In the early years, teaching in a rural middle school, there was a boy surnamed Kang in the class, white-skinned, short, weak, even walking carefully, always slightly bent over, afraid of stepping on the ground like ants, so he was often squeezed by some mischievous mischief.
One day, Kang shouted the report into the teacher's office and said with a painful face: "Teacher, someone gave me a nickname." "
Ask what nickname, half a day without saying. After repeated questioning, Kang handed over the homework book in his hand, and saw that the name column on the cover was changed to: "Kang Luopi".
Radish, the Jin dialect is called "Luo Pi".
Turnips
After comforting Kang away, the teachers couldn't help but laugh, and some people said: "This 'Kang' should be changed to 'bran'." "
I shook my hand: "Don't you say, the students are really not mistaken, the word 'chaff' is really 'Kang'." "
Kang, pronounced kāng in Mandarin, is a very old Chinese character that was first seen in the Shang Dynasty oracle bone script.
Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty", "Shuowen Jiezi": "穅, grain skin also, from he from rice, Gengsheng." Kang, Wo or Province. "
According to Xu Shen, the word "Kang" is an omitted notation of "穅", which means grain skin, that is, the skin and shell that have fallen off from the fruits of grains such as rice, wheat, and millet.
Xu Shenhe and "Explanation of Words"
In fact, Xu Shen is not entirely right.
Yes, "穅", the same as "bran", means grain husk, but "Kang" has many meanings.
For example, the "Zhou Shu Wenhou's Order": "Rouyuan can be far, Huikang Xiaomin, no wilderness." "Kang" here means "appeasement."
The meaning of this sentence is that if one wishes to appease and subordinate people near and far, it is necessary to extend to them a wide range of favors, so as to ensure that these people can live and work in peace and contentment, and not be wasted and slack, but only for comfort and enjoyment.
Another example is Shangshu Hongfan: "And Kang and Color." Here "Kang" means "Heyue".
The meaning of this sentence, the Tang Dynasty linguist Kong Yingda explained: "The colors of Rudang and An ru. "Now" and "pleasant face".
Ancient Book "Explanation of Words"
Another example is the "Poetry Sutra, Xiao Ya Bin's First Feast": "Judge Pi Kangjue, to play ershi." "Kang" here is said to be "empty", and "KangJue" is an empty wine glass.
The meaning of this sentence is to pour that empty cup full of wine and offer it to the shooter who shot the bullseye.
In addition, what we often call "xiaokang" today is found in the "Li Ji Li Yun" compiled during the Western Han Dynasty, which refers to the so-called social situation of clear politics and religion and the prosperity and happiness of the people in the Confucian ideal, that is, the rule of Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, Chengwang, and Zhou Gong.
The age of creation of these poems is far earlier than the time when the "Commentary on the Interpretation of Texts" was written, and if "Kang" is simply interpreted as a grain husk, it is obviously incomplete.
Rice husk bran
So, what exactly does the word "Kang" mean?
In modern Chinese, the word "Kang" means annunciation and health, but tracing back to the source, in the oracle bone, the glyph and meaning of the word "Kang" are divergent, and to this day there is still no clear and unified conclusion.
Judging from the oracle bone glyph, the word "Kang" is added four dots below the word "Geng". Therefore, in order to understand the original meaning of the "Kang" glyph, it is necessary to start with the oracle glyph of the "Geng" character.
The glyph evolution of "庚"
What is fatal is that people cannot understand the original meaning of the oracle glyph of the word "Geng", and until now a unified conclusion has not been formed. Many philologists also have their own opinions, and these statements, summed up, are generally the following three types:
First, the "Gung" is like an instrument with ears to shake.
Guo Moruo's "Oracle Bone Script Research · Shi Zhigan: "Looking at its form, when it is an instrument with ears that can be shaken, it is immediately a palladium by sound. "
Later, some scholars believed that the four dots under the "Kang" oracle bone glyph represented the music emitted when the bell was rung, and from the music, it extended the meaning of tranquility and emptiness.
The glyph evolution of "Kang"
This kind of ringing bell, according to Guo Moruo's research, believes that it is a plutonium or a cymbal, which is a musical instrument used in ancient marching and fighting. Military music has always been used to motivate people to forge ahead and motivate killing, how can it give people a sense of peace and emptiness?
Obviously, the credibility of this claim is questionable.
Second, "Geng" is like a person holding a flail in both hands to thresh crops.
Flail is a kind of agricultural tool, according to scholars, as early as the Shang Dynasty, until now China's rural areas are still in use.
This is a type of threshing farm tool consisting of a long handle and a set of flat rows of bamboo or wooden strips used to beat grains, wheat, beans, etc., so that the grains fall.
Several oracle glyphs of "Kang"
According to this, some scholars believe that the points under the "Kang" oracle bone glyph are the chaff skin that falls.
