This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
自
In brief: beginning to show
Common reading
The small-seal form depicts a nose. 自 is a radical; its original sense is the nose. Present senses: from, beginning, origin and so on. Shuowen: “自 means nose.” Duan Yucai’s note: “Xu holds that 自 and 鼻 have the same meaning and sound, but 自 is very rarely used for 鼻.” Guangya: “自 means from.”
Design reading
目 with a left-falling stroke on top.
“A left-falling stroke on the head” shows beginning to show; 目 stands for the changes of yin and yang in the material world; together they mean to begin, the beginning.
Related characters
About this entry
This entry is taken from the edited manuscript of LI Xutong’s Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters. The common reading follows traditional philology, the Shuowen Jiezi and other classics, and modern dictionaries; the design reading recovers the rationale of the character’s formation from the meanings of its strokes, the pairing of yin and yang, and the nine-palace layout, following the New Six Scripts. The premise of the design reading, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology; the two readings are kept apart, as surface and depth.