Chinese and Sumerian

26 PROGRESSIVE TRANSFORMATION OF CHARACTERS

Sumerian symbol. These imply a dialectic NAN, SIN; cf the derived Assyrian sin-tintu, Syriac sent-nitha, ‘swallow’. Take, again, the Sumerian STN, ‘she-goat’. This now consists of =JTY, ‘ship’, and ne ‘road’; as if to identify the goat with the sea (the road of ships), because the sea was mythically a goat (¢f j#; and see PSBA., Feb. 1909). But this curious cuneiform character is not original. It was

only arrived at by successive transformations of the primitive figure (D. 51), which

appears to represent the animal's udder. Thus the original linear fig. for an udder, which suggested the animal to the inventors of the script as naturally as a lifted forepaw suggested the dog, has become in the cuneiform writing something altogether different. It shows what changes primitive hieroglyphs or pictograms are liable to undergo in the course of ages. We are not therefore surprised at meeting with similar transformations in the history of Chinese writing. The character FQ fzex, ‘heaven’, for instance, is explained by the old Dictionary Shwoh-wén (a.D. 200) as composed of — ‘one’ and Fe ‘great’; which is certainly what the symbol looks like in its modern shape. But neither this, nor any of the other Chinese explanations, is correct. When we look at old forms of the character, such as DP Mm aN ®, we surely recognize a likeness to the Sumerian “NX E-DIM (=E-DIN), ‘heaven’; which seems to figure the arch of the firmament, upheld by a central pillar. (See D. 278; also D. 11 A; a sign with which the former was early confounded.)

To take another instance, the Chinese analysis of tp 7%, K.che, A. de, ‘god’, “emperor ’, makes the character a compound of —- shang, ‘above’, and Jf 722, ¢s‘ck, A. fvk, ‘prickle’, ‘thorn’, ‘to prick’, ‘stab’ (G. 12410). The latter is then Phonetic (Chalmers: ‘a phonetic in disguise’), indicating that the old sound of the word was tik. ‘The ancient form of ip has: doubtless been modified in this direction; but, as Chalmers points out, the assimilation is not complete (Ch. 189), and Wells Williams remarks that the composition of the character is obscure. One of the old forms, however, is dR. which at once suggests comparison with the Sumerian aS DIGIR, DINGIR, DIMER, ‘god’, ‘king’. The Sumerian symbol (an eight-rayed star) was also read AN, in the sense of ‘Heaven’; and there seems to be a relation between some of the old forms of JE “ez, ‘heaven’, which we gave above, and such forms of ifr 7, ‘god’, as cK, fin and ff). In any case, it appears probable that the resolution of # into a Radical element and a Phonetic was an afterthought. Our derivation of the Chinese # from the Sumerian star-symbol which denotes ‘god’, ‘king’, ‘heaven’, may perhaps be confirmed by comparison of ¥f] ch’in, tsén, A. t‘én, ‘kindred a

‘parents’, G. 2081, for which an old form (¥) is given, with the Sumerian group pee, MEY AGA-RIN, dialectically AMA-TUN, which is explained both ‘father’ and

‘mother’, and may therefore be taken to mean ‘parents’ or nearest kin, like the Chinese term (OS. #z=tiin). The oldest forms of the two characters which