Pictograms, ideologies, signifiers, and shapes and sounds are the four methods of character making that we are familiar with, among which pictograms should be the oldest, and it is a type of Chinese character that the ancients were inspired to create in the process of observing nature. In the distant ancient period, the sun, moon, mountains, stones, birds, beasts, insects, fish and other natural things were presented in front of people in different forms, which provided rich materials for the shape of Chinese characters. We can also say that pictographs are stick figures drawn by the ancients who observed all things in nature.
Hieroglyphs are generally relatively easy to read, and even people who have not learned Chinese characters can guess the meaning of the characters when they see them. The picture below shows the evolution of the word "rain", and we can guess the meaning of this word from its oracle bone inscription, with a horizontal line above it representing the sky, and then a continuous three-line dot painting to represent the raindrops falling from the sky. Later, Jin Wen and Xiao Seal reduced the number of rain drops to four, and added a box to represent the house outside the four points, so that the meaning of the word "rain" was richer. Seeing the word "rain" in Xiao Seal, we seem to see the scene of raindrops falling from the sky falling on the roof and then sliding down from the eaves.
The raindrops converged into a surging river, which provided inspiration for the ancients to coined the word "water". The following picture is the evolution of the word "water", from the oracle bone inscription to the small seal, there is a long wavy curved pen in the middle of the word "water", the ancients used this curved stroke to represent the characteristics of the water flow, and then used four strokes to indicate that the water flow is also formed by the convergence of water droplets. Because the oracle bone inscription is a carved text, its lines are more stiff, and the small seal is written with a brush, so it can better reflect the soft appearance of the water. In regular script, the curved pen in the middle is turned into a straight pen, and the dots around it become an apostrophe, and the appearance of the word "water" is finally frozen, but the soft characteristics of the water flow are not visible at all.
The ancients originally called the river "Chuan", and the evolution of the word "Chuan" is shown in the figure below, which can be seen from the oracle bone inscription that the middle is the word "water", and there are two curved lines outside, which represent the river bank. Then the meaning of the word "chuan" is very clear, and if you limit water to a range, isn't it a river (river)?The ability of the ancients to define these natural scenes with such simple strokes is absolutely impressive.
Some pictographs are difficult to guess, but if you compare them with other Chinese characters, you can understand the meaning of these words. "Chuan" and "Zhou" are a pair of similar words, the evolution of the word "Zhou" is shown in the figure below, the writing of the oracle bone inscription is very close to "water" and "Chuan", but there is a small circle in the middle, if we know the word "water" and the word "Chuan" in the oracle bone inscription, it is not difficult to guess that the small circle in the middle of the word "state" actually represents the island in the water, so the original meaning of the word "state" refers to the land in the water. The middle of the small seal writing became three small circles, and the official script and regular script turned these difficult circles into three "points", so the word "state" became what it is now.
Among the hieroglyphs of the oracle bone inscriptions, the more difficult to recognize is the word "ice". The diagram below shows the evolution of the word "ice", which is two upwardly raised curves created by the shape of the ice when the water freezes. Because the word "ice" in the oracle bone inscription is not easy to recognize, the word "ice" in the small seal adds water to the right of the two points of water to explain that ice is formed by changing from water.
Both the character for "water" and the character for "ice" later became important Chinese characters, one being "氵", known as "Sandian Shui";One is "冫", which is called "two points of water". Because "氵" is simplified from the word "water", the characters with "氵" are related to water, such as "river, river, lake, sea" and so on. The word "冫" is based on the oracle bone script of the character "ice", so almost all the characters with "冫" are related to cold weather. Such as "cool, cold, cold, cold" and so on. If we come across the words "three-point water" or "two-point water" and can't tell which side to use, we can guess based on the meaning of the word.
In Chinese characters, there is also a kind of side that is composed entirely of "dot" paintings, "灬", which is called "four-point bottom". Its creation has nothing to do with "water", but with its "sworn enemy" - fire. The picture below shows the evolution of the character "fire", the oracle bone inscription of the word "fire" was created by the ancients based on the shape of the flame.
The writing of the small seal has changed greatly, and the strokes have been reduced to four. The "灬" used now is created by flattening the word "fire" and placing it under the word (as shown below), so the words with a four-point bottom are all related to "fire", such as "hot, boiled, illuminated, cooked" and so on.
The characters with "冫", "氵" and "灬" can actually be distinguished according to the temperature level. The lowest temperature is the word next to "two points of water", which are almost all below freezing;Lukewarm is the word next to "three points of water";The words "four o'clock bottom" are as hot as fire.
There is a pictograph, its oracle bone writing is similar to the word "fire", this word is the word "mountain", the evolution process is shown in the figure below, its oracle bone writing is like three mountain peaks of the same height standing side by side, the straight horizontal painting below represents the earth, which is the biggest difference between the word "mountain" and the word "fire" in the oracle bone inscription (the lower part of the oracle bone writing of the word "fire" is rounded).
The evolution of most pictographs is the same as "water" and "fire", and the early fonts (oracle bone inscriptions, golden inscriptions, small seals, etc.) still retain pictorial characteristics, and later because of the needs of writing, they no longer pay attention to the pictorial characteristics of the characters, but use the changes of lines to highlight the symbolic characteristics of the characters. So now it's hard to see that some characters are also pictographs, and if you want to understand their "past and present lives", you should learn how to write these characters in the first place.