Category: #1

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#1 Ér Dào Fēi 非 Jiâo Míng Miào Tiān Wú 無 Yôu

By way of introduction… Chapter 1 summary

Here’s how I see it. Please consider it a light fanciful daydream if it offends your sense of the Dào Dé Jīng!

Setting the stage: conflict!

Yinxi the border guard recognizes Lâozî as he’s departing the country, allegedly fed up with politics in Zhou. He asks the renowned wiseman to leave behind some helpful words, presumably about his philosophy and the way to go about things. Lâozî says… well you might want to click here to read Chapter 1 and then pop right back. But basically Lâozî says…

The Way that I can describe to you as definitively The Way breaks the little wings off our traditional version of The Way.

Wow. What a great first sentence. It’s very overt and rather patronizingly graphic in setting up all sorts of conflict and questions… especially with those actual Western Zhou Bronze Inscription characters that Lâozî used! (Yes, I’m making lots of assumptions here, as do all translators. Mine are described here.)

What follows sets up some idiosyncratic themes for the whole book.

Hair

Somehow hairstyle figures prominently in this first sentence and the entire text! Here’s my full version of the first sentence:

The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all—about which you can purse your lips like a piece of cane and puff: “Yup, that’s it, definitely The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all—” is breaking the little wings off the ever-present square fabric which our grown men wrap around the ‘little bird’ top knots on their heads after receiving their public courtesy-names—or what we know as the timeless, whole-cloth ‘jin’ version of The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all.

So we have a roaming prophet-like chieftain with loose hair. And then we have a sort of opposite: the current tradition in which men wrap their hair in a top knot on their head and cover it with a cloth as part of their puberty ritual. We’ll encounter some other hair and headdress images later in the book, but that theme’s established right here in the initial line.

What’s in a name

Different types of names also figure prominently throughout this whole first chapter. I count four different namings.

1.Above we learned about how when boys turned to men in ancient China, they received a new formal name.

2. The next sentence talks about the childhood name the boys gave up, a name you can still use with intimates after you’re a grownup:

Its personal, childhood name—what it says to identify itself urself by moonlight—about which you can purse your lips like a piece of cane and puff: “Yup, that’s it, definitely personal, childhood naming—what you say to identify yourself by moonlight” is breaking the little wings off our traditional its personal, childhood name—what it says to identify itself urself by moonlight.

[Yes, I shortened the ever-present square fabric which our grown men wrap around the ‘little bird’ top knots on their heads after receiving their public courtesy-names—or what we know as the timeless, whole-cloth ‘jin’ version of (chàng) into “our traditional.” Yes, it’s both a big assumption on my part AND a useful space saver! That character’s described in detail here.]

So here’s yet another harsh difference between tradition and what Lâozi could say. This time it’s over personal naming in particular. Now we feel like names might be key in the conflict that’s been staged for us.

Lâozi goes on to differentiate two kinds of personal names: Being, its personal name, and Not-Being, its personal name. In this simple step, Lâozi introduces two of our most central and most baffling characters and puts them squarely into this naming conflict… but more on them later. Let’s see what other kinds of naming are discussed in the first chapter.

3. There’s also how things are spoken of altogether with one another—like all earthly, mortal, commonplace plates. Lâozi uses THAT title when talking about Being and Not-Being when they’re a yoked pair, just before they’re stepping out “of a cave” and into their two different, masked personal namings.

4. To really describe them altogether like that, Lâozi adds in yet another kind of naming: what it’s called when speaking from the gut—words, like slaves or criminals branded by a chisel emerging from a mouth.

Later in the book, we’ll see some significant permutations of these naming types, and we’ll really notice them too, since the basics are pointedly noted in the first chapter.

Being, Not-Being, their altogetherness, their differently masked names once they step out of the cave and get bearded, plus the crux of the mystery:

Most importantly, in this introductory chapter we meet and learn a little something about two of the book’s fundamental characters. The facts we get, in order of appearance:

