The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context: A Textual Ar ...

Dui characteristics needs several explanatory steps. The association with sacred speech is not hard to understand, having just encountered the idea of invocator (prayerfully conducting ceremonies) or shaman. The common Mandarin Chinese word meaning “talk” is shuo , using the dui element; this word itself can also be used to mean “pleasure,” as was just seen.

The original pronunciation of words in this complex combined initial /g-/ (Middle Chinese, *gwat > Mandarin, yue) and initial /l-/ of various set members in a reconstructed /*gl-/ initial. In fact, it was suggested (Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu, 56–59) this sound family’s members are strictly comparable to the Indo-European initial /*gl-/ family, with important words: “glitter,” “glisten,” “gold,” “glimmer,” “glamour,” “glossy,” and “glee.” The Chinese counterpart words are very similar in symbolic content, closely connected with mirth, music, laughter, light, metallurgy, and ritual comportment, particularly speech.

Smiling—I digress one step further. A word very commonly encountered in the oracle bones is ruo (“seem, be pleased”), often asked in reference to ancestors: “If we do X, will Y approve?” This glyph, a kneeling man with outstretched arms and hair disturbed as if rising upward, shows some kind of ecstatic communication with another world. Perhaps “pleased” is too weak a translation; more literally would be, “Will Y grant ecstasy?” (communication, access, pleasure). This character appeared with a “grass” radical when glyphs were standardized. According to Shirakawa (SS, 5A:917), another line of development saw the “bamboo” radical written over a person with head aslant, dancing ecstatically, producing the character now used for “laugh” or “smile” (). The words ruo and yue (“speak”) appear extremely frequently in oracle bone inscription lexicon, related, directly or indirectly, to our attempt to sketch our sense of their humor. Depicting kings’ speech acts was the ultimate objective of oracle bone archives (Field, “Who Told the Fortunes?”). For this reason, inscriptions commonly conjoined the two words: (“The king approvingly said . . .. . .”).