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an etymology of the ideogram Xie.40

confucius

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Etymology of the ideogram Xie.40






The fortieth hexagram is illustrated with a three part ideogram. On the top right the common character for Knife and below it the one for the Bovine family. The group originally represented a Tool, a knife whose blade was carved from the horn of a bull; its punch-like shape made it practical to undo knotted ropes that were too tight.

From this basic idea, this image will adopt a series of very common meanings, all in relation to the Relief of Tensions. Actually, in modern times, it would adopt a historical usage comparable to the post-war coined expression Liberation. In fact, the red army of Mao would bear that very name Liberation and, since the foundation of the People s Republic of China, the expressions before and after the liberation became the references to designate (or compare) the periods before or after October 1st 1949.

Its usual connotation is one of relief comparable to what is felt after having been clogged, as understood at Jian.39, a situation which relaxes and finds anew its fluidity. This relief can be moral, material and even physiological since Xie.40 can also be used, in the proper context, to designate the verb To Urinate. An example of relief like only Chinese pragmatism can render and of which anyone can understand the soundness.

It is quite remarkable, even funny, to see this analogy in the trigrams: Kan (Water) associated to Zhen (Movement)…


Confucius
















40
 

ewald

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Confucius - You described the two characters on the right, but not the third character on the left. Perhaps you could add something about it?
 

lindsay

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Hi Ewald -

I am unable to see any characters in Confucius's postings. Is he displaying characters? If so, I wonder how I can see them? (I am using IE 6.0 as my browser on a PC running Windows 2000.)

Lindsay
 

ewald

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Hi Lindsay,
No, he's not using any Chinese characters. You should be able to see the ones in my post here if you have installed east Asian character support with Windows.

The character this is about is:

Top right:

Bottom right:

Left:
 

philippa

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:eek: IE user! Lindsay, I have higher expectation of you!

Opera users unite! :hissy:
 

martin

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Opera yeah! I use it, but how to make these Chinese characters visible? I need PMingLiu (Big5), right?
The help file of Opera says I should 'install' the characters first. How? Where can I find them?
I don't have MS Office (it seems they are included with it) and I still use Win ME (because in XP I can't run my beloved DOS programs).
Am I in deep hexagram 29 trouble? :)
 

philippa

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Ok. Firefox is quite nice too. :p

Martin, the download section of Opera offers instructions on grabbing the correct language files (http://www.opera.com/download/languagefiles/)

Btw, can you normally read Chinese (Big5 or GB)? If not, look under Control Panel. I think setting your regional/language options allow you to download some default font files.

Good luck.

Philippa
 

ewald

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I'm not sure, but I think that all you need to do under Windows 98 or Windows ME is install a Chinese font file, and it should work in your browser. You install it by copying the TTF file to the Fonts folder that is in the Windows folder.

This also works with Windows 2000 or Windows XP, but there you can install the East Asian language support from the installation CD. To install, go to the Windows Control Panel, Regional and Language options, click on the tab Languages, then check Install files for East Asian languages.

There are some free Chinese fonts around.

Bitstream Cyberbit - this is a ZIP file, you'll have to unzip it first, with WinZIP or WinRAR or something.

Here you can find lots of links to Traditional Chinese fonts.
If you want to use a font that is supplied as a GZ file, you can unzip it with WinRAR.
 

martin

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Thank you Philippa and Ewald. :)
I followed the link to traditional Chinese fonts, downloaded and installed the program AsianSuite X2 and now I can see the characters.

Problem solved, was that not to be expected in a thread about hexagram 40? :)
 

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