This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
立
In brief: yin and yang reversed between heaven and earth: standing upside down
Common reading
Compound-ideative. The oracle-bone form depicts a person standing on the ground, seen from the front. Original sense: to stand upright. Shuowen: “立 means to stand; from 大 standing on 一.” Xu Xuan and others: “大 is a person and 一 the ground; compound-ideative.” It depicts a person standing on the ground with arms outstretched. Book of Changes, “Heng”: “The noble person stands (立) firm and does not change his direction.”
Design reading
The two horizontals above and below stand for the two ways of heaven and earth. The right-falling stroke, which is yin, is in the yang position on the left, and the left-falling stroke, which is yang, is in the yin position on the right: an image of yin and yang reversed. Yin and yang are reversed between heaven and earth, and the dot on top tells us to notice the inner meaning of this form. That the form in the Shuowen, “大 standing on 一”, has become in today’s regular script an image of yin and yang reversed between heaven and earth shows that now one can no longer stand upright, but stands hanging upside down.
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.