This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
牛
In brief: turning over the surface to see the essence, in good order
Common reading
A member of the genus Bos or related genera: a sturdy mammal with hollow horns. Shuowen: “牛 is a great sacrificial animal.” For 件: “To divide; from 人 and from 牛; the ox is large, so it can be divided.” Original sense: to cut up, to separate. Duan Yucai’s note: “The three of horns and head: the three branches on top depict the two horns and the head, making three.”
Design reading
A vertical runs through the two ways of heaven and earth (the top and bottom horizontals), showing an understanding of the principles of this world at its different levels; a left-falling stroke joined to the upper left corner of the top horizontal shows displaying these principles to others. The ox ploughs the field, turning up the soil beneath the surface and laying it out in neat furrow after furrow: like understanding the principles of the world, turning over the surface to see the essence, neatly arranged, reasoned and orderly. So the animal that does this is called 牛.
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.