Oh, but bookshelves and desks piled high with pedantic tomes, next to one’s racks of calligraphy brushes and the odd antique scholar’s item, are much more interesting, no? 
Oh, but bookshelves and desks piled high with pedantic tomes, next to one’s racks of calligraphy brushes and the odd antique scholar’s item, are much more interesting, no? :p[/quote]
Well, I do agree, that’s why I bought it. And I still seem to find characters quicker the old-fashined way by looking them up in a book. But on the other hand I just want to have EVERY dictionary. And I won’t carry the HYDZD in my hand luggage around while travelling, it would probably be considered heavy weaponry these days.
Here’s a new archaic Chinese challenge:
隹王廿又三祀 zhui1 wang2 nian4 you4 san1 si4
[quote=“Dragonbones”]Here’s a new archaic Chinese challenge:
隹王廿又三祀 zhui1 wang2 nian4 you4 san1 si4
[/quote]
Doesn’t this simply mean “the king/duke made 23 blessings/sacrifices”? I’m guessing the actual name of this king/duke is noted in previous sentences. Is there a date that follows this line? Like 隹王廿又三祀X日?
[quote=“sjcma”][quote=“Dragonbones”]Here’s a new archaic Chinese challenge:
隹王廿又三祀 zhui1 wang2 nian4 you4 san1 si4
[/quote]
Doesn’t this simply mean “the king/duke made 23 blessings/sacrifices”? I’m guessing the actual name of this king/duke is noted in previous sentences. Is there a date that follows this line? Like 隹王廿又三祀X日?[/quote]
Nope! This IS the date! 
Hint - this is a Shang dynasty bronze inscription.
[quote=“Dragonbones”][quote=“sjcma”][quote=“Dragonbones”]Here’s a new archaic Chinese challenge:
隹王廿又三祀 zhui1 wang2 nian4 you4 san1 si4
[/quote]
Doesn’t this simply mean “the king/duke made 23 blessings/sacrifices”? I’m guessing the actual name of this king/duke is noted in previous sentences. Is there a date that follows this line? Like 隹王廿又三祀X日?[/quote]
Nope! This IS the date!
Hint - this is a Shang dynasty bronze inscription.[/quote]
Ah! 祀 in this case means 年. So it’s the 23rd year of the reign of some duke. But AFAIK, there’s no way to know who the 王 is unless one is to cross reference it to all the Shang dukes and how long they’ve ruled. After that, you can eliminate all those that ruled shorter than 23 years. I guess one would need more info to nail it down to the particular person in question. Or am I totally off base here?
Well, no need to go so far – the point of this phrase was merely that [color=blue]夏曰歲, 商曰祀, 周曰年[/color], as the good 爾雅 quoth. 
As for 王, why don’t you translate that as king? The vessel from which the 23rd year quote was taken was (I discovered just now) the 大盂鼎, which the aforementioned excellent book 商周金文 by 王輝 analyzes on p. 63. (I really think you’ll enjoy this book, since it walks you through the character recognition and analysis in a much easier fashion than what we went through earlier with our quail bucket. Anyway, this 大盂鼎 is quite famous, and the inscription on an accompanying vessel mentions several other kings, from which it is clear that the owner was 周康王, the third W. Zhou king. My error calling it a Shang vessel, btw – I saw the 祀 in an isolated quote and referred to the quoted Erya rule from memory, which implies it was a Shang vessel. The real-life distinction between the three terms is not so clear cut, and you find some use of 祀 for “year” in the early Zhou too. I only looked up the source of the quote just now.
I did write king/duke a couple of posts back but in my last one, I stuck with duke. No particular reason to my choice as I’ve seen translations of 王 as being both duke and king. Since I didn’t really know the context of that short phrase, I just picked duke randomly.
Although you “misled” me with the “Shang” vessel comment, it proved to be very useful in figuring out that 祀=年. So no harm done.
The first one to guess the mystery character on the side of this piece of pottery wins a … uh … gets to have bragging rights! 
hint: think money
It looks like one of those combined characters we discussed in another thread.