  • Not-Being is shown by a pictogram of a mysterious, shaman-like dancer and is often taken to mean “null” or “nothingness.” Lâozi tell us its personal naming is the conception of Heaven-Earth (merged to be something like… the whole universe or “heaven and earth”).
  • Being is shown by a pictogram of a hand holding a piece of meat. Lâozi says its personal naming is the rearing, raising, or “suckling” of all the gazillion of material things in that universe, literally 10,000 Things—all matter external or cut off from you.
  • In the traditional version, Not-Being is “wanting.” It’s missing something that’s been eroded, and that is a mysterious feminine essence called miào.
  • In the traditional tradition, Being is “wanting.” It’s missing something that’s been eroded, and that is delineated surface—like a patrolled frontier border lightly hit with a sword tip from left to right (jiâo).
  • Whoa, though! Really they’re a matched pair and can be spoken of in this state where they’re altogether—as common as daily dishes—stepping out of their cave…
  • But. Once they step out, lots of “buts” apply. The first, main, and most unusual and specific “but” is a character that’s a pictogram of a beard (èr). The instant they step out, Lâozi starts describing them with a qualifier: and yet now, bearded…. Every time this èr character’s used, I can’t help but harken back to its intro here as a description of Not-Being and Being as they step out of the cave.
  • So they’re altogether stepping out of a cave and yet now, bearded…. they have differently masked personal names (presumably this refers back to the “Being” and “Not-Being” personal names described before).
  • What they’re called from the gut when they’re altogether has this hard-to-see darkness—the figure-eight structure of a skein of string-dyed-black (xuán). Based on how the text’s written, I think the entire set-up described beforehand—what I summarized in the above bullet points—constitutes that xuán. But I guess it could be something as yet unspecified, something that we discover later.
  • And here’s the kicker… that hidden structure has its own hard-to-see dark figure-eight structure of string-dyed-black.
  • And THIS, my friends, is the mysterious feminine essence’s double-winged gateway. Ending the first chapter here leaves us with miào feeling somehow central to the whole story.

What’s this have to do with our original conflict between The Way and our tradition?

I guess that’s the question Lâozî’s setting up for the suspenseful tale about to unfold to Yinxi, me, and you.

What stands out to you?

I’m going to give you some time to ponder this introduction and my question and send me your answers before I prejudice you with mine—because they’re doozies! And with that cliff-hanger… I thank you for being here with me and for sending me your comments. It means the world to me.

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#1 Wàn 萬 Wù 物

the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten-Thousand Things cut off from you—all external matter like cows etc.

wàn wù

You’ve heard of today’s characters if you’ve a passing familiarity with any Buddhist and Taoist writings or, for that matter, the works of various western artists from composer John Cage and novelist Maria Dermout to writer Cheryl Strayed whose memoir Wild describes Dermout’s novel The Ten Thousand Things in such a way that you have to pause on that page of Strayed’s book and order it at once.

Gasp. That was quite a sentence/paragraph. These words do that to me.

Today we’re looking at two characters because they’re very often—though not always—written together in the Dào Dé Jīng: wàn wù (萬 物). This combo’s most commonly interpreted as The Ten Thousand Things, in keeping with the usual English way of talking about that Buddhist and Taoist concept.

When you try to find the origin of the phrase, all roads lead back to the Dào Dé Jīng. Did Lâozî invent this way of describing the many things and events manifest in the world? Some people mention the I Ching in connection with this phrase. I haven’t studied that book nor even read any of it versions or commentaries, but I can see that neither wàn nor wù appear in the 64 hexagrams that make up its divination system. Did the Buddha coin this phrase? Wait, who came first anyway, the Buddha or Lâozî? Short answer: no-one knows for sure. Because no-one knows anything much for certain about either one’s life, especially regarding dates. Some people think Lâozî became the Buddha’s teacher after leaving China. Heck, here’s a fantastical and beautiful image of “Confucius handing over Gautama Buddha to Laozi:”

Awww… So sweet. Ok, yeah. that probably didn’t happen, but we can’t really know for sure. Remember, some scholars think Lâozî lived two hundred years later than I’m assuming, in the 300’s BC. (Confession: looking at that lovely painting I do get a little nervous about these old wise men alone with this baby. Philosophical wisdom aside, I hope Lâozî knows how to change diapers and properly burp, never mind feed, an infant! I know that’s irrationally sexist of me—after all my husband knew more about that stuff than I when we brought little baby Caitlin home from the hospital. Thank goodness. But still. Anyway, I guess the painting is symbolic as baby Buddha looks already old also!))

ANYWAY. Whether or not Lâozî invented the phrase—and you know that’s always my preferred assumption!—this Ten Thousand Things phrase does appear in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng 11 times.

~

The first character, wàn (萬), is a pictogram of a scorpion:

Scary, huh. I think I see the stinger! This character became the name of a particular ritual dance in ancient China which some people, since then anyway, have called sorcery. Linguists think that usage stems from China’s oldest “Proto-Sin-Tibetan” roots since there are related words in Tibetan word (for “medicine” or “she-demons worshipped by common folk”) and Burmese (for “utter mystic words to heal or ward off evil.” This whole line of meaning makes me think about our animal-tail-waving dancer in the Not-Being character! Ultimately, wàn has come to a modern connotation of myriad, a great number; innumerable,  numerous; very, extremely, absolutely; and, specifically, ten thousand.

