Monday 19 November 2018

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 牟

Our new character today is 牟, which is related to 牛 as well. From its current form, we are not sure what does its upper part  represent. It ancient scripts might be of great help, as shown below: (image taken from http://vividict.com)
evolution history of 牟

Now we can see from its Oracle script that initially the upper part was , which is 口. Recall what we have learnt with 鸣 | 鳴. We know that 牟 originally should mean sound made by a buffalo.

Starting from Seal Script era, was slowly changed to , which madeis very close what we write today: 牟.

As we known, First Emperor of Qin dynasty burned all books in China, and emperors of Han dynasty tried their best to rescue all ancient books by gathering elders to tell stenographers from their memories. Stenographers sometimes would write down a temporary character which has the same pronunciation in place of the correct one. Then eventually some characters were borrowed or phonetic loaned to represent same meaning of some other characters.

牟 is one of such characters. It pronounces the same as 谋, thus 牟 sometimes can replace 谋 in certain phases where 谋 should be used. So same as 谋, 牟 is also used to mean seek, strive for. For example 牟利.

The original meaning of 牟 is then represented with a newly created character. If it were you, how will you create the new Chinese character?

That is all for 牟, time to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 牟 inside:
魏牟尺纵,裴度千缣
ps: story of "魏牟尺漇 裴度千缣" can be read here: http://www.yibei.com/krecord/4ecf47937e021e5b51259980

Wednesday 7 November 2018

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 伴

The character today we are examining is 伴, which is obviously composed of 人 and 半. If we would like to guess its meaning, following could be the possible combinations:
a). A person who divides a buffalo into half;
b). A person is divided into half;
c). It is as if a person divided into half.

Option a) sounds like a butcher, or someone like tribe leader who divides sacrificed buffalo to each member.

Option b) is quite unreasonable to have a character created for cutting a person into half.

Option c) is interesting. When we would like to describe how close two friends are, we probably say they are as good as one person.

Option a) or c) cannot be ruled out. let us see what is its ancient scripts for more ideas (image taken from http://vividict.com):

Evolution history of 伴

We now can tell from its oracle script that 伴 refers to two persons together. Option a) is thus eliminated.

One of its Seal Script  already started to use and to mean two close friends.

So 伴 means a companion, for example: 同伴.

Since two friends always hang out together, 伴 has the meaning of together, accompany as well. for example 伴随.

If we recall the story from Bible, creation of 伴 surprisingly fits well with the story that "Eve is created by taking one rib from Adam". We Chinese also call husband and wife as 伴侣.
伴侣

That is all for 伴, time to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 伴 inside:
花香伴君如梦境,清茶淡酒品人生。