黃金萬兩 - ten thousand taels of gold
Does a mod want to combine this with a previous thread on archaic translations?
正確!
Correct!
正確!
Correct![/quote]
Brag brag brag brag brag!!!
Does a mod want to combine this with a previous thread on archaic translations?
[/quote]
It’s not really an archaic translation, but I guess those combined characters were buried somewhere in that thread (a spin-off from 合文), so here goes. Done.
Could someone with decent classical Chinese please give their translation of the following Shuowen definition of 
can2 (the top of can1 餐)?
[color=red]“殘穿也 cán chuān ye3”[/color].
I can’t find this defined in my dictionaries, but I’m thinking it means ‘to make a hole or pierce with an auger or chisel’. I often misread classical period definitions (like from Shuowen), so I’m wondering whether any of you who are stronger in classical can confirm or rebut my reading.
It’s critical to my analysis of 歹, 歺 and . Thanks in advance!
in the HYDZD there is a comment from 段玉裁 (whoever that is), saying: 殘穿之, 去其穗襍
I am not going to start guessing now, but if you need to see the whole entry I can send it to you, if you pm me your email address.
Oh, thanks, but I have the HYDZD; yeah, it says
殘穿之, 去其[color=blue]穢[/color]襍, 故从又,歺, 會意. (穢 hui4, not 穗 sui4)
The problem is that I often find the comments by
許慎
Xŭ Shèn (the Han Dyn. author of
說文解字
Shuōwén Jiézì) and
段育裁
Duàn Yùcái (one of the most famous Qing Dyn. commentators of Shuowen) extremely difficult to read. I didn’t major in Chinese, and haven’t studied classical Chinese, so I’m playing catch up in these areas.
Some of our fellow posters are honestly much, much stronger in classical Chinese, so I’m hoping for intelligent input from them.
去其穢襍
qu4 (get rid of) qi2 (its) hui4 (weeds; dirty, foul, detestable) za2 (same as 雜) seems like ‘get rid of the undesirable miscellany’, but in relation to
殘穿之
, frankly I don’t find this comment enlightening.
殘穿? That wouldn’t be 反切 pronunciation notation, would it?
A quick google search turned up this sentence: 《段注》：殘穿者，殘賊而穿之也。
殘賊 can2ze2 – both characters mean to destroy and together, can mean torture.
So I’m guessing 殘穿 means to “pierce while destroying”.
Is that why 餐 means meal? First you pierce and destroy the prey, then you eat it.
No, that’s the main Shuowen definition. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between Shuowen def’s (character, definition ye3) and a 反切 (昨干切).
AFAIK Shuowen says 讀若 or just lists a phonetic component, instead of providing 反切; here it says 讀若殘. The 廣韻 Guangyun gives 反切 of 昨干切平寒從. 元部.
[quote=“sjcma”]A quick google search turned up this sentence: 《段注》：殘穿者，殘賊而穿之也。
殘賊 can2ze2 – both characters mean to destroy and together, can mean torture.
So I’m guessing 殘穿 means to “pierce while destroying”.[/quote]
Well, Shuowen’s def. of 殘 is 賊也, and Xu Shen defines 賊 as 敗也. Based on this, HYDZD’s first def. of 賊 is 破壞. So on the surface this looks like “pierce while destroying”, yes. But ‘pierce while destroying’ isn’t a very natural concept, is it? That seems forced to me. Compound definitions are generally resorted to only when it is necessary to clarify which of several meanings is intended, so I am leaning toward interpreting this as the intersection of the meanings of 殘穿 rather than the combination of their meanings. I.e., one of the meanings of 殘 which overlaps with the meaning of 穿 ‘pierce’. (“殘賊 can2ze2 – both characters mean to destroy” is a perfect example of this compounding; here, can2 is complemented by zei2 to mean the ‘destroy’ reading of can2, rather than another meaning; so complementing can2 with chuan1 should mean the ‘pierce’ reading of can2, no? )
Now, the secondary definition of can2 as
穿[color=red]鑿[/color]
in 漢語大字典 Hànyu3 Dàzìdian3 would be such an intersecting meaning, which is what has me leaning toward the ‘to auger or chisel a hole’ reading. I don’t know whether this is convincing or not.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Look at the structure of can2, which is a hand plus 歹 aka 歺 (dai3). The structure is essentially unchanged from the oracle bones 
to the small seal. 歺 is often interpreted as depicting a broken, decayed or otherwise ruined bone (a partial scapula); compare to 冎 (the etymon of 剮 and 骨?), which is thought to depict a scapula. The oracle bones were plastrons or scapulae, with hollow pits bored and/or chiseled into the back to facilitate crack-making for augury. The Shang probably had a word for this. How would you represent chiseling the pits? With a hand, a chisel or auger, and a plastron. Tadaaaa.