I don’t know how a picture of a scorpion, or a ritual dance for that matter, came to depict “myriad.” I’ve read—and been influenced by—people who thought it had to do with how insects swarm. Alas, as I stop to think about, I remember that scorpions aren’t insects. Nor do they swarm except in video games—at least not according to anything I’ve read or experienced myself. Wandering the desert as kids, my brother and I did meet and play around with a lot of scorpions, but they were always traveling solo. And I’m pretty sure that if scorpions did swarm, the internet would be full of terrifying photos! BUT I could be wrong. I did use the word “swarm” in my initial translation, as you saw in this blog’s first post. I wanted to keep some obscure reference to the pictogram. Now I lean toward not being obscure myself since Lâozî has that covered! I’m into just naming the images straight out even if it feels harder to understand. I trust that whatever ancient things are supposed to be conjured up will be. Even if they’re from a culture different than our own, they’re still part of the human experience and we will feel something. Who am I to say we shouldn’t see what Lâozî presented? So my translation is:

the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten Thousand

Lâozî uses this word 12 times in the first 37 chapters of the Dào Dé Jīng. In only of those times it does NOT appear with today’s second word, wù.

~

Wù (物) is a compound character:

On the left is a cow, ox, or buffalo (niú, 牛). That is still the modern meaning of this sub-component character, though it can sometimes be used to say pig-headed, stubborn, powerful. It’s considered the semantic part that gives the word wù its meaning.

The phonetic part of this compound character—the drawing on the right that gives the word its sound, wù —is a picture of a knife with blood on it. Yup. On its own it’s been used as a negative particle since the Oracle Bone days. Remember we discussed several such negating words meaning “not, no,” etc.. in the post on Not-Being.

Together, these two components make a character that today means thing, matter; all of the outside world, excluding oneself; substance, content. In physics, wù is used for the term “matter.”

Side-note: wù is in fact part of the word for physics itself, wùlǐ (物理). The other component, lî is a picture of polishing jade and means tidying up or put things in order. That word’s not in the Dào text.

Our full character wù appears 23 times in the first 37 chapters—11 of those times with wàn. I translate it as:

Things cut off from you—all external matter like cows etc.

~

And that brings me to my new translation of the two words together. Mainly, I think it’s key to remember that neither alone carries the full meaning of The Ten-Thousand Things. (I rather sloppily included Things in the first word in my own initial translation!)

Ten-Thousand is wàn, and Things is wù. Most Dào Dé Jīng translators don’t use that phrase though for the two together though and instead go with: all creatures, all things, or all particular things. Since I also want to include the pictures and all old ways of describing them, I stick with:

the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten-Thousand Things—all external matter cut off from you—like cows etc.

Goose bumps. We see you, Lâozî.

Thank you for checking in here today, friends. And for messaging me your responses and support. See you tomorrow.

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#1 Xuán

mysterious figure-eight of string dyed black

xuán

Perhaps it’s wrong for a translator to have favorites… but xuán (玄) makes me swoon. Look at the Western Zhou Bronze Inscription above. Think about the idea that Lâozî probably wrote it just like that! It’s soooooooo evocative. Even six centuries later, the Small Seal Script detailed in the Shuowen Jiezi drew it pretty similarly:

We talked about this character a little in the post about the mysterious feminine essence—and indeed those two characters occur together again in Chapter 15. You can see how they definitely share an invisible cosmic nature. As you recall, the modern definitions of xuán are deep, profound, and mysterious. I would say translators of the Dào do most commonly use mysterious, mysteriously. or mystery, but they also famously and commonly translate xuán as darkness, primal, inner, hidden, supreme, and profound depending on the context. Ahem. Notice how I’m not giving a sermon about how much I dislike inconsistencies of this sort? I call that progress!

What doubly intrigued me about this character the first time I delved into its roots was the description of this glyph as “a string, dyed black.” And then of course I was taken with the string’s figure-eight shape. I immediately thought of the infinity symbol, and my first translation quite romantically included that image. To be fair, I didn’t think it was right to call it a figure-eight since Arabic numerals weren’t introduced to China until sometime between 1271 and 1368 AD—way after Lâozî’s time. But upon further research, I can’t find reliable evidence that the sideways eight was a symbol for infinity in ancient China either. So how can I describe the shape AND, for that matter, why did Lâozî use it?

