Source: Jiefang Daily | Licensed 02.09.2024
Some time ago, CCTV announced the theme of the 2024 "Spring Festival Gala" - "Dragon Travel, Xinxin Family". The word "龘" here is a very rare Chinese character, pronounced dá, which means the appearance of a dragon soaring in the sky.
So, do you know the origin of "龘"? Why has it been forgotten and why is it known again? Do you know what other Chinese characters have a similar structure to "龘"? What kind of history of writing is behind these rare Chinese characters?
From "Dragon" to "Dragon"
In the oracle bone inscription of the Yin Shang period, there are two "dragons" stitched together with the character "龖". The first dictionary in ancient China, Shuowen Jie Zi, interprets it as "flying dragon". "Shuowen Jie Zi" was written by Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which shows that the Han Dynasty people have begun to use the word "龖".
The change from "dragon" to "dragon" also confirms that the Chinese nation's understanding of the development law of the objective world is constantly deepening.
It has been suggested that the word "dragon" in the oracle bone inscription is almost completely consistent with the arrangement of the "dragon star" constellation. "Zhou Yi Qiangua", talks about the six forms of "Dragon Star", and these six changes of "Dragon Star" astrological signs are related to the rhythm of the season, so the ancients believed that "dragon" is both yin and yang, and the word "Gong" included in "Shuowen" is the "dragon" that can be yin and yang, and in the process of "flying", the appearance of "yin and yang" transformation is realized.
Written in the Southern Dynasty Liang Wu Emperor period of the character book "Jade Chapter", and included the word "龘", it is actually a variant of "龖", mainly showing the appearance of the dragon soaring, writing three dragons or two dragons, there is no difference in ideology.
The appearance of the word "龘" is also inseparable from the historical environment at that time. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, paper was widely used, and the upgrading of writing materials made "writing" a field that more ordinary people could touch, and the popularity of culture and writing was greatly improved.
In fact, the character "龘" still does not belong to the common and common characters of modern Chinese, and it cannot be found in the Xinhua Dictionary and the Modern Chinese Dictionary.
However, this does not affect the re-activation of the "龘". From ancient totems to auspicious symbols, in the long history of China for 5,000 years, the word "dragon" has gradually evolved into a spiritual symbol and cultural symbol of the Chinese nation, and most of the Chinese characters related to "dragon" have left an indelible auspicious mark in people's hearts.
Kanji "Metamorphosis"
In addition to "Long Xing Lang", in recent years, Shanghai Dragon TV's Mid-Autumn Festival TV Gala has also been branded as "Moonlight Oriental". This "朤" is a variant of "Lang", indicating Lang and bright.
It can be seen from the three words "龖, 龘, 朤" that a number of identical words are combined to indicate an abstract meaning related to the meaning of the word. Philologists call them "synonymous characters", and there are mainly "two-in-one, three-in-one, and four-in-one".
There are two kinds of "two-in-one" ones: left and right side and top and bottom layers. For example, "forest" means "forest" with many trees, and "fire" means "fire" rising from the fire. "Three-in-one", most of them use the word "product" to form words, such as the common words "Zhong, Lei, Xin, Sen, Miao, Yan, Yao" and so on.
In addition, in recent years, many merchants like to use "鱻 (xiān), 羴 (shān), 犇 (bēn), 骉 (biāo), 猋 (biāo), 麤 (cū)", which are all found in the "Shuowen Jie Zi", which respectively means fresh, sheep and cow, horse, dog, and deer running.
Today, although we can't read the exact pronunciation of these Chinese characters at first glance, the meaning of the glyphs is relatively clear. This cognitively reflects the complexity and inheritance of the thinking of the ancestors, and is an important part of Chinese character culture and a realistic carrier.
However, the strokes of this structure are complex, the pronunciation cannot be seen, and sometimes even the ideograms are not precise enough, so they are gradually simplified or even extinct. For example, "boom", previously written as "轟", a total of 21 paintings, is really cumbersome, simplified characters in addition to the use of cursive glyphs to simplify the "car", but also with "double" cleverly retain the same meaning of the configuration. Similarly, the word "聶" is simplified with "Nie".
