In an Incheon museum collecting various items, I saw a text written by old Chinese characters. At first sight, I could recognize only “water” character (the second on the left, it looks like a river). I felt curious about the whole meaning of the text. So, I started to find the way how to translate it.
And, to my surprise, there’s a web site 小篆识别器_篆书识别器_篆书部件查字 (guoxuedashi.net) where one can search characters using radicals.
While looking for any info about the old Chinese Characters, I found that this calligraphic style is called small seal script 小篆. This style as standardized was introduced into usage in 220 BC, the year after Qin’s unification of the Chinese states. Before the Qin conquest, local styles of characters had evolved independently for centuries.
There’s a table of the small seal script radicals on the website. One just needs to choose the radicals from the table which are present in a character, the system will show all the characters containing chosen radicals, one needs to find the considered character among the proposed. The web site provides detailed info about the character’s evolution. But, that’s not as easy as it could be, because the style is shown on the photo actually differs from small seal scripts.
Here are the styles of character 文, however, the third one of the left doesn’t seem to look like any of those. The thing worrying me is that there’s no dash on the top of the character on the photo. As you may know, each dash or line, its position and incline very matters, so, there’re some characters which look similar, however, have an absolutely different meaning. Just have a look at two modern characters, 孑 and 子, meaning lonely and son respectively. So what to say about the ancient characters.
I found supposed alanog of the 6 left characters, but the bottom one of the left made me crazy. The only one familiar to me radical was 土 “ground”. The upper part of the character looked like a jumping frog with front legs up and fingers on the back legs. The fingers attached my attention, so I was looking for radicals with “fingers”, red circles on the picture. I was looking over the table, again and again, trying different combinations, and didn’t succeed. Actually, it was there (green circle), but I saw it only after I found resolved the whole sentence.
How did I solve the whole sentence? I just searched the few supposed modern characters, and succeed. Fortunately, it is a well-known sentence. After that, the frog has become a deer.
Here you can see the characters I supposed to be the bottom one, however, none of these was right. In the small seal script the character should look like one of these:
Here are other suggested styles of the character 塵 (traditional) or 尘 (simplified):
Only after I overviewed all calligraphic styles 鹿字书法字典_鹿字书法写法_鹿的书法怎么写_鹿书法作品欣赏 – 国学大师 (sfds.cn) of the character 塵 present on the website, I found the similar one.
This sentence in small seal script should look like this:
There’re some deviations in the style, but the sentence is resolved!
- About origins
When looking to the origins of the character 塵, I can guess why does it mean “dust”. Probably the inventor was thinking about running deers who rise up the dust from the ground. Nevertheless, simplified Chinese character 尘 is not devoid of logic, the top part 小 means “small”, together with 土 “ground” or “soil” makes “small soil” or “small piece of the soil” which is “dust”.
I was curious about there the deer’s legs and horns are 鹿, so looked up for the origin of the character.
There’s a big gap between these symbols and the present appearance of the character 鹿.
The character 秋 have an interesting origin too:
It looks like a bug (supposed to be a dragonfly), and the bug doesn’t seem to feel well, maybe it’s dead or burned on a fire, dried. The modern character 秋 for “autumn” burns (the remains of) the crops after it been matured and harvested.
So, coming back o the sentence, in simplified Chinese, it looks like:
春风大雅能容物 秋水文章不染尘
And traditional Chinese:
春風大雅能容物 秋水文章不染塵
The funny thing about the sentence it was written long after the small seal script stoped to be used. The author of the sentence is Deng Shiru 鄧石如 who lived in 1739/1743–1805, during the Qing Dynasty. He was a Chinese calligrapher who travelled around eastern and southeastern China to study specimens of rock calligraphy and the stele. He made hundreds of copies of Han and Wei dynasty monuments. Based on the achievement of the calligraphers of the Han, Tang dynasties, he developed an organic and individual combination of different ancient variants of handwriting.
What the calligraphic style is used in the photo? I didn’t find the answer to this question. I found a translation of the sentence into English:
“The wind of spring is great to contain all things, the article like water of fall that keep away from dust”
The comments of the sense of the sentence I found on the Chinese Internet usually are very similar. I suppose people use the same source to make own opinion. Here is one of the explanations: “The spring breeze has the inclusive feeling of accepting all things. The words and phrases are like autumn water, and they are not contaminated with the dust of the world”.
I am a little bit disappointed with the meaning of the phrase and I do not really understand it even after thinking about it for some time. But I am very happy with that I found something new. And now I know how to easily write text in old Chinese. Sometimes, when I was historical dramas, I am thinking about to have a folding screen with Chinese characters on it. Moreover, now I can write whatever I want.
梅葉子掉進水里
太陽升起並落山
大漢江水流向海
Chinese here is not correct*
lezhok 