So – I’m thinking that this graph, now , originally meant to drill or chisel pits in a plastron or scapula. Now, I realize some will claim the line atop the form is 卜, but this doesn’t make sense for several reasons. First, if it’s a bu/pu3 crack, it should appear in the center of the scapula, and in fact there is such a separate character, which is used differently. Second, the line atop sometimes occurs with no side stroke, which is not the case with the versions with the bu3 crack in the center. Others (most) generally consider 歺 to be a partial scapula, but this has always seemed like an unsupported assumption to me. On the other hand, the side stroke in two of the forms here doesn’t really match a ‘chisel’, which would presumably be a straight line or a 辛 or 刀 element.
Further supporting evidence is phonetic. if can2 did originally mean ‘drill; chisel’, this is consistent with it being an oral cognate of 鑽 zuān, zuàn (n./v.) as well as of 穿 chuān, and I’m guessing that fell into disuse as these synonyms predominated.
If I’m right, and I realize I’m out on a limb, then 歺 / 歹 was probably polyphonic in the Shang period (I’m guessing) because
- It’s read dai3 ‘evil’ now
- It’s pretty clearly the etymon of 列 + 烈 so it must also have a reading of lie4.
- If is read can2 and so is 殘, then 歹 is likely also read can2. And if 歹 and 殘 both mean 鑿穿 then 歹 is probably the etymon of 殘. 戔 would then be considered a redundant phonetic. 戔 in the OB btw was used as a person’s name (by loan) and as ‘to attack’, which is probably its original meaning, given that it comprises two 戈 ge1 weapons.
What do you think? Am I off base? 
Er, no, I don’t think so. Most characters are phonetic-semantic compounds, so we should always first look to see if either element appears to be a phonetic. is clearly phonetic and there’s no obvious connection to eating, while 食 shi2 is clearly semantic, with no obvious phonetic relation, so case closed.
[quote=“Dragonbones”][quote=“sjcma”]A quick google search turned up this sentence: 《段注》：殘穿者，殘賊而穿之也。
殘賊 can2ze2 – both characters mean to destroy and together, can mean torture.
So I’m guessing 殘穿 means to “pierce while destroying”.[/quote]
Well, Shuowen’s def. of 殘 is 賊也, and Xu Shen defines 賊 as 敗也. Based on this, HYDZD’s first def. of 賊 is 破壞. So on the surface this looks like “pierce while destroying”, yes. But ‘pierce while destroying’ isn’t a very natural concept, is it? That seems forced to me.[/quote]
Why do you think it’s unnatural? A cat scratching its claws at a shirt will naturally rip it to shreds – it has destroyed the shirt and has pierced through the shirt in doing so. “Piercing” in this case need not equate stabbing through. Else, it could be an angry dude repeatedly stabbing his wedding album with a steak knife after a divorce. Or, as you suggest, it could be a chisel pounding repeatedly into a scapula. All seem to fit the “destroy + pierce” combo, doesn’t it?
While the original meaning may very well be “to drill or chisel pits in a plastron or scapula” as you’ve suggested, another alternative could be that the act of drilling/chiselling a scapula was simply one example of “destroy+pierce” which was then used to represent all “destroy+pierce” actions.
EDIT: DB, after re-reading your post more carefully, I think I agree with you that the general meaning of can2 is probably, quite simply, “make a hole” (殘穿 = 穿鑿).