Chinese and Sumerian

AND THE SUMERIAN PARALLELS 19

and ¥_ are both foot-symbols originally ; a statement which is also true of the other Radicals which have to do with walking, going, standing or stopping. Such are 77 hing, kiang, OS. ging, 7o wa/ (R. 144), which is very common in the Sz in the sense of going and marching; 4% chi, J.seki, shaku, A. hsik, from t'i-k, ‘to walk’ (R. 60), ‘step with left foot’, and >= ch‘uh, ch'uk, from t'u-k, ‘step with the right foot’; TE chi, from ti-k, ‘to stop’ (a picture of the foot resting on the ground: R. 77; Chalmers, 94), so used in the Siz; 3 tsou, K.chu, A. téu, from to-k, ‘to walk, go, depart’ (R. 156); Ga ch’o, J. chaku, A. hsok, from t‘ok or t'ak, ‘going on and stopping’ or ‘walking’ (R. 162). The Shwoh-wén explains }f (tsuk, tsu, chotik, J. soku, A. tuk), the character for ‘the leg’, ‘foot’, as derived from [J k‘ou, ‘mouth’ [cé Sumerian KA, ‘mouth’], and [f chi, ‘to stop’, which the character certainly resembles. A commentator, feeling the difficulty of ‘mouth’ in this connexion, says that 1 here is a picture of the thighbones! Tai-tung comes nearer to the truth in stating that Fl is a picture of the £uee, leg, ankle, and foot: cf [J with the Sumerian © (modern &) DUG, ‘knee’, for which we find SIB and ZAG dialectically (Br. 4210, 6470). Asa philological fact it is not very remarkable that the sounds DUG, ZAG (= tsuk, tuk) should mean ‘knee’ in Sumerian and ‘leg’ or ‘foot’ in Chinese. (Indeed, DUG seems to be used for the whole leg in phrases like DUG-MU AN-TA-TUM-TUMU, ‘my knees are moving on’.) What is remarkable is the close correspondence of dialectical change which they exemplify, supposing that the two languages are not closely akin to each other. We may here add one other character as in all probability formed, like those specified above, from the original pictogram for the foot, viz. se ki, from k‘u-p (P. 143), ‘to go away’, although it has come to look like a combination of R. 28 and R. 32. It is the Sumerian GUB, ‘to take one’s stand’, ‘step’, ‘walk’. Further, the character 4_, yin, ying, J. in, A. jén, ‘to move on’ (R. 54; G. 13285), which as mentioned above, and as the old writing shows, is also a foot: character (see Lzs¢, No. 79, and cf. Morrison, s. z. f@t kéen), appears to be phonetic in 3 kien, kin, ‘to establish’, and therefore probably represents an original sound gin as well as din (Edkins: R. 54). In Sumerian DIN is a dialectic form of GIN (see p. 12); and the same interchange of initials is observable in the Chinese ZiE ching, chin, from tim (P. 142), ‘to go’ = Sumerian DIM (C&]]: also GIM), ‘to go’= TUM (from DUM), ‘to go’, which is another value of ><Y, the foot-character. With S. TUM, ‘to go’, of Ch. #~ tsung, dzung, chung, A. tung or tung, ‘to follow’ (G. 12028). We have also in the Sz #E tu, du, ‘to go afoot’ (= S. &<7 DU, ‘to walk’), with 3% Phonetic (tu-k); and 3f£ tsin, tsun, chin, ching, J.shin, A. tén, ‘to advance’, ‘go to’, ‘enter’, where the bird-character 4 is Phonetic, with the value tun or tin (P. 472; of. the Sumerian compounds MU-TIN, MU-SHEN, ‘bird ,

This brief review has shown us that the sounds associated with the foot-symbol and its modifications in Chinese are mainly kin, ti-k (Japanese shaku), tu-k or tok (A. hsok ; nearly = shok), t‘u, du, k‘u-p, tin, tim, tum; a series which will at once