Cars are a means of transportation that people cannot do without when they travel every day. There were cars very early in ancient China. So, were the main uses of ancient cars the same as they are today? If not, what were ancient cars for?
"Car" is written in many ways in oracle bone and gold scripts, depicting the appearance of an ancient car. In the multi-digit form, there are parts that represent the rim, the two wheels, and the axles. However, whether it is oracle bone or gold text, there are some more complex or relatively simple glyphs in the car characters, for example, in the more complex glyphs, some have carriages between the two wheels, and even depict the yoke, scale and even some decorative parts in detail, while the simpler gold glyphs have only one wheel. Moreover, the simplified glyphs of the che characters we use today are not the creation of modern people, but the cursive glyphs of "che" written by many calligraphers since the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
The glyph evolution of the word "car"
"Car" originally referred to a means of transportation with wheels on land, and as can be seen from its archaic glyphs, the original car had two wheels, pulled by a horse. Xu Shen's "Explanation of Words": "Car, the general name of the public opinion wheel." "Public opinion" refers to the carriage, and "wheel" refers to the wheel. In the construction of ancient cars, carriages and wheels are the two most important components, so Xu Shen defined "car" as a general term for vehicles with public opinion and wheels as the main components.
Ancient cars were usually driven by horses, a feature that is not only reflected in the ancient glyphs of the "car", but also confirmed by ancient documents and excavated artifacts. For example, in ancient Texts, "cart" and "horse" are often mentioned together. "Poetry Classic, Qin Feng, Che Lin": "There are chariot neighbors, and there are horses and white bumps." "Neighbor" describes the sound of a car driving, and "white bump" is a good horse with white hair on its forehead. Du Fu's "Soldier Carriage Line": "The car is rudder, the horse is Xiaoxiao, and the pedestrians have bows and arrows at their waists." "Xiao Xiao" describes the horse's hissing.
Copper carriages and horses excavated from the Mausoleum of The First Emperor of Qin
Unlike today, in addition to being used by nobles for travel or hunting, the main use of early cars was for military combat, so "car" sometimes referred to chariots. "Zuo Chuan Yin A.D.": "The Fate Of the Sons of The Commandery Car is multiplied by two hundred times that of Fajing." "History of Chen Shijia": "Compared with Chen, the car is six or seven hundred times, riding more than a thousand, and tens of thousands of people." It is worth mentioning that in ancient times, the number of chariots was usually used as "multiplication", and four horses and a car were "one multiplied". Because the number of chariots possessed marks the strength of a country's national strength, there are sayings such as "the country of a thousand multipliers" and "the country of ten thousand multipliers".
The meaning of "car" means a means of transportation with wheels on land has been used since ancient times. With the development of the times, the shape of the car has undergone tremendous changes, and the scope covered by the "car" has also been expanding. From ancient cars powered by livestock or people, to today's bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trains, and even driverless cars, there are many types of cars.
Not only that, but tools that share the common characteristics of "car" and use axle rotation to work can also be called "car". "Later Han Shu , Eunuch Biography , Zhang Rang " : " Also as a turning over the car thirsty Wu , applied to the west of the bridge, sprinkled on the north and south suburban roads, in order to save the people the cost of sprinkling the road." "A "rollover" is a mechanical device used to divert water. Volume 10 of Lu Rong's Miscellaneous Records of Shuyuan in the Ming Dynasty lists various tools named after "cars": "Those who operate the mortal instruments today are called cars. ...... Spinning tools are known as spinning wheels, pimples are known as windmills, silk reels are called reels..."
Hand spinning wheel
Further, "car" can refer to the machine in general, and the "car" in today's words such as "workshop, test car" belongs to this usage.
Wheels are rotating, so "car" can also refer to the use of axle rotation for processing, operation, etc. Tang Dynasty Duan Chengshi "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks and Music": "Straight to the collection of passengers, the exhaustion of the pool of vehicles, the poor pool of sols." "Water in a car" means to draw water from a water truck. Song Dynasty Hong Hao's "Song Desert Chronicles and Supplements": "The elk horn is different from the antlers, and the elk horns are like camel bones, which can be used throughout the body, but there are no lines." "The "car" here refers to cutting objects with things like lathes.
Waterwheel
In some dialects, "car" also means "spinning, turning", and mostly refers to the rotation of the body, which obviously also developed from the meaning of wheel rotation. Li Jieren's "Big Wave": "The wife of the bell knife maker seems to have heard it too, so she turned over and kowtowed to the public, whirling and crying." ”
The idiom "auxiliary car dependence" comes from a record in the "Five Years of Zuo Chuan and Gong Gong": During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Jin State wanted to cross the Yu State to eliminate the Yu State, so it sent emissaries to borrow the road from the Yu State. Yu Guo Dafu Gong Zhiqi believed that the Yu State and the Yu State were interdependent neighbors, and if the Yu State perished, the Yu State would also suffer. He quoted the proverb of the time, "Auxiliary cars are dependent on each other, lips are dead and teeth are cold" to illustrate this interdependent relationship between Yu and Yu. Here, "auxiliary" refers to the cheekbones and "car" refers to the gum bed. The cheekbones and gums are closely related to each other. The reason why the "car" is used to call the gum is because the gum bears the same role as the car. There is a similar usage in the Tang Dynasty Han Yu's "Book of Cui Qun": "The near one is particularly weak, and the second tooth of the left car is shaken and removed for no reason." ”
Five Hundred Commentaries on Han Changli (Basic Series of Classical Chinese Literature)
In addition to the commonly used pronunciation chē, "che" is also pronounced jū, which refers specifically to a chess piece. Song Dynasty Liu Kezhuang's "Xiangyi Yi Yi Chengye Qianzhong": "Kunyang ran with elephants, and Chen Tao lost with cars." ”
"Car" is also used as a subordinate, and the word "car" is mostly related to the car in meaning, such as "military, yuan, public opinion, light, turn, transmission, rail, load" and so on.
(This article was originally published in Monthly Reading, No. 4, 2022)