Bound Bamboo Books
April 30th 2008 06:21
Bound Bamboo Books
There was a time in China when Books were not scrolls of paper or silk or bound by stitches down one side but Strips and Slices of Slender Wood or Bamboo.
Nowadays the most common wor dfor book in Chinese is SHU 3 and scrolls are JUAN but bamboo books were called chai or t'se which is ce 2 in putonghua / pin yin. The Unihan code is 518c and 518a. This ideograph has two variant forms.
The Japanese changed this to SATSU SAKU, Viet sach, Sino Korean chayk and the Cantonese is caak3 so the original word was probably tsek or chaik ?
These strip books like dsomething like bamboo tabel mats or brush wrappers but with wider strips and lately there's been several major arachaeologicla finds of them in tombs.
Poor little CE doesnt appear by itself as word expect in specialist literature but it lives on in very useful compound. As DIAN (unihand code 5178) it means a book that is a set of volumes a reference work a classic or dictionary! In Japanese this is Ten.
Rather delightfully the ideograph in its seal script form shows a tied roll of strips standing ona small tabel or altar. These are revered books!
And so such a useful thing as a dictionary should be too!
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