I think the answer’s held within that first etymological description I read: a string dyed black. How could anyone ascertain those specific details from that image: string, dyed?

If you’re jumping up and down, waving your hand, and shouting “I know, I know!” then you’ve probably done some embroidery, knitting, spinning, or dying of fibers. You might say it looks like a skein. Or technically speaking, a “hank,” though the terms are often interchanged.

A pleasant side trip into the world of fibers:

A hank is a pretty long length of yarn or string arranged into one big open loop like this:

In order to handle a hank during the dying process, the loop needs to be stabilized. And you do that by securing it with figure-eight pieces of thread! Click here for a link to a charming 2-3/4-minute video that shows you how to do that with yarn. A hank with some figure-eights tied in place looks like this (well not really but you get the idea, especially if you watch the video):

Once the fibers are dyed, it’s easier to handle, transport, and store a hank if you twist and fold it into a sturdy coil. Click here for a link showing a quick way to make a coil. The end result does look sort of like several figure-eights attached to each other end-to-end (I hope you’ll look at the video as my sketches aren’t great!):

Why am I getting into all this besides the fact that it’s always super interesting to voyage into a sub-world of skill and knowledge? Because I’m trying to understand the concept and pictogram of figure-eight of string dyed black. So far we haven’t seen anything exactly like the xuán character, though the figure-eight ties are obviously ringing a bell.

A few definitions:

  • In theory, a coil is still a hank, and
  • a “skein” is technically 1/16th of a hank. But many people nowadays call the coil arrangement a skein, especially for
  • “string, twine, rope, cord, or yarn” which are defined as several strands or threads of fiber twisted together.
  • A “strand or thread” is technically one individual piece of long, thin fiber.
  • Except for “embroidery thread.” These individual strands are so fine that they’re commonly twisted together for ease of sale. We rather mistakenly but commonly call the result “thread,” though it’s technically string. Embroidery thread—be it wool, cotton, or silk, as was likely the case in Lâozî’s world—comes arranged in a very particular shape, also called a “skein.”

I hope you’ve seen these colorful little embroidery skeins and are getting excited thinking about it because… THEY DO kind of resemble figure-eights. And silk embroidery thread—which still almost always originates in China—exactly does because it has only one paper band squeezing in the center of a loop-shaped hank.

Now, here’s what I’m thinking. What if the technique for stabilizing hanks of fiber for dying is similar the world over and for generations past, including in ancient China? And what if they didn’t use paper bands to hold together embroidery thread skeins but rather… the same figure-eight tie they used during dying processes?

I decided to try that out. With black thread. Here’s my result:

So cool, right?! But very hard to see… ohhhhhhhh. Have you ever worked with black thread? It IS hard to see. When you want stitching to be visible, you use light thread. I start to understand the translations like darkness and mystery.

Meanwhile, I re-arranged light, flashes, and background so you can see this little skein more clearly:

So cool. Still hard to see the center though (we hear you, Lâozî!). More light, bigger, closer…

It’s a figure-eight all right. And see the figure-eight string tie holding the figure-eight string into its characteristic shape?! What a lovely character and metaphor, thought Lâozî.

Back to translating

And even though Lâozî didn’t use the word “eight,” I’m going to modify my translation to insert this picture into a modern reader’s mind exactly as it’s shown in the pictogram:

mysterious figure-eight of string dyed black

We’re not going to wrap up Chapter 1 today since I got a little carried away with the thread experiment—yes, in order to be transparent I must report that some threads and part of my sanity were injured in the making of this blog….

Plus it will be nice for us all to have a day or two to let this thread image knock around in your unconscious with what we have read so far. Tomorrow, we’ll clean up a few words in Chapter 1, and then on Wednesday… put it altogether. Or as you and I like to say: .

Thank you so much for joining me today for what’s definitely the most exciting blogging day yet, for me anyway. I look forward to your comments!

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#1 Tóng

spoken of altogether with one another—like all mortal, earthly commonplace plates—

tóng

Every and any commonplace plate you see,

… is an example of ordinary things being altogether in this worldly, earthly, mortal existence. At least that’s the sentiment I construct when I string together one sentence that includes all the different definitions (in italics) of the sub-component 凡 (fán). And I love that sentiment. One of the most special thing about the fact that we’re all ordinary mortal humans is how we’re all in this together—you can find us in every household all over the world.

