This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
文
In brief: the teachings of the Buddhist and Daoist schools
Common reading
The Shuowen also says: “文 means crossed strokes; it depicts lines crossing.” 错 means crossing, so 文 was originally the root form of 纹 (wén, “pattern, grain”).
Design reading
The character 文 itself: the top part 亠 stands for the Taiji, yin and yang; the crossed 乂 below (a tilted 十, that is, the swastika symbol) completes it. The whole is made of figures representing the Buddhist and Daoist schools, and means “the principles of the Buddhist and Daoist schools”.
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.