The Discovery of Genesis (16 page)

This is an example of how such a phonetic character is formed. The Chinese colloquial word for
mother
is “ma.” In order to develop a character for this word, the coiner of the new character chose a common phonetic radical possessing the sound, “ma,”
a horse
, and combined this with the radical
for
woman.
Thus the new character
means a
mother
, but not a
horse woman.
In other words, the phonetic portion no longer has pictographic or ideographic meaning, and therefore one analyzing the character from its constituent parts would not understand it. The structure of many of these characters in use today is obscure since the phonetic aspect of Chinese has changed drastically during the intervening millennia.

There is a point of controversy among linguists as to whether some characters are ideographic and whether the constituent radicals were intended to be literally translated or phonetic, with part of the components used only for sound and not for meaning. Since with the passage of time the original sound of the phonetic has been lost through regional modifications in dialectic changes, large numbers of characters are left with neither ideographic nor phonetic meaning. Hence their composition appears haphazard and devoid of practical sense today. In other words, the majority of Chinese characters do not tell a story and if “translated” would be quite nonsensical.

It should be said at this point that the characters discussed in this book are believed to be either pictographs (Class I) or true ideograms (Class II), since their constituent radicals appear to have been carefully selected by the inventor to convey a specific thought. Most of these characters are also fairly simple, which in itself suggests a primitive origin. If it is argued that these selected characters are mere phonetic combinations, it would seem that the possibility of chance formation of completely meaningful words from almost limitless happenstance phonetic possibilities is mathematically narrowed with each additional radical contained. The likelihood of thus producing a random intelligent ideogram, especially applicable to a specific Genesis story, might be compared to the proverbial explosion in a print shop resulting in the fortuitous compilation of English words!
⁵

Earliest identified inscriptions have been found on oracle scapular bones and tortoise shells, which were used for divination purposes during the Shan dynasty (1766–1122 B.C.) The Supreme God was thus consulted regarding every act of life from the propitious time for planting to royal troop movements. The most ancient forms of writing are also found on large numbers of bronze vessels and pottery, as well as stone and jade carvings. Even during the Shang dynasty there were already some 5,000 different characters, both pictographs and ideographs.
⁶

The Chinese were greatly concerned with writing, and it bore an intimate relationship to the arts and painting. The Chinese were the inventors of paper about A. D. 100; had the first Chinese dictionary in A. D. 121, containing 9,353 characters; invented block printing in the 9th century; the movable press in the 11th century; and prior to 1750 had printed more books than the rest of the world put together! It is no wonder then that their estimation of “civilization” (wen hua) is literally, “the transforming influence of writing,” while the English word “civilization” refers to urbanization as a sign of being civilized.
⁷

There are several different forms or styles of scripts in which Chinese characters may be written, and although all of these calligraphies are very old, they are still in use today for designated purposes.

There are two types of antique seal characters: the
greater seal characters
are ascribed to a court historian, Shin Chou, about 900 B. C., and were created to take the place of the simple pictographs found on early bronzes and ancient drums. The
lesser seal characters
are said to have been used by Li Ssu, a minister of the great “First Emperor,” Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, in the Ch’in dynasty, about 240 B. C., for the purpose of unifying writing.
⁸
These seal scripts are used today only for ornamental purposes, and upon public and private seals.