Analysis of Chinese Characters

388 Pages·1975·19.973 MB·English

by  George Durand Wilder

PHILLIPS ACADEMY
ANAUHS
3 1867 00508 5357
OF CHINESE
CHARACTERS
G.D. WILDER &I.H INGRAM
DOVER BOOKS ON LANGUAGE
Five Great German Short Stories/Funf Deutsche'Meistererzahlungen: A
Dual-Language Book, Stanley Appelbaum (ed.). (Available in U.S.
only.) (27619-8)
Great German Poets of the Romantic Era, Stanley Appelbaum (ed.).
(28497-2)
Introduction to French Poetry: A Dual-Language Book, Stanley
Appelbaum (ed.). (26711-3)
International Airline Phrase Book in Six Languages, Joseph W. Bator.
(22017-6)
Flowers of Evil/Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire. (27092-0)
French Word Games and Puzzles, Sister Chantal. (28481-6)
Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language, Morris S. Engel. (28274-0)
First Spanish Reader, Angel Flores (ed.). (25810-6)
Spanish Poetry/PoesIa Espanola: A Dual-Language Anthology, Angel Flores
(ed.). (40171-5)
Spanish Stories/Cuentos Espanoles: A Dual-Language Book, Angel Flores
(ed.). (25399-6)
Introduction to Spanish Poetry: A Dual-Language Book, Eugenio Florit
(ed.). (26712-1)
French Stories/Contes Francais: A Dual-Language Book, Wallace Fowlie.
(26443-2)
Modern French Poets, Wallace Fowlie (ed.). (27323-7)
Games and Puzzles for English as a Second Language, Victoria Fremont and
Brenda Flores. (28468-9)
Latin Selections/Florilegium Latinum, Moses Hadas and Thomas Suits.
(27059-9)
Italian Stories/Novelle Italiane: A Dual-Language Book, Robert A. Hall, Jr.
(ed.). (26180-8)
Everyday English-Russian Conversations, Leonid Kossman. (29877-9)
French: How to Speak and Write It, Joseph LemaTtre. (20268-2)
Introduction to German Poetry: A Dual-Language Book, Gustave Mathieu
and Guy Stern (eds.). (26713-X)
Best Short Stories/Les Meilleurs Contes, Guy de Maupassant. (28918-4)
A New Russian-Engush and English-Russian Dictionary, M. A. O’Brien.
(20208-9)
Modern Chinese: A Basic Course (Book Only), Faculty of Peking University
(22755-3)
Modern Chinese: A Basic Course (Cassette Edition), Faculty of Peking
University. (99910-6) 3 cassettes, manual
Modern Chinese: A Second Course, Peking University. (24155-6)
(continued on back flap)
■## # # # # e{
>#&>
{-Anno 1778 •
#
#
# PHILLIPS • ACADEMY
m
OgJ
r
#
f3 OLIVER'WENDELL'HOLMES
#
library
3g3 ^JpAamphcm
## # # #
THE MORRIS TYLER
BOOK FUND
'
ANALYSIS OF
CHINESE CHARACTERS
BY
G. D. WILDER & J. H. INGRAM
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.,
NEW YORK
This Dover edition, first published in 1974, is an
unabridged republication of the second edition of
the work, published by the College of Chinese
Studies in China (no indication of city) in 1934.
(The first edition was published by the North China
Union Language School, Peking, in 1922.)
International Standard Book Number: 0-486-23045-7
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74-75626
\
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
INTRODUCTION
ANALYSIS OF CHINESE CHARACTERS.
