Saturday, November 19, 2022

Amazing Chinese Characters (548) Easy - 易

 The shell bone script of character Easy is

The left are three water drops, the right is half of character of Enon and Mortise. When it is difficult to put Enon and Mortise in position, but it is easier to do so when you spray some water on Enon and Mortise. This is my explanation.

There is another shell bone script for character Easy


People believe that ancient Chinese extracted metal Tin by heating soil containing Tin, the Tin has very low melting point, can be easily melt. The diagram of the character above shows the transfer of melted Tin between two cups, one could be used as pan for melting Tin, another could be used as container of Tin.

It is easy to melt Tin, which is the meaning of the character. Also the exchange of Tin between two cups means Change, which is another meaning of the character: change hands (trade), change positions, etc.

The bronze script of character Easy is

Similar to shell bone script, just the Enon and Mortise is flipped. 

There are another bronze scripts of the character 


The left is the cup with melted Tin, means Change, or Easy (to melt). The right one is lizard. There is no explanation online for why the character has this kind form. What I guess is that the people at that time (in East Zhou Dynasty, about 1000 years later after the Shang Dynasty when the shell bone scripts were created), didn't know the original meaning of the character, misunderstood the meaning of the pictography of the earlier scripts, mistakenly changed the drawing of the character. The Lizard is nothing to do with Easy.

The small seal script of character Easy is

It is obvious heritage from the right form of the bronze script, which is not right.

The top is character Sun (Post 4), the bottom is character Do Not (Post 547). People in the sun get sweating easily. The character is totally different approach the meaning from the older scripts, but it is very reasonable. 

The clerical script of character Easy is

similar to small seal script.

The pinyin of character Easy is Yi4.



 


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