8 MEMOIRS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM 
ing essentially from the well-known “seal character” of the early Han Dynasty 
(B. C. 200). 
A more reasonable conclusion is drawn from what we find in the most ancient 
inscriptions, to wit, that the Chinese, like most other peoples, began to record ideas 
by scratching rude pictures upon wood, stone, bone, or metal, in order to suggest 
the thought to be conveyed. Among these rude beginnings of language are found 
the outline drawings of animals, wild and domestic, which soon assumed conven- 
tional forms merely suggestive of the more elaborately carved originals. 
5 In one instance a tiger is represented with the attached symbol for “tree” 
eee if to indicate that the beast inhabited the jungle, the sign (4X) being 
Ancient sym- identical with 7 “tree.” 
Pag ngs The oldest preserved inscriptions are found upon bronze vessels and 
implements, upon stone and brick tablets, on bones used in sacrifice and 
divination, and on bronze coins vaguely referred to the Yin, Shang, and early Chou 
Dynasties (B. C. 1100-2000), as already noted. 
Such inscriptions are unsatisfactory because of their brevity, and, in the case of 
coins, on account of the habit of abbreviation in order to save space and labor. This 
last unfortunate characteristic renders the coin-inscriptions at once difficult to 
decipher, and unreliable as complete specimens of early symbolism. It seems ¢ 
safe inference from the oldest inscriptions on bronze vessels and tablets that the 
original Chinese writing was pictographic. 
Pictographs, as found among these primitive symbols, may be divided into two 
kinds, (1) those based upon the form of the object as o ? (now J)" picturing the 
head or side-view of a “nail,” or as Sand & the right and left hands (contracted 
from % and which show the five fingers), and (2) those suggested by some real or 
imaginary characteristic of the object, as \ (now 4¢) “ father,” composed of a ver- 
tical line attached to X (“right hand”) and signifying a “rod in the hand” as a sign 
of authority, hence “father,” who was the absolute ruler of the household or clan. 
Wang Chun of Shantung, one of the greatest of modern Chinese scholars, whose 
commentary is embodied in recent editions of the Shuo Wén, states in his preface 
that writing began with pictures of things which appealed to the senses. These 
developed into abstract ideas, and these in turn gave rise to indefinable particles 
such as conjunctions and prepositions (classed by the Chinese under the general 
term of “empty symbols”). The same scholar gives numerous examples of this 
11 Chinese, following the Shuo Wén, consider this as originally the picture of an insect’s sting. This will not 
account for the form ©, and the author of the Shuo Wén adds that when men made nails of metal and wood, these were 
allied in form to a sting Gi: I prefer to consider the nail as the original basis of the sign. 
