Lesson 1 象形三书 The Three Pictographic Principles

Lesson 1 象形三书 The Three Pictographic Principles

The oracle script, bronze script, great seal script, small seal script, clerk script, cursive hand script, regular script and running hand script are all external forms of Chinese characters. Now we begin to study the internal forms of Chinese characters.

The oracle script, bronze script, great seal script, small seal script, clerk script, cursive hand script, regular script and running hand script are all external forms of Chinese characters. Now we begin to study the internal forms of Chinese characters.

The internal forms of Chinese characters are the constructions of Chinese characters, so we must study the structures of Chinese characters in terms of principles.

The famous philologist Xu Shen in the Han Dynasty proposed “Liu Shu”(六书, six logographic principles). These six logographic principles are the six principles of writings, representing six categories of script elements: pictographic category(象形), indicative category(指事), ideographic category(会意), signific-phonetic category(形声), mutually defining category(转注) and phonetic loan category(假借).

Mutually defining category(转注) and phonetic loan category(假借) are methods to use Chinese Characters and not methods to make new characters, so we can simplifies the Six Principles to Three Principles: 整体象形([quán bù xiàng xíng]  Intact Pictographs), 部分象形 ([bù fen xiàng xíng] Partial-Pictographs), 片段象形 ([piàn duàn xiàng xíng]  Fragment-Pictographs).


Latest Articles