Amazing Chinese Characters (460) Viola - 堇

 The bronze script of character Viola is

The top is the flower of viola, the middle are the leaves and stem of viola, the bottom is character Mountain.

The Dictionary of Pictography explanation is that the top is a person who shouts or cry while being hanged, and burnt on the bottom. However the bottom 

is the bronze script of character Mountain (Post 1), not the bronze script of character Fire (Post 26)

The lower part of top looks like a person, the top is like character Mouth (Post 16), but people point out that if a person is being hanged, he couldn't shout. But what is the top? I think that a person with a big container on his head for collecting violet on a mountain. The viola is eatable, people pick up them to be food when the natural disaster time.

The big seal script of the character is

which has no human head on the top, the bottom is character Soil (Post 223). It may be a drawing of the violet, but from a view we don't understand.

The small seal script of the character is

Similar to big seal script.

The clerical script of the character is 

All lines are straight now, which is the revolutionary change from the older scripts to clerical script.

The song typeface of the character is

堇

Almost same as the clerical script.

The pinyin of the character is Jin3.

This is a rarely used character, I normally don't introduce this kind characters. However, 堇 is so important in many important compound characters, including character 汉（漢）, which form 汉字 -  Chinese. We should know where the Chinese original is from. This is the reason I introduced this character in this post even though it is not very clear to get the true meaning of character in ancient Chinese mind.