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。

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