This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
矢
In brief: Houyi shooting the suns: the arrow when heaven's way tilted
Common reading
Pictographic. The oracle-bone form depicts an arrowhead, nock and fletching. Original sense: arrow; bamboo arrows were called 箭 and wooden ones 矢. Shuowen: “The arrow of bow and crossbow.” Shiming: “矢 is also called 箭.” 矢 is interchangeable with 誓 (to vow): Book of Songs, “Weifeng, Kaopan”: “I vow (矢) never to forget.” With 施 (to bestow): Book of Songs, “Daya, Jianghan”: “Bestowing (矢) his civil virtue, in harmony with these four states.” Upright, straight: Book of Documents, “Pangeng I”: “Utter straight (矢) words.” Kong Anguo’s (Han) commentary: “Utter upright words.”
Design reading
As the saying goes, once the bow is drawn there is no turning back the arrow. One of the most famous traditional stories of China is Houyi shooting down the suns. 天 with a left-falling stroke added on the left shows the way of heaven tilting. The legend of Houyi shooting the suns should date from prehistory: ten suns rose together and the way of heaven was thrown into disorder, and Houyi shot down nine suns with his arrows (矢). This should be the most meaningful event connected with arrows and the greatest role they could play, so it is used as the sign for 矢.
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.