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An etymology of Shi He.21

confucius

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Etymology of the ideograms Shi He.21






The first of the two ideograms illustrating the twenty-first hexagram is assembled from two groups. On the left the symbol for mouth. On the top right the symbol designating bamboo and, below it, the ideogram used to describe shamans; this can be further understood in the Prefect level of Xun.57

This character describes a very specific order of shamans: the bamboo shamans, those specialised in the clarifications concerning doubtful proceedings. (So called because they consulted texts and guides written on bamboo scrolls); these scrolls would later be known as the Yi King.

Another particularity of these shamans was their usage (in divination) of Millifolias. It is commonly believed that, while drawing for an oracle, the diviner kept the fiftieth strand, the one traditionally put aside, and kept it between his teeth during divination. From there could justifiably be derived the traditional rendering of this hexagram: Biting through.





The second ideogram of the twenty-first hexagram is also composed of two groups. On the left we find the common ideogram for mouth, as with Shi, above. On the right, a character composed of two groups: at the bottom the ideogram depicting a vase, as is understood in Gu.18 and in Yi.42. Above is the symbol for its cover.

This cover, when used singularly as a word means to leave, to disappear, as can be found in Tenth Wing of Ge.49. However, different from the cover used to describe the name of Agreement with the many (Tong Ren.13), the cover here is perfectly adapted to the recipient.

From this specificity is derived the sense on Union, principal meaning of the second ideogram of She He.20, since it is reinforced by the idea of drinking, action uniting the cup and the mouth (a pleasure only considered in the company of friends, in China).

Confucius
 
L

lightofreason

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From the universal position we have expansive bonding (fire in upper - direction setting, establish an ideology etc) operating in a context of expansive binding (thunder in lower - enlightenment, enlightening)

Thus we have "with/from enlightenment comes direction-setting" - this is reflected in Confucius comments re using texts etc to aid in proceedings etc.

The infrastructure is described by analogy to:

100101
100001
--------
000100 - 16 enthused, focused, planning etc (and so the enthusiasm is covered in the reference to drinking etc with friends - this associating allows for discussion on laws, rules and so problem solving in general)

Chris.
 

Trojina

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Since Lindsays discussion about how Chinese was not a pictographic language I'm finding if I ever did take this stuff with a pinch of salt I'm now taking it with an oil tanker. Of course i wouldn''t know for sure, i am 100% ignorant of etymolgy. However I just found myself a while ago secretly thinking that theres a fashion for putting in whatever the translator would like to see there that accords with their view. Suddenly elephants, tigers, all sorts appearing out of nowhere. To be honest i was probably looking with a childs eye, I'd think 'hmm that may look like someone praying to you but to me it could be absolutely anything at all'. Wisely i kept quiet :D

Then the idea is floated that it is crazy to interpret letters that represent sounds as pictures. It would be like someone in a few thousand years time asserting the letter 'b' represents a 'spoon', that 'w' represents water.


What Lindsays professor wrote gave me much to think about.

Confucious etymology of each hexagram is very interesting to many but I'm wondering can it be taken as fact - it seems to be presented as factual text. It is not presented as an idea for discussion, rather as a 'lesson' of how something is.

I'm just registering since reading that great discussion started up by Lindsay on the 'etymology of 1' thread I've been thinking alot about it. Especially that if someone has an imaginative interpretation of how something might have been, perhaps with some historical evidence then its enriching to us that they share it. I get uncomfortable when it leans over from that though into being presented as 'historical fact' when even a non scholar like myself sees it can't be. For divination like Harmen said then its not so important as one can divine with anything. If you put elephants in to your divination system sooner or later elephants will be meaningful in your answers. However if people are talking and writing about the Yi Jing as an historical document then if theirs is one imaginative interpretation of how things may have been seems misleading to present it as fact.

Hmm of course the only people it will mislead are non scholars like myself, who don't know, who take others words for it, who simply use the Yi Jing as a divination system.

I would like the Yi I use to be as real as possible though, to be as near as possible to its original state, (hmm so i get tangled here as seeing harmens point anything can be used for divination,) still if we consult the Yi we want it to be the Yi not a gross distortion.
Still all translations are someones view, I do what most here do and read all of them..

Thing is with the etymology thing it look impressive, scholarly, not something an ignoramus could begin to grapple with - just accept these people must know what they're talking about. :rolleyes: Then along came Lindsays argument and :eek: my Yi world is rocked.

Actually i'd be interested to hear how other non scholars viewed that whole debate. I suspect many like me did not join in as we knew we were out of our depth yet had an opinion, maybe not ?
 

pakua

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Do we know if the original authors deliberated a long time and selcted the best possible words to express what they wished to convey? Did they edit and re-edit, trying to express the perfect idea? May be, from time to time, they wrote down the first thing that came close to their thoughts.

If their prose was fuzzy, why does it matter if ours is as well?
 

heylise

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"Chinese was not a pictographic language"...

View attachment 42
Yan, swallow – niao, bird – shi, rat – gu, drumming – gui, ghost

Careful, those Chinese can really fool you. These are not pictures!! They are only sounds. From left to right: yan, the sound which means swallow, then niao, the sound which means bird, then shi, means rat, then gu, means drumming, then gui, means ghost. Yan is not a picture of a swallow, it is a graphic representation of the sound yan. Same goes for the other .. erm.. representations.

I can understand that, later, the sound "yan" was also used for other words, which were maybe difficult to express in an image. For many characters, the dictionary gives the meaning, and also "loan for..". When I look at those loans, they usually make some sense. The loan is not totally unrelated to the meaning of the word it is used for. In Chinese there are not that many different sounds, many characters are pronounced the same, so there is an ample choice for which one to use.

In the case of yan, it is used for the similar sounding "pleasure, joy, leisure, dinner party". For that, you wouldn't chose the image of rat, or ghost. A telephone line with 20 swallows makes me think of fun-together: the way they behave and the sounds they make.

When you imagine how the first writing happened, then pictures are very logical. Here in the West, we wrote words according to their sound. Suppose you cannot talk, for whatever reason, and you are analphabetic. You want to tell about a pig - so you draw a pig. But when you want to say, someone is messy, you might also use the pig image. The step from concrete to abstract is very often only small.

LiSe
 

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