This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
王
In brief: cultivating Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance together; connecting heaven, earth and humanity
Common reading
What the Yin and Zhou called their rulers; original sense: the Son of Heaven, the sovereign. The Shuowen quotes Dong Zhongshu: “Those who made the script of old took three strokes joined through the middle to be 王. The three are heaven, earth and humanity, and the one who connects all three is the king.”
Design reading
The three horizontals depict the Great Law, Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, and the middle vertical symbolizes cultivating Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance together. What kind of life can cultivate the Great Law? Only the kings (王) of every world, cosmic body and universe can; other lives are not worthy. This is the original meaning and source of 王. In the human world, the three horizontals depict the three powers of heaven, earth and humanity, and the vertical symbolizes connecting heaven, earth and humanity; one who can connect heaven, earth and humanity is a king among humans.
In ancient times 玉 and 王 looked alike. The three horizontals of 王 stand for the ways of heaven, humanity and earth, and the central vertical for “one who connects heaven and earth is king” (one who follows the way of heaven and cultivates the laws of heaven, earth and humanity becomes king); “三 + 丨” means “cultivating Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance together is 王”.
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.