CHALFANT: EARLY CHINESE WRITING 15 
etc., ete. The phenomena exhibited in its old forms lead us to suspect that it, too, 
is an incongruous composite from more than one root. 
The character ¥4 (Chih) is the name of a river, and also means “to govern,” 
“to control.” The oldest forms show confusion of origin. 8 plainly designates a 
river, it being an old form for ; “stream,” but RQ, $4, Si, also occur as synonyms, 
and are analogous to $a (now 4 “to govern”). <A possible conclusion is that 
these varied forms have coalesced in 34, which retains the several meanings of its 
components. 
Just as in other languages, the early juggling with orthographic signs has led to 
puzzles in the shape of monographie signs which are the despair of the philologist, 
unless he can recover the lost key. 
A curious phase of this juggling with writing-signs appeared at an early date in 
the development of the Chinese language. I refer to the habit of reversing or 
inverting an existing sign to signify its opposite in meaning. his forms a distinct 
class of mechanically devised symbols. 
The process may be illustrated thus : Having accepted an English word “hard” 
as descriptive of unyielding substances, we might have adopted “drah” (the 
reversed spelling of “hard’’) as suitable for the opposite meaning “soft.” Or, being 
familiar with the meaning of “child,” we might have reserved it to signify a child 
of good conduct, and then have written “ priyo” (letters inverted) to mean a “ prodi- 
gal son” who has turned normal conditions upside down. Such a conception 
actually seized the ancients in China when they represented “ unfilial”” by & (now 
written 4 fw), the inverted character { for “son” (now written F ti). Another 
instance is that of the now obsolete sign i which was formerly written § and 
signified “to turn back.” It is the reversed symbol cel (§ shen) for “body,” and 
hence was considered appropriate for the idea of “about face.” 
I, (now twisted into &) means “deficient,” and in form it is the reverse of TF 
chéng “exact,” the latter being the older symbol. Again, having become familiar 
with the sign *y (now altered to 2%” chiie) as meaning “sever,” depicting “cut 
silk” (38), it was little short of an inspiration that led some scholar to adopt the 
reverse ie for the idea of “connect,” a symbol now enlarged to gf “ki.” 
66 
The effort to construct ideographs for the negatives “no,” “not, not yet,” 
f=) om ’ ? v 
“without” and “do not,” seems to have taxed the ingenuity of the ancient sign- 
® We have in this form a survival of an old variant written 8B composed of ‘‘ silk,’’ ‘‘ knife’? and ‘‘ knot’? equally 
suggestive of “ cutting.’’ It is further curious to note, among the old forms of 4 ki, ‘‘ to connect,’’ several which seem 
Or eae cote mL « . H 
to be 18 with variations. This may be FE fei, “not,” and 92, ““sever,’’ which would he another way of reversing the 
meaning of the sign. 
