This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
勺
In brief: nothing one gives is better than the Fa
Common reading
Shuowen: “勺 means to ladle out; pictographic. There is something inside it; the same idea as 包.” Shuowen Jiezi Zhu: “A ladle.” Note: 勺 later took the semantic component 木 and split off 杓, showing that ladles were made of wood. The name of a dance music made by the Duke of Zhou: Book of Rites, “Neize”: “At thirteen, one learns music, recites the Odes, and dances the Shao (勺).”
Design reading
A small left-falling stroke shows going outward; the horizontal-turn-hook is also obtaining the Fa, cultivating and spreading the Fa outward; the dot inside points to what is most important to give people. When ladling out rice for someone, do not forget: nothing you give is as good as giving the Fa; this is what matters most.
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.