Page:Elementary Chinese - San Tzu Ching (1900).djvu/60

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Nai see.

Pa is explained as to separate, to divide, being a picture of two persons separating, turned back to back. It may well have been adopted as the symbol for 8 in reference to the obvious and easy divisibility of that unit; the Chinese however occupy themselves less with its origin as a numeral than with its fanciful position, a climacteric of the female numbers.

Yin is a corruption of 言 yen words with a stroke inserted, and means regulated noise, i.e. musical sounds. These are arranged under eight heads. The gourd furnishes such instruments as the mouth-organ, earth the ocarina, skin the drum, wood the castanet, stone the hanging musical-stone, metal the gong, silk the guitar, and bamboo the flute. [Eitel wrongly renders this line "By these then we produce the eight tones of the scala."]

Kao is used of height in both material and immaterial senses. It is supposed to present to the eye the semblance of looking up from a terrace or belvidere, and is here an adjective qualifying tsu ancestor understood. See.

Tsêng is composed of 八 pa to divide above, and 曰 yüeh to speak  below, a middle portion which is said to be the phonetic. It is defined as a stretcher-out of language, from which we can understand its sense of past, finished, especially as applied to time, thus imparting a tense-value to