As you can see, in today’s word tóng (同), that common flat dish is drawn above an image we’ve seen before, a mouth:

From our first post’s version of Chapter 1, you’ll remember that I thought the plate and mouth symbolized “altogetherness” because they’re so commonly found together. At least around my mouth! So I originally translated this word as altogether with one another—as together as a commonplace plate with a mouth. But being around these characters more, I’ve learned that while sometimes a mouth does indeed depict a mouth, at other times it means a hole, an entrance, or an exit (like the mouth of a cave) or maybe the fact that something is coming out of a mouth, i.e., someone is saying it. We have the same use of this word in English. (“‘Oh no,’ she mouthed.” Or “I was mouthing off again.”)

So… once again… I’ve refined my translation:

spoken of altogether with one another—like all mortal, earthly commonplace plates—

And once again, the translation most true to the image AND the abstractions is also the most lyrical (despite or maybe because of being additionally complex).

The modern definitions of tóng are: same, identical, together, with each other, with, and, and as well as. Although this word appears in only three of the first 37 chapters (the Dào part) of the Dào Dé Jīng, it’s hard to say exactly how others translate it in these places. Probably because tóng occurs in some of the most confusing lines and they’re trying to make it more succinct and understandable, translators often lump things together and interpret these lines in a readable way rather than directly translate them such that you can put your finger on each word. Furthermore, without exception, each translator I’ve seen varies this word quite a bit within the Dáo Dè Jīng depending on if they think it’s being used as an adjective or a verb. That said, the most common translations I can make out are: same, both, unites, assimilates, merge, accords with, follows, at one with, and in accord with.

Now…. right or wrong of me, you know what I’m about to say: I get downright disgruntled when I can’t tell when/where the same particular word is being used! Happily, my translation seems to work everywhere, which means you and I can read along feeling… gruntled?! Granted, we also will be a little bewildered. But we know Lâozî likes us like that…for now anyway.

Thank you so much for joining me here again today and for your messages of support and interest. Together, we’ve dived deep—methodically, objectively, literally, and pictorially—into the majority of Chapter 1’s words! We’re getting close to stepping back from our cracked open neutral bewilderment and taking a look at what happens when we put it altogether. See you tomorrow.

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#1 Guān Qí 其 Yî Yù

wanting (what’s been eroded from this ravine)

yù

Things go better when we don’t confuse “desire” and “want”—whether in translation OR in our own lives.

  • “Desire” is when something pulls you; you feel it. It moves you. In English, we describe the most essential such experience as our “heart’s desire.” Perhaps it IS always our heart pulling us when we feel that inexplicable longing to do something… to go somewhere, make something, or talk to someone. Whatever the action, like a river pulled by the invisible force of gravity toward its sea, desire always leads us into some movement, into falling into what pulls us… into the very next step.
  • “Wanting” is when something’s missing and/or you think it is—it indicates a lack of something. This is a more unsettling feeling, not particularly an energizing feeling, but still a part of our human life and nothing to be ashamed of.

Both situations will occur in a human life, but how we feel is different as is our typical behavior and also… what would be most helpful.

Our word-of-the-day yù (欲) gets translated as both desire and want—often by the same translator. It’s also called wish which is something else altogether since it pulls in a wistful sort of request for supernatural help.

So, which of these options best represents yù? Let’s look at what the old scripts of Lâozî’s times show us in their pictograms.

You can see right away that we’re dealing with a compound character. The left sub-component is considered the phonetic one that tells the reader how to pronounce the word, and I guess gû does indeed rhyme with yù. Gû‘s modern character is 谷, and the Western Zhou Bronze (WZB) inscription looked like this:

I’m relieved this looks so much like the left-hand side of the very first character I showed you above because that one’s written in the Warring States (WS) Chu Slip script that came just after Lâozî (check out the Dates, Dynasties and Their Scripts tab to follow that timeline). You know I prefer the Western Zhou Bronze inscriptions, but I couldn’t find any such version of the whole compound character. The similarity between the two scripts in this sub-component gives me confidence that the WS script is a good approximation of how Lâozî may have written this character. It depicts a stream running between two mountains and is translated as valley, gorge, ravine.

The right-hand sub-component, qiàn (欠) translates as to lack, be deficient, yawn. Depending on which linguist you listen to, it shows either a knife (⺈) or a mouth:

atop a person (人).