There are also some synonymous characters that are the result of text alteration. Falsification is a phenomenon in which the form of a character changes erroneously in the process of historical change. For example, the word "jujube" is written as "棗" in ancient characters, that is, overlapping two "朿" characters to represent the sour jujube tree with thorns, and the simplified characters use the following two points to represent the "朿" character below. Historically, people would mistake "朿" as "bundle" or "come". What's more, the word "朿" is misspelled as "south", and the words "(Shangnan + Xianan) and (Fig. 1)" appear. People who happen to see these two words will laugh and say that they can mean "I am too southern (difficult)" or "difficult to be difficult", but in fact, they are just variant of "jujube", and have nothing to do with "south" or "difficult".
Figure 1
Knowing rare words is not the same as being "literate"
When it comes to complex and obscure Chinese characters, it is easy to think of the character "((Figure 2)" on the side of (Fig. 2). Actually, "(Fig. 2)" is not a "word" in the strict sense of the word.
In Mandarin, there is no syllable combination of biáng, and "(Fig. 2)" is also an imaginary figure, and its internal components are not directly related to the meaning of the noodles or the pronunciation of the word. This "character" is a cultural creativity related to Chinese characters, in order to express people's worship of words and deepen the impression of this pasta, which is essentially a common combination of characters and graphics in folklore.
Figure 2
During the Chinese New Year, there are many people who will "attract wealth into the treasure", "five grains harvest", "day into the gold", "gold ten thousand taels" and other auspicious words into a very compact graphic, through a few words between the same strokes of the borrowing, simple province, a number of words written in a word position, from a distance like a word, in fact, to be read separately into four words. Another example is "Xi", many people call it "red double happiness", which basically only appears on wedding occasions, and they are very typical folk text graphics.
Throughout the ages, the changes and development of Chinese characters have been complex and diverse. Countless users of words create new characters and even graphics. However, since the Qin Dynasty, the ancient central dynasties attached great importance to the standardization of writing. In particular, after the formation of the customization of the imperial examination, the use of words has been regulated from the legal point of view, which has always been the power of the central government and a symbol of the unity of state power.
As early as in the process of unifying the Six Kingdoms, Qin compiled the "Cangjie Chapter" and other character books, and promulgated them all over the world for people to learn to write. The Eastern Han Dynasty's Shuowen Jie Zi was the first time to standardize Chinese characters in the form of a dictionary.
After the Sui and Tang dynasties, due to the formation of the imperial examination system and the innovation of printing, special books on the study of standard glyphs appeared. Such as Yan Yuansun's "Ganlu Character Book", Zhang Shen's "Five Classics of Text", Guo Zhongshu's "Pei Jin" and so on. Among them, the purpose of the "Ganlu Character Book" is to avoid writing typos and non-standard characters in the answer sheet of the imperial examination. By collecting various glyphs in society, the author determines the standard font, corrects errors, and reduces variant characters. Many of the colloquial characters mentioned above have been preserved through such books.
In 2013, on the basis of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, the State Council promulgated the General Standardized Chinese Character List, which included 8,105 characters and stipulated that "the use of Chinese characters in the general application field of society shall be subject to this table", and Chinese characters outside the character list should be avoided as much as possible in daily use.
From this point of view, whether it is "Long Xing Lang" or "Shuyue Dongfang", they can only be regarded as the achievements of Chinese character culture and creativity, although they have all contributed to the popularization of Chinese character culture, but it cannot be said that if you don't know these symbols, you are "illiterate", let alone because you can recognize such non-standard characters or even non-standard characters, you can feel how "literate" you are.
Chinese characters are not the world's earliest paleographic systems, but they are the only ones that continue to evolve and are still in use today. The development of Chinese characters also seems to tell us two facts -
First of all, the culture of Chinese characters is broad and profound, and the ancient configuration of Chinese characters such as Tongxin Yizi not only reflects the wisdom of the ancestors, but also carries rich national feelings. But many words have also been eliminated by history, and we need to respect the choices of history.
Secondly, the total amount of characters will continue to be enriched due to the increase of different and vulgar forms, and various text-based graphics will be created in folklore, but the use of Chinese characters should be standardized in teaching, scientific research, and daily writing, and we need to distinguish the specific situation and strictly follow the rules and bottom lines of the use of Chinese characters.
(The author is a lecturer in the Department of Chinese, East China Normal University)