However, those who are familiar with farming know that the use of flails to beat grain can only make the rice fall off the stalk, and cannot achieve the separation of rice from the shell, that is, it is necessary to go through the step of scooping rice to get "bran".
flail
Therefore, although this statement has some basis, it is still not accurate enough.
Third, "Geng" resembles a kind of sieve chaff in ancient times.
This kind of sieve chaff is said to be a fan car for bran, some people say that it is a sieve woven with thorns, and some people say that it is a dustpan used for bran in Yanggu.
Dustle the grain with a dustpan
The four points under the oracle bone of the word "Kang" are the milled rice poured into the "Geng" from the top mouth, or shaken, or dusted, or sieved, and the chaff skins are raised and fallen.
There seems to be some truth to this explanation, but no one can say exactly what this "sieve chaff device" looks like.
Radish is one of the oldest vegetables in China, and its found in the classics should be the Book of Poetry.
"Shao Feng Gu Feng": "Cai Feng Cai Fei, no following body." "
The Book of Verses
"Feng" is a vine, and "Fei" is a radish. This sentence is the angry question of a woman abandoned by her husband: "Picking vines and radishes, is it not as long as the leaves do not have roots?" "It means that because I am old and faded, I can't see my true feelings for you."
The original radish was wild and did not taste good, unlike today's radishes, which were sweet, crisp and tender, and juicy, so the woman in the verses compared her old and fading self to a radish.
In ancient times, there may have been too many varieties of radish, so there are too many names. One of them is a name that we still use to this day: "Lai Ling".
Traditional Chinese medicinal herbs: stir-fried Raisan
Lai Zi, which is the seed of the turnip flowering and knotting, is a very good Chinese medicine, which can dissolve phlegm, qi and accumulate.
The name radish probably appeared during the Ming Dynasty, and Li Shizhen said in his "Compendium of Materia Medica": "Lai Shu is commonly known as radish. "
The water content of white radish is very high, up to nearly 90%, if not properly stored, it is easy to lose water, resulting in hollow, spongy internal tissue, and extremely poor taste.
White radish
In ancient Chinese, the word meaning "water loss" of plants is "Kang Ou".
Kangxi Dictionary: "Erya Shiqi" Kang Ou is called the "Urn". "Note" urn, pot also. And with the passage. "Shuowen" 穅 or Provincial Kang. And with The Tong. "Erya Shiyi" 漮, Void Also. Yi Kangyin means the same thing. "
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the beginner Ding Weifen's "Erya Zhiming" further explained: "Erya Yun Kang Bao, Kang Ou is the false urn, the immature Urn also, with which to make the instrument, the day will be long, so kang Yong also has the name of the urn." "
瓠, pronounced hú (pronounced hu) in Mandarin, is the kind of gourd with a short neck and a large abdomen, which can be eaten as a vegetable when tender, and can be cut in half when old, and used as a scoop for scooping water and picking rice.
Gourd melon
甈, pronounced qì (phonetic instrument) in Mandarin, means broken clay pot.
The gist of the above words is that Kang Bao, that is, The Urn, is the Broken Clay Pot, because it is made of a gourd that has no ripeness, which is "Kang", that is, it lacks moisture and is empty inside, just like a radish loses its moisture. The utensils made of this kind of kang are used for a little longer and are in tatters.
The pronunciation of "kang" here is exactly the same as the pronunciation of "穅" and "漮".
Although there are many theories about the original meaning of the word "Kang", basically speaking, "Kang" is the original word of "穅", that is, "bran", that is, grain husk. The separation of rice from the shell means emptiness and emptiness.
A container made of gourds
Where there is chaff, there is rice, and where there is rice, there is grain. The old man said that if you have grain in your hand, your heart will not panic. Down-to-earth and jubilant. In the ancient times when the people took food as the sky, having grain meant guotai and people's security, which meant family peace and happiness, so the word "kang" was mostly borrowed as the meaning of happiness and tranquility.
In ancient Chinese, most of the shapes and sounds with "Kang" as a sound symbol were "empty and virtual" from the extended meaning of "Kang".
糠, that is, rice hollow, grain peeled off from the husk of grain; 㝩, to describe the house empty, 槺 is its variant; 嵻, to describe the mountain void.
漮, Western Han Yangxiong's "Dialects": "漮, emptiness." Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty", "Explanation of Words": "漮, water deficiency also, from the sound of water Kang." "
漮, Mandarin pronounced kāng
Water deficiency means that there is an empty space in the center of the water. In the beginning, the word "漮" may not specifically refer to the radish that lost its moisture due to the long storage time and became hollow, and later in the local dialects, the word basically inherited the pronunciation and meaning of the Qin and Han Dynasties, but the meaning of the word was reduced, from the initial variety of things that were empty due to the loss of moisture, to the specific reference to the radish thing.
To this day, due to the disconnect between spoken and written language, we do not know that there is another Chinese character "漮", which is specially used to indicate that vegetables such as radishes lose water and become hollow, so we borrowed the "bran" character of grain bran instead. (Zhang Wenping)