I have almost always lived in landscapes where ravines are commonplace—playing in them as a child, hiking them as an adult, and surveying and analyzing their dimensions and changes as a stream restoration hydrologist. What I’ve experienced is that a yawning, slashed, eroded gully has way more in common with what’s “wanting” than with “desire” or “wish.” Nonetheless, “desire” is so ubiquitous in others’ translations that I tried to incorporate it along with the pictogram in my own initial translation: desiring what’s wanting—what’s been eroded from this ravine…

~

Let’s try out my translation to see if Chapter 1‘s structure and content sheds any light on the subject. Both times our word yû occurs, it’s followed by these words:

this means:

keeping watch from the temple tower for

what it holds a basket of…

Here’s a quick breakdown of those characters:

~ yî, 以: This is a very common word in the Dào Dé Jīng. Its left component carries the meaning but remains a mystery. In the WZB it looked like this:

Some say it’s a plough; others say its a turned version of the symbol for a snake or a fetus. The right-hand component of the current character 以 wasn’t added until modern times. It’s a person, and in Western Zhou Bronze Inscription that looks like this:

We’ll see this character a lot as we go forward. The word yî is translated as by, by means of, according to, so, so as to, in order to, therefore and other connecting, almost causal or at least logically-linking transitional words. I fiddled with a lot of ways to make it work in all 46 contexts where it occurs in the first 37 chapters and came up with: this means… I don’t like that I haven’t included the pictogram itself, but the options are too different for me to decide on one yet. That could change in future posts as we learn about the sub-component’s use in other words and get a feel for it.

~ guān, 觀: In this compound character, the left side shows a heron. Its old WZB form is beautiful:

The right-hand component means watchtower, platform, or temple—it was drawn as an eye over a pair of legs:

This compound word now means observe, watch, see. I translate it as: keeping watch from the temple tower for…

~ qí, 其: Here’s yet another seemingly inconsequential word that’s translated many ways, usually something like its or has but also he, she, it, they, one, his, hers, theirs, that, those, probably, perhaps, therein… You know I do not like the predicament this creates, consistency-wise! The WZB inscriptions shows a basket on a stand:

After another chunk of time fiddling around for something that can work anywhere, I just went pretty much only with the image, as I think it says it all: what it holds a basket of… So does that mean “what the basket is made of” or “what’s inside the basket?” Hmmm. Either way, and with that double possibility, I think it’s in keeping with all the translation choices in the list you just read.

Look here at how all these words work together:

desiring what’s wanting—what’s been eroded from this ravine…
this means:
keeping watch from the temple tower for
what it holds a basket of…

It looks like Lâozî just straight-out gave us a clear way to interpret our word-of-the-day: when someone “wants” something, that’s saying they are looking for their own stuff. They feel like some of what their life holds—contains or is made of—is lacking, like the soil that was washed away to make a ravine. And when that happens to us humans, we very much do “want for” whatever basic ingredient we feel is missing—we maintain a sort of vigilance and sense of lack. Lâozî’s words definitely make yù sound like it’s more about what’s missing than about being pulled toward a heart’s desire or making a wish.

That decides it. I’m changing my translation. Mixing this word up with desire is unnecessary and misleading. We don’t want to mislead ourselves into thinking that any further information Lâozî gives us about wanting is pertinent to desire. Bonus: my new translation’s simpler, and it still can be used as either a verb or a noun:

wanting (what’s been eroded from this ravine)

~

So what else does Lâozî teach us about wanting here? You’ll remember that just before this section, Chapter 1 introduced us to two seemingly opposite or complementary characters Not-Being and Being. Specifically, in this first use of them, Lâozî linked them up with míng (personal childhood name) to explain that “Not-Being míng” and “Being míng” are each the origin of something… something unique for each one.

Names as an origin? That puts me very much in mind of quantum physics as well as the thought-provoking psychologic, neurolinguistic, and anthropological research indicating that if we can’t name something, we can’t really develop our perception or understanding of that thing. And as we learned in a previous post, both approaches to naming are the origin of cool stuff: Not-Being, its name is Sky-Earth’s beginning like conception in and by a woman; Being, its name is all the manifest stuff’s nourishment like being suckled by a woman.Very cool. But there’s more.

Lâozî says there’s something that’s followed logically for many generations…

Here’s where learn about exactly what might be “wanting” in two different aspects of experience. Before getting specific, Lâozî specifies that we’re now talking about the timeless, constant, ever-present version of it all—as represented by the traditional “you’re-officially-an-adult” males’ head-cloth.

