread and (? ) four stitches is the pictorial explanation of what happens with that particular piercing. Clay walls are hammered together but I do not think this is the primary association between the divergent senses of the sound chui.
CHUI belongs in the leather and root class. The verbal sense carries over quite clearly into at least three ch'ui: to beat, and two kinds of mallet, differentiated in ideograms.
The CHUN and CH'UN groups (lips and spring) are independent and extraneous from our locative or cut conjugations but CHU ? N umlaut has clear indication of place above, latin super or altus, as with the water rad/ deep sea, italian mare alto. The third chun, even, equal must be taken as ''level up to'' and chun water level or plumb-line is one wd/ say its relation. The verbal sense of the 15th chun can only be traced thru its noun, hornless deer (bind, seize, collect). But superior, ruler, high (with mountain rad/) etc. belong, I shd/ say without question to our verb CH.
CH'UN umlaut might seem scattered were it not for the graphic signs. Grain heaped in an enclosure; the chief place above the sheep; the dress on the noble; granary, flock and skirt for a lady.
CHUNG we have already located as the perpendicular axis potently locative, the weight that draws to the centre, with ch'ung.
The single CH'OU is an eloquent picture of grind with the teeth (teeth and foot), and augur to bore a hole.
Let us now return to our omitted CH forms.
CHE^ circumflex, 19 ideograms
1. wise (hand, ax, mouth) clear cut, know intuitively cutting clean into.
The sense of cut (CH) is clear in a number of cases, in others the pictogram indicates the primitive association with cutting (five axes, a knife). The wagon rad/ is given two sounds che^ and chu ? umlaut, and the ideograms with two signs assigned them always
216 appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951)
raise doubts. There is however a conjunction of wagon and cut in No. 1 & 17, the track of the wheels, a cut in primitive life as distinct from the hoof-prints. Among the meanings of 18, cover, hide, screen, intercept. The sound gives a general sense, the pictogram indicates the particular (more or less) object acting or acted upon. Various che take their sense from the wagon, indicated in their graphs. In four CH'E^ circumflex we have four very nice illustrations of cut and of e^ as ex.
No. 1 remove and through, cuts both ways.
2. pull, drag, haul, tear (remove by wagon) I think the original sounds for ax
and cart have melted together
3. remove, reject.
4. clear water, connecting with the ''through'' sense in No. 1 as indicated by
similar ideogramic adjunct to the radical. THREE CHEN
1. pregnant;2. even,uniform,placeevenlycf/chunwater-levelorplumbline;3. pillow, cross bar at back of a carriage.
29 CHE^N circumflex, EUDAIMON, the ANVIL
The list looks heteroclite enough at the start.
1. (chen in index, shen in its own page in Tsang) men and horses in large
company, crowd.
2. heart rad/ fearful
3. to rouse, restore, terrify, save (a hand that moves up or down? )
4. pour, add, deliberate.
5. I, me, we, subtle, incipient (pictogram, moon and eight over heaven)
6. kind of tree, target.
7. hazel
8. sink deep
9. curious, jewel, treasure.
10. examine
11. boundary, raised paths, terminate.
13. truth, immortality, pure (the eye looking straight)
14. ANVIL, stone and divination sign
15. propitious, spirit and the great sign of CHANGES, the shell and the direction
16. the steelyard (up, down, cf/3)
17. needle, to probe (bamboo rad/)
18. gentry, the literati, graduation, the girdle, to bind. (she^n in text che^n in
index)
19. utmost, highest, attain
20. look at, examine
21. UNCORRUPTED,thegreatsigninIKing,theshellanddivinationsign,the
carapace and a direction.
22. rich, wealthy, to give.
23. bar behind carriage, to move, turn (indicated in pictogram)
appendix: ''preliminary survey''(1951) 217
24. deep in wine
25. pin, needle (metal rad/) sting, probe, pierce.
26. a mart, a great trading town, to repress, to keep in subjugation, to ward off
an evil influence.
27. ideogram mound and wagon: rank and file, battalion, set in array
28. ToSHAKE,VIBRATIONthe51stsignoftheCHANGES. Hereisourkey,to
couple with ANVIL
29. bird like a secretary falcon.
One is tempted to connect Chun with the CH of location, or motion, and up and down with the steel-yard.
But the predominant number of meanings of the sound, which is even onomatopoeic, if you like, centre round the anvil, the hammer of Thor falling upon it.
Che^n is the thundering heaven and CHIEN the calm or the righteous.
Even we say a horse chestnut for something larger that looks like a chestnut, and bull has similar connotations.
Again the old rule of english philology that the oldest words are those that have diametricly opposite meanings that is, that need gesture to indicate which way they depart from a median.
There are M. graphs that do NOT indicate any reason for their pronunciation. It takes no wild fantasy to get sheep over big meaning excellent. This ideogram is pronounced as mei, as for the lure of a lady's eyebrow, and the meaning fills up and extends over the space between graph and sound.
It is not our job to say what our precursors ought to have done, but we can try to find out why they did it.
MENG circumflex is uniformally dark in 4 cases.
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.
