Group 文 (wén)

Hi henning,

Interestingly, the character 文 meant ”tattoo” in oracle bone scripts (甲骨文), more than three thousand years ago. You can find “文身 (or 纹身)” even in modern Chinese dictionaries.

In old Chinese, 文 usually indicated basic parts of Chinese characters, such as 月, 日, and 人, which are now called “偏旁” (radical). On the other hand, 字 meant a character made by combining some radicals, i.e. 明, 行, 阳 etc.

And therefore, the title of a famous ancient dictionary, 说文解字, literally means “explain (说) radicals (文) and interpret (解) characters (字)”. The purpose of the dictionary was to show the original meaning (本义) of characters.

Yes, 文 could be used in the sense of tatoo (you find it in a very famous Zhuangzi story...."宋人資章甫適諸越。越人短髮文身。無所用之。"- A man of Song went to Yue to sell his ceremonial hats; but the men of Yue were short haired and  tatooed : they had no use for them-) but it's meaning was more general, more or less "decorative pattern" ("然。瞽者無以與乎文章之觀。聾者無以與乎鐘鼓之聲。" - Yeah, it is so. Blind men cannot enjoy decorative patterns and designs, neither can deafs listen to the sound of bells and lithophones.") It is interesting to note that you find also this caracter (without the radical 纟) to mean wrinkle. In fact, I think the original meaning is really

"pattern of lines":

文：錯畫也。象交文。 (说文解字)

Cool input.

Keep it coming (and join the group!).

Hi xiaoanolga,

How hilarious the 越人断发文身 episode is! I didn’t know that 庄子 was so humorous. As for 文, I still think that its original meaning was tattoo. Please look into the webpage below, where you can see a lot kinds of 文 both in oracle bone scripts (甲骨文) and in bronze inscriptions (金文). Some of them clearly indicate a standing man with a (tattoo-like?) mark on the chest.   

http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E6%96%87&submitButton1=Etymology

What interests me is that some of these marks symbolize “a heart”, and I don’t know whether they also indicate “a tattoo on the chest” or just imply the existence of the heart of a man. Or, are they heart-shaped tattoos? (Just joking!) Anyway, the original shape of 文 was not “intersected lines” as defined in 说文解字, but “a standing man with a mark on the chest”. 

许慎, the author of 说文解字, edited the dictionary mainly based on the interpretations of seal scripts (小篆), which were invented in Qin Dynasty (秦朝, 221～207 B.C.) Unfortunately, he could not refer to older characters such as 甲骨文 and 金文, since 甲骨文 was discovered in 1899, and it was not until Song Dynasty (宋朝) that 金文 attracted attention of researchers.

Hi xiaoanolga,

For your information, let me show you the original forms of the character “心”. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw these characters for the first time. Don’t ask me why, please.

http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E5%BF%83&submitButton1=Etymology

Another hilarious character, 且.

http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E4%B8%94&submitButton1=Etymology

Eventually I understand that graffiti in the University toilets...those student poets are actually referring to the Chinese character 心 and they even use 篆书 to express their feelings! Wow!

By the way: That is a great resource, Changye. Just added it to my bookmarks.

Hi Changye! I was just parrotting what I was taught (no pretention to real knowledge!), which was something like this:

文: at first this character meant all sort of lines or cracks (wood lines for insatnce). 文 is cognate with 卜 the fissures in the heated tortoise shell forming the oracle: one can therefore see in it a "divine script". 文 implies the notions of trace, structure, pattern, power line. Nature is writing, leaving its traces for us to decipher (and admire)

Su Xun:
風行水上渙, 此亦天下之至文也。(Su Xun)

I had no idea that the notion of heart was included in that character, but bearing in mind that the 心 is the organ of comprehension it is not so surprising....

hanzi, what fun