Then, Lâozî tells us what “wanting” means for 1) the timeless mens’ head-cloth version of “Not-Being” wanting and 2) the timeless mens’ head-cloth version of “Being” wanting. Here’s my summary, in table form:

STATE, QUALITY, ASPECT, OR PERSONA:

Not-Being—————-> ————————–

Being———————> —————————

This “personal naming” is the origin of:

Sky-Earth’s beginning, like in and by woman

10,000-external things’ suckling, like being fed by a woman

In “timeless/head- cloth way,” wanting /looking for:

mysterious feminine essence

delineated surface

This makes sense. If “Being, its name,” at the most intimately known level, nourishes and rears the myriad of manifested things out in the world, then it follows that “Being wanting” also would have to do with this concrete kind of stuff. We know when something’s wanting, it will involve looking for the stuff IT HOLDS or IS MADE OF, and in this case, Lâozî says that’s going to be a clearly-marked outward surface. As you remember from when we broke down that word in a previous post, this is a feature that was defined by drawing a sword tip left to right. In mathematics/geometry/physics, such a lined-out surface is a plane—a 2-dimensional feature. The surface is what we see of the universe—of what exists. It’s obviously an important, vital part of our lives. In fact, it’s usually what we pay attention to. Lâozî says that in the eternally constant grown-man-head-cloth version of Being wanting, what we’re missing and keeping an eye out for is that surface plane. This seems correct and like the useful thing to do.

And Lâozî also reminds us of another part of our experience: something more mysterious and hard to describe or touch. It’s not concrete, and indeed Lâozî describes it as an absence. “Not-Being, its name” gives us the very beginning, the Source, or what some call the Divine, Sky-Earth, heaven. And when considering this “Not-Being” in terms of “wanting,” Lâozî says the stuff missing is mysterious feminine essence. That’s what it holds a basket of.

~

Wait. How can Not-Being Wanting be missing anything at all?

Here’s where we get a clear notion that Not-Being Wanting isn’t the same as not wanting. If it were simply “not wanting,” then that might be pleasant (or even noble in the eyes of a puritanical interpretation that confuses wanting with desire and desire with lust or greed). But nothing would be missing. And yet here we are with something missing, albeit a non-concrete mysterious essence of a something.

What exactly is this “Not-Being?” And if it’s something other than a simple modifier meaning “not,” then what does that tell us about its complement, “Being?” Is that something other than just a confirmation that something’s happening?

Review the tortuous logic I took you through in this post! Now you’re seeing why I did it this way for myself originally and why I laid it out for you here. I wanted us to follow exactly what we’ve read thus far about the nature of these Being and Not-Being characters. The structure I outlined in the table above is exactly how it’s laid out in Chapter 1… and it’s exactly parallel for Being and Not-Being. I’m pretty sure it drives us to the conclusion that Not-Being is as much of a something as Being.

Of course I don’t have an answer for you as to what these two terms mean. They’ve been the source of discussions about the Dào since… ever since this text was written as far as I can tell. But somehow I felt relief in clarifying for myself and you that they indeed are not simple little modifiers. There is something going on here. It’s baffling and disorienting. And that’s perfect.

Let me skip ahead for a minute to Chapter 3. There Lâozî comes right out and describes the Sage’s strategy in dealing with civilians — in “governing” them or rather, in the literal old images I prefer, “harnessing the river happy!” A fundamental step in the strategy is to create confusion—”Not-Being sure.” Ha! I would say Lâozî’s succeeding at that with this entire book! At least thus far. In the end of Chapter 3, and increasingly clearly all throughout the rest of the book, Lâozî shows us how this strategy leads to a deep rightness.

We have to unlearn some things to learn other new things. We have to get baffled to crack open enough to take in something bigger than we previously held, to increase our capacity. So I’m going to keep trying to suspend you and me in uncertainty. We can do it. We can tolerate it. We can even enjoy it. We’re built for this.

~

Whatever they are, the egalitarian structure of this chapter indicates that the not-so-visible “Not-Being” name/wanting is equally as important as the concrete “Being” version of those things. Lâozî even clarifies that these two parts are “a matched pair, like a harness of oxen yokes” presumably pulling things along nicely and evenly when they’re both involved.

Moving along forward… that’s where your life is happening. The Dào has a lot to tell us about living with and from and for the heart—that’s the stuff of desire and movement. Lâozî devotes the entire second half of the Dâo Dé Jīng specifically to that straight heart path (AKA the Dé or Te), and there’s lots of information on it coming up in this first half also. Until then, when you feel your heart pulling you somewhere, take a step.

But today’s word is about the inevitable times when we feel ourselves not moved to move but like we’re sitting up on a watchtower, staring out over a valley because we feel we’re lacking somehow. Thats part of being human. And then it is fine to keep a watch for what’s missing. It helps to know what you’re looking for though. Sometimes it will indeed be the surface stuff—specifically it will look like a boundary, a line drawn with the tip of your sword. That’s true whether you consider yourself a sword-bearing frontiersman on patrol (remember that was part of the original image) or not. And sometimes it will be a mysterious feminine mist of an essence—that’s true whether you’re a man or woman. When your wanting isn’t very definable—you can’t figure out what or how to draw a boundary or address the surface or even see it and so you keep watching and waiting and watching—then feel around for an essence and breathe it in. We’ll get more specific instructions as we work through the book, but honestly it just comes back to that.

