Chapter 31 Section 7: The Charade of the Character "He"

There is a well-known ancient book in our country called "The Book of Songs", which records the words and deeds of celebrities and scholars in the Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties.There is a story in it that Cao Cao, Emperor Wu of the Wei Dynasty, once received a large cup of cheese as a gift from others. After taking a sip, he wrote the word "he" on the lid of the cup to test his wisdom for his officials.Everyone didn't know what it meant, but Yang Xiu, an extremely intelligent counselor, took a sip from his cup and said, "The word 'he' written by the Lord is telling us to 'one mouthful for each'!" Xiu solved the riddle of the character "He" based on the shape of the regular script after the official transformation.In the earliest Chinese dictionary "Shuowen Jiezi", "He" is interpreted as a combined knowing character, which is composed of "

The word "合" is added with the word "人" to form "佮 [gege]", which is the harmony of people, referring to the spouse; the word "door" is added to form "He", which means the combination of two doors, and the whole family lives inside the door. People, so there is the saying of "hejia", which refers to "the whole family"; adding the word "shui" means "qia", which means the combination and gathering of water flows; Congruence means "harmony"; adding the word "羽" means "口〔xi希〕", which is an action of folding the wings of a bird when it is about to take off; adding the word "dish" means "box", which is a kind of , A vessel that fits up and down.

At the end of this group of characters is the character "颷" [xia box] with the addition of "礻". "礻" is the word "show", written in ancient characters