This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
巴
In brief: a great snake that has gained spiritual power
Common reading
Pictographic; the small-seal form depicts a snake. Originally a great snake of ancient legend. Shuowen: “巴 is the ba creature; some say the snake that eats elephants.” Classic of Mountains and Seas, “Hainei Nanjing”: “The ba snake eats an elephant and after three years brings out its bones.” Something attached below or behind an object (tail 尾巴, chin 下巴); something dried or thickened into a lump (scorched rice 锅巴, mud 泥巴, salt 盐巴); to hope, to long for (巴望); to be close to (Water Margin: “No village ahead, no inn behind”).
Design reading
A vertical added inside the 口 at the top of 巳 makes 巴, the great snake of ancient legend. Such a snake has already gained spiritual power and gong; the ancient serpent of the Bible and the like may all belong to this kind.
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.