The author of the great Chinese English dictionary Mr. Giles, has
not hesitated to express most trenchantly his contempt of etymology as it
has been applied to Chinese Characters. He says that “Much of the
etymology of the Shuo Wen is childish in the extreme”, and that the
phonetic principle of combination is the only one of which we can pretend
to know anything. Notwithstanding the ridicule heaped upon it, scholars,
like Chalmers, Chalfant, Wieger and others have continued to pursue the
fascinating study of the origin of these symbols and have given us most
Interesting results. These results are so convincing that in the teaching of
character writing we have unhesitatingly adopted the principle that the
etymology of the earliest Chinese writers on the subject, childish though
it may often be and fanciful, is yet superior to the numerous mnemonics
that have been invented by foreign students to assist in the difficult task
of memorizing the forms of a few thousand characters. The student
of these pages may often consider the etymology suggested fanciful
and the logic of the combinations far fetched but the following consid¬
eration should be borne in mind. They are the products of Chinese
fancy and imagination and to some extent show the workings of the
Chinese mind. Therefore they interest us who are students of Chinese
thought. Moreover they often may only seem to be fanciful because we
are ignorant of the ancient customs out of which they arose, or of the
forms of the utensils of which they are pictures, or of the variations of pro¬
nunciation in the different dialects. If any one of us were entrusted with
the task of inventing written symbols for both concrete objects and abstract
ideas it is doubtful if we would produce anything much less fanciful and
we could produce nothing of such rich historic interest, as cer¬
tainly invests the 3000 most primitive characters.
Writing Chinese characters is a task of memory. Modern pedagogy
insists on the value of logical or even fanciful links between ideas for fixing
them in mind. Those who try to learn Chinese characters almost in-
INTRODUCTION
IV
variably grope for some association of ideas, some logic in the formation
by which to hold them in memory. We have no doubt that the groupings
which have been arrived at already by a study of the ancient inscriptions of
the early seal writings and etymologies are more interesting, more logical,
and wider in range than any memory system that has been or can be
invented by ihe superficial study of the characters as written with the
modern Chinese pen. These etymological studies enlist the interest of the
historic imagination to aid the dry-as dust task of committing to memory
these curious symbols of the thought of three or four milleniums.
Missionaries in China have been spared the task which their brethren
in many places have had, of reducing the language of the people to writ¬
ing. The genealogy of Chinese characters takes us back nearly 4000
years. For an interesting historical sketch the student is referred to
Wieger’s introduction, of which we here give a summary. Tradition con¬
firmed by well grounded induction ascribes the idea of writing to the
mythical Emperor Fu2 Hsi and the systemization of written charac¬
ters to Ts’ang1 Chieh4 Jl’fg in the 27th century B.C. Emperor Huang2 Ti4
B.C. 26o7-2598, had recorders trained in official schools under a
A t’ai4 shih* or Grand Master. Bronzes of the 18th century B.C. with char¬
acters on them are extant. The stone drums exhibited in the gateway of
the Confucian Temple in Peking, referred by some to the 12th century, by
others to the 9th century B.C. show inscriptions in the style used by an
imperial recorder fi Chou4 in a catalog of characters called the Chou*
wen2 or large seal, td1 chuan4. Later they became known as tadpole
characters, (B.C. 200) k'o1 tous tzu4, because so many of the
penstrokes suggest the form of a tadpole. Confucius, B.C. 500, complained
of scribes who were dishonest and instead of leaving blanks when they
forgot characters, made new ones. These he called ch’t1 tzu4 or odd
characters. Ch’in2 Shih3 Huang* 213 B.C. had his prime minister
Li8 Ssu1 make a new catalog called the HJt sanx ts’ang} It contained
3300 characters which are known as the small seal hsiao8 chuan4.