Thank you for joining me in floating in—heck, diving into—Not-Being sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Categories
#1 Dì Mén Tiān Xià

Heaven (that sky level above the human head)

tiān

You’ve seen the word Tiān many times—as part of the word Tiananmen, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, in Beijing. Actually, we’ll see all three components of that word in the Dào Dé Jīng, starting with today’s word: tiān. It’s the heaven part, and its modern character looks like this:

天

In the pictogram of the Warring States Chu Slip script—which is the era after Lâozî—as well as every script thereafter, this character’s shown by a picture of a person with a line over their head:

In the oldest known Chinese writing—the Oracle Bone script of the Shang dynasty, it also looked like that:

During the Zhou dynasty, this figure for sky was the word that became used to talk about the highest god which previously was called Shàngdì, meaning something like God of Shang. That’s why some people occasionally translate tiān as Lord, presumably depending on context. Why the change in the Shang dynasty? One thing I’ve learned is that often with each new emperor, words that sounded like the last emperor’s name were more or less banished! It really complicates etymology. Sometimes I try to make some big cosmic reason for a character turning into or being replaced by another character, and it turns out that no one was allowed to say the old name, for example “Shang,” lest the powers-that-be-think they’re not loyal. Obviously I am over-simplifying, Anyway, in Zhou times, this high god and/or the place it lived were called Sky, so that flavor often is captured by translating this word as heaven. “Heaven worship” is one name for this religion which was the state religion before the 20th century. Its philosophies are quite beautiful sounding:

“…it sees the world and the gods of its phenomena as an organic whole, or cosmos, which continuously emerges from a simple principle. This is expressed by the concept that “all things have one and the same principle” (wànwù yīlǐ 萬物一理).This principle is commonly referred to as Tiān 天, a concept generally translated as “Heaven”, referring to the northern culmen and starry vault of the skies and its natural laws which regulate earthly phenomena and generate beings as their progenitors.“

Yes, I just quoted Wikipedia! Sorry/not sorry because when you want to know just a little about something, it is just the way to get a taste.

I want you to see how, in Taoism, this word Tiān is a fundamental concept with all kinds of the cosmological implications we just tasted. But the question is, was Lâozî a Taoist?! If you think Lâozî founded Taoism, then that’s like asking if Christ was Christian (we can be sure Jesus wasn’t attached to later dogma in the Christian church since it didn’t exist yet, though people can and do argue as to which of those dogmas are exactly as he meant it to be). Whether or not you think you think Lâozî founded Taoism partially depends on if you think Lâozî lived in the 300’s or in the 500’s. Why does this matter to me right now? Because I’m trying to figure out if Lâozî used tiān as heaven or sky. Probably both, like current English speakers do with the word “heavens.” Its use as capital-H Heaven was clearly established during Lâozî’s time, and that’s probably why almost every translator calls this character heaven. This creates such a quandary for my picture-oriented translation method! Dang it. I’m going to change my translation AGAIN. And it’s going to be longer. Again:

Heaven (that sky level above the human head)

“Remember,” I keep telling myself, “we’re going for the complete picture, not the most succinct one.” And you know what? I think the complete picture ends up being super evocative and even lyrical.

~

Before we leave today’s word, I want you to know a little about all the ways Lâozî combined it with other characters in the Dào Dé Jīng to create distinct meanings.

  • tiān xià: During Lâozî’s lifetime, xià (下) was drawn as one line below another: It now means lower part, under, inferior, and below. I capture all that with my interpretation of it as down below (lower level). As we’ll see beginning in Chapter 2, this word is commonly combined with tiān to make Sky-Below or Heaven-Below. You can see why most translators interpret it as world, and, in different places, everyone, all in the world, etc. I of course let the lengthy combo of my own translations stand on its own, but I do hyphenate them since they’re so commonly combined into one entity: Heaven (that sky level above the human head)–down below (lower level). When you look at it like that, does it mean heaven when it occurs down below? Or does it mean some scope that encompasses both levels? We don’t have to decide. As usual, we can let the poet’s multi-layered meanings wash over us.
  • tiān mén: As you probably intuited at the beginning of this post, mén (門) translates as gate. The old glyph