Amazing Chinese Characters (739）Ten - 十

The shell bone script of character Ten is

which is a vertical line, very confusing.

The bronze script of character Ten is

There is a big dot in the middle of the vertical line, which is a rope knot to represent Ten. We then know that the shell bone script above is a rope. Probably a rope represents Ten in very early time, later on, people use a knot in rope to represent Ten.

Before any character was created, ancient Chinese used knotting on rope to record the quality, amount, and number they got. In most documents, people believe that ancient Chinese used knotting to record what happened. I don't believe because it is impossible to represent the time, the place where the event happened, and what happened by knotting on rope. But it is easy to record the number by knotting.

The small seal script of Character Ten is

The big dot in bronze script horizontal line is replaced by a horizontal line, which is unique feature of small seal script: all dots are replaced by short line, either horizontal or vertical.

The clerical script of character Ten is

Similar to its small seal script.

The Pinyin of the character Ten is Shi2.