Worked examples
These examples come from chapters 6 and 7 of Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters and show the New Six Scripts at work on single-unit and compound characters. Each row gives the character, the common reading (from the Shuowen and modern dictionaries) and the design reading (the recovered rationale). Where the manuscript gives only a design reading, the common-reading column is left empty rather than invented.
I. Single-unit characters
two modes · indicative
Common reading
The Shang and Zhou title of the ruler; originally the Son of Heaven, the sovereign. The Shuowen quotes Dong Zhongshu: “Those who first made writing joined three strokes through the middle and called it 王. The three are heaven, earth and man; the one who connects them is the king.”
Design reading
The three horizontals stand for the great law of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance; the vertical for cultivating all three together. What life can cultivate the great law? Only the “kings” of worlds, heavenly bodies and universes — this is the original sense and source of 王. In the human world the three strokes are heaven, earth and man, the vertical their connection; whoever connects them is a king among men.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
三 stood upright and joined at the foot by 一, and close in sound to 三. The three strokes can be the three great barriers of the three realms in which people live, or the three basic characteristics of the universe. Add the person radical on the left and 山 becomes 仙 — a cultivator who lives by the Way and the law (cultivators of old mostly lived in the mountains). The upright 三 is the three barriers opened, the stroke beneath is the Way and the law: one who enters the Way, obtains the law and lives by it may rise out of the three realms when the barriers open.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
Two mountains stacked make 出. Beyond the three realms are higher three realms, and lives that fell into the three realms may come from above all those layers. Two stacked mountains remind people in the three realms that breaking through layer after layer and returning to where they were first born is the final aim of life here — the highest and original sense of 出.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
人 over 王. 王 is 三 with a vertical; 三 is the great law of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance and the vertical through it their joint cultivation. A person who cultivates all three together is whole — 全.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
米 is 十 with four dots — every direction; at a crossroads leading everywhere one loses one's way. 十 is also the world of the ten directions, our material world: a life that falls into it becomes lost. 迷 was originally written 米; when 米 was borrowed for “grain”, the walking radical was added by transfer to write the original sense as 迷.
II. Compound characters
four images · rationale → form
Common reading
Compound-ideative, from 女 (woman) and 子 (child); originally “beautiful” (Shuowen: 好 means beautiful; Xu Kai: 子 is a fine name for a man).
Design reading
女 + 子. Life in the world is cultivation; more hardship means faster progress, and that is good. Women's lives hold much hardship, so 女 + 子 came to mean good.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
The bottom is 見 (see); the cover stroke means covering and concealing; three horizontals are the ways of heaven, earth and man (the truth of the universe), enclosed by two verticals; opening that enclosure, 爻 in the middle stands for change. The whole: sight pierces the cover, opens the hidden truth and sees the changes it reveals — awakening, 覺.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
An inch of earth makes 寺. To higher beings everything material inside the three realms is earth, and lives in the three realms are as if buried in it; the lower the realm the denser the earth, and the human realm is the heaviest. A temple is where cultivators live; being at a higher level, they live as if in a higher space where the earth is thin — so 寸 and 土 make 寺, the dwelling of cultivators.
Common reading
No common reading in the manuscript (none is invented)
Design reading
吾 is 五 over 口: 五 the five phases, 口 a bounded space — together the material world made of the five phases. 吾 sounds like 無 (nothing): this world is empty for us, and one must leave the three realms and the five phases to return to the true self. 悟 adds the heart radical to 吾: nothing in the heart means no attachment, and the insight gained with no attachment in the heart is 悟.
theme: reason at the core
Common reading
福 is blessing (Shuowen); of old, wealth, rank and long life together were called 福, the opposite of 禍. 富 is “complete, ample”, from 宀 with 畐 as sound. 禍 is harm, “the spirits do not bless”.
Design reading
福: the altar radical with 一 on top, 口 in the middle and 田 below — the 一 is reasonableness, 口 a flourishing, harmonious household, 田 the fields that support it; with the altar radical it is the blessing heaven bestows. 富: blessing gathered under one roof — a household that is reasonable and lettered, numerous and with good land. In both, the 一 of reasonableness is at the core. 禍: in 咼 the 一 inside the upper 曰 is broken — people no longer reason; the enclosure below has lost its bottom 一 — the state has lost the way on which it stands. When people abandon reason and a state without foundation splits apart, that is 禍.
