Chinese and Sumerian

28 PROGRESSIVE TRANSFORMATION OF CHARACTERS

on the real relations of words, which lay quite beyond the ken of Wang-ch'ung, as of all the old Chinese philologists. In short, A 2we7, ‘ghost’, the old sound of which was gu-t (R. 194; P. 684), and its labialized cognates FY mez, mi (from mi-t), ‘ghost’ (G. 7748), His vue, mec, mz, ‘demon’ (G. 7738), find their prototypes in the Sumerian and Accadian GA-L, MU-L, ‘ghost’, ‘demon’; while fi £wez, ‘to return’, which also was anciently gu-t (P. 1020), answers to the Sumerian GUR, GI, ‘to return’.

The cuneiform ideogram which is read GAL and MUL in the sense of ‘ ghost’ or ‘demon’ is ] 7"; a compound, apparently, of *] awe or dread and Y” full, and so a very good instance of a ‘Suggestive Compound’ (Class iii), The linear character, however, being still unknown, we cannot be sure that it was not ‘a picture of the fancied shape of a demon’, as the Chinese J has been supposed to have been originally. (Cf the similar case, p. 26f.) Still, if we write <4] Y in linear style, it will be s (cf. D. 217, 440; 218); and some may be inclined to recognize in this ideogram the possible original of the £u wéu figures g and fe It should be noted that the value GAL of the group 2] "is inferred from gad/#, an obvious loan-word, by which the ideogram is always rendered in Assyrian versions of Sumerian texts; and (2) from MUL, the known £me-sa/ value, which implies a Sumerian equivalent GAL (GUL). The old Chinese sounds gut, mit, clearly corroborate this inference of Sumerian scholars.

The pictorial import of the Sumerian an ‘dark’, ‘black’, ‘night’, may be shadows descending from the hollow firmament of heaven; as though darkness were something positive which, like rain, falls from the sky ({ our own expression ‘nightfall’). It was read GIG, GE, and MI, as well as GA (cf the sign-name GA-GIG). Doubled, it is G= {= KUK-KU (from GUG-GUG?), ‘darkness’ (see C. T. xi. 36). It is evident that GIG (GUG; GA-G), ‘black’, ‘dark’, is the Chinese A kek (P. 862; R. 203), ‘black’, ‘dark’, now variously read her, hak, het, haik, hék, he, hé, K. hik, J. koku, A. hadk; see G, 3899. It is true that the oldest known form of the Chinese character already shows traces of the artificial attempts at explanation which native scholars are fain to substitute for lost knowledge. The £u-wéx figure az doubtless owes its shaping to the idea that the character was originally a

compound of signs for window and flame, because fire and smoke blacken openings. But although this false analysis has modified the symbol materially, it has not wiped out all resemblance to the Sumerian original. The four lines on four survive, though they are no longer vertical. The Sumerian symbol mn read GIG and GE, also meant ‘sunset’, ‘night’; and §% is used of ‘the dark’ or dusk of evening and morning. But 7¥ ye, ‘night’, is another offshoot of the same Sumerian original ; although the old forms have undergone various alterations in the effort to restore significance to a symbol which had become unintelligible, or to distinguish the different applications of the primitive character by modifying its form. In the light afforded by the