Li Ssu1 invented no new symbols but combined the primitive picture
characters with phonetics. Thus the creation^ of new characters ceased
before 200 B.C. and probably long before that, as the phonetic principle,
which renders unnecessary the invention of new symbolic elements, was in
use in 800 B.C. Li8 Ssu1 was deceived by the odd characters” and as he
had nor enough ancient documents to ascertain the meaning of many
INTRODUCTION
v
symbols he fixed wrongly the meaning of many characters. We can now
correct some of his mistakes. In the period of liferary enthusiasm following
Li3 S§u! many new characters were invented by the easy process of
phonetic combination. As there were many literary centers with different
dialects prevail ing and no standard or center of control, countless useless
and duplicate characters were formed. Li8 Ssu’s catalog was reedited
seven times until it contained 7380 at the time of Christ and two hundred
years later over ten thousand. The modern standard dictionary of Kang
Hsi finished A.D. 1/17 has 40,000 characters. Of these 34,000 are
monstrosities and useless doubles ; 2000 more are surnames and doubles of
little use, leaving 4000 that are in common use. Of these 3000 are all
that need be studied for etymological purposes, although there are also
some rare or obsolete characters that are of etymological and historical
interest. Fortunately the 3000 ancient primitives are still the most useful
characters and anyone who gets a mastery of them and their combinations
will have a magnificent vocabulary for all departments of literature. Let
no one be appalled by the popular misstatement that there are 80.000
characters or even by the fact that there are 40.000 in the dictionary The
vocabularies of Goodrich and Soothill have but 10.000 and the larger
Chinese English dictionaries but 14.000. One who masters 2000 will find
himself fairly well equipped for public speech. Dr. Goodrich after his many
decades of experience is surprised that he can catalog but 4000 colloquial
characters.
Besides the multiplication of characters there hate been many trans¬
formations for ease in writing or condensations for the sake of speed. Many
of these changes occurred as writing materials changed. At first the metal
stylus, writing on wood made uniform strokes equally easy in all directions.
Curves and circles were common. Then the wooden pencil used on silk
caused poor writing and some peculiar changes. Finally fine pointed
hair brushes used on paper gave great Power of shading and speed in exe¬
cution but still further distorts the shapes of the classic small seal characters.
The brush has produced the modern k' aiz tzu*, in which curves
are reduced to straight lines and angles, and the grass characters,
ts'aoz tzu1. or running hand which still further obliterates the classic
forms.
Other transformations are due to abbreviation for securing more
space for inscriptions on-small pieces of bone, shell or metal, as Mr. J.
VI INTRODUCTION
Melion Menzies has pointed out, and these abbreviations have become
precedents for permanent forms. >
About 120 A.D. there was printed a posthumous work of Hsft® Shen
(B.C. 86). It was the first publication of genuine archaeological and ety¬
mological studies. This father of Chinese archaeology had travelled
ex’ensively and studied Li8 Ssu’s catalog. His great work is the
Shuo1 Wen2 Chieh8 Tzu. It contains 10516 standard characters arranged
under 534 to 544 primitive symbols which are the origin of our 214
radicals. All Chinese dictionaries claim to be based upon the Shuo Wen,
though they often show ignorance of it and fevV scholars to-day are ac¬
quainted with it. Our Character Analysis is based upon Wieger’s Ety¬
mological Lessons which is drawn largely from the Shuo Wen. Our
references usually mean that our explanation is taken from Wieger. But
it is not always so, for the original Shuo Wen as well as the works of
Chalfant, Chalmers and others have been used. Original or at least modern
suggestions have been made and usually placed after the reference to
Wieger. In Wieger’s Lessons will often be found the quotation from the
Shuo Wen in Chinese justifying the explanation.
We shall use a few technical expressions which are best explained by
the ancient classification of characters into six categories. All characters
are divided into the wen2 or simple figures and the tzu4 or com¬
pound. On the basis of form or composition these two classes are each
divided into two other classes. 1. The wen1 or SIMPLE characters may
be either (1) pictures Ht hsiang* or imitative symbols, Hj ^ hsiang4 htsing2,
of which there are 364 in the Shuo Wen or they may be (2) indicative
symbols chihz shih*, pointing to things, affairs. The Shuo Wen has
125 of these. 2. The COMPOUND characters are divided into (1) logical
combinations, hui4 z4, in which each component part of the character
has a meaning relevant to the meaning of the character as a whole. There
are 1167 of these in the Shuo Wen: (2j phonetic combinations
hung3 s/ieng1 (form and sound), also called ksieh1 shcng1, in which
one part has a significant meaning and the rest points out the pronuncia¬
tion only. Of these the Shuo Wen explains 76^7. We should note how¬
ever that in many of these phonetic combinations the phonetic part was
chosen because its meaning had some suggestion of the meaning of the
character so that they incline towards the logical combination class and
may be called suggestive phonetics, e.g. fBJ wen4 to ask has men2 door