There is first the phonetic base, itself a character originally intended to represent some thing or idea, and then borrowed to represent other things and ideas similarly pronounced; and secondly, the indicator, another character added to the phonetic base in order to distinguish between the various things and ideas for which the same phonetic base was used.

All characters, however, do not yield at once to the application of our rule. [yao] yao “to will, to want,” is composed of [xi] “west” and [nue] “woman.”  What has western woman to do with the sign of the future?  In the days before writing, the Chinese called the waist of the body yao.  By and by they wrote [yao], a rude picture of man with his arms akimbo and his legs crossed, thus accentuating the narrower portion, the waist.  Then, when it was necessary to write down yao, “to will,” they simply borrowed the already existing word for “waist.”  In later times, when writing became more exact, they took the indicator [yue] “flesh,” and added it wherever the idea of waist had to be conveyed.  And thus [yao] it is still written, while yao, “to will, to want,” has usurped the character originally invented for “waist.”

In some of their own identifications native Chinese scholars have often shown themselves hopelessly at sea.  For instance, [tian] “the sky,” figuratively God, was explained by the first Chinese lexicographer, whose work has come down to us from about one hundred years after the Christian era, as composed of [yi] “one” and [da] “great,” the “one great” thing; whereas it was simply, under its oldest form, [Illustration], a rude anthropomorphic picture of the Deity.

Even the early Jesuit Fathers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to whom we owe so much for pioneer work in the domain of Sinology, were not without occasional lapses of the kind, due no doubt to a laudable if excessive zeal.  Finding the character [chuan], which is the common word for “a ship,” as indicated by [zhou], the earlier picture-character for “boat” seen on the left-hand side, one ingenious Father proceeded to analyse it as follows:—­

    [zhou] “ship,” [ba] “eight,” [kou] “mouth” = eight mouths on a
    ship—­“the Ark.”

But the right-hand portion is merely the phonetic of the character; it was originally [qian] “lead,” which gave the sound required; then the indicator “boat” was substituted for “metal.”

So with the word [jin] “to prohibit.”  Because it could be analysed into two [mu][mu] “trees” and [qi] “a divine proclamation,” an allusion was discovered therein to the two trees and the proclamation of the Garden of Eden; whereas again the proper analysis is into indicator and phonetic.

Nor is such misplaced ingenuity confined to the Roman Catholic Church.  In 1892 a Protestant missionary published and circulated broadcast what he said was “evidence in favour of the Gospels,” being nothing less than a prophecy of Christ’s coming hidden in the Chinese character [lai] “to come.”  He pointed out that this was composed of [Illustration] “a cross,” with two [ren][ren] “men,” one on each side, and a “greater man” [ren] in the middle.