Chinese and Sumerian

AND THE SUMERIAN PARALLELS , 23

or ‘Radical’ (R. 86). Thus we have JH pét, pi (K. pil), A. tét, fiery; blazing, G. 8999, written five + finzsh (P. 791 pit, pil), in which we hear an echo of the Sumerian sounds BIL, PIL, BI, PI, and DE. GUZ, GIZ, GISH, IZ, IZI, USSI, again, are evidently represented by yt, ngiet, Zo, zih, ngih, yeh, K. yol, J. net, A. flyiet (¢/ Sumerian NE = NGE, NJ), hot, to heat, G. 5649, and its homophone yt, ngiet, Ziet, nih, &c., to burn, set fire to, G. 5594. Here the fire-symbol as Radical is combined with P. 744 (ngit, nit, sit), with the addition of the grass-character in the latter instance. The sound LAM has been treated quite similarly in the Chinese script (see Lex. s.v. LAM zz ME-LAM). The same may be said of ZAG, the sound of which is heard in tsau, J.sd, furnace, fireplace, G. 11625; in tsdk, chiok, ziék, chio, a torch, to kindle, G. 2221, P. 1019 tsak; in tsiu, tsiau, scorched, burnt, G. 1317, P. 850; and in other words. All this is easily intelligible; and it is needless to multiply examples of the mode in which originally polyphonic symbols have been relieved of a great part of their burden of different sounds. But, it may very naturally be asked, how did it ever happen that so many dissimilar sounds came to be associated with a single primitive symbol like the Sumerian character for ‘fire’; in other words, how did the original characters of Sumerian or Chinese writing become polyphonic? Leaving out of consideration merely dialectical changes of sound, we may reply that a written symbol begins to become polyphonic, when it is used for some word of different sound but of similar meaning to that which it was invented to suggest. Thus the use of the characters which originally denoted the sun and fire was naturally extended to comprehend numerous other words expressing the ideas of brightness and purity and the modes of their manifestation or production. (vi) A7a-tszé, ‘borrowed characters’; as when 4, the character for nti, ‘woman’, is written for th jw (zu), ‘thou’, as it often is in the S%z. Giles calls this class of characters ‘ Adoptive’, giving the example just cited. Douglas adduces the instance of 4= shz, ‘an arrow’, used in the sense of ‘direct’, ‘right’, because of the straight course of an arrow. Such a use would be ‘metaphorical’, in the ordinary sense of the word. But Edkins distinguishes this class from (iv) Héai-shing as ‘ borrowing without any additional mark’, z.¢, without appended Radicals. Confucius, for instance, uses #% sun (‘grandson’), without any addition for 4A siin, sitin, ‘compliant’; and pe shi (‘time’) is used without alteration for ## shi, ‘this’, in the older classics. Quite similarly, the Sumerian <]~, the eye-symbol, is used for SHI, ‘land’, ‘earth’, (= KI; Br. 9275), and for SHI, ‘ear’, and for SHI, ‘life’, and for SHI, ‘this’, ‘that’: simply because one of its sounds was SHI (probably meaning ‘to see’). Another Sumerian example is JJ SIG, SI, ‘horn’, used for II SIG, ‘weak’, ‘ill’, Such cases are numerous both in Sumerian (2d. exx. in Lex.) and in Chinese. In the latter, as Edkins observes, ‘very many abstract terms, verbs, adjectives, and particles, were supplied on this principle with the required written signs’. It is one of the most natural, obvious, and probably oldest, devices for the enlargement of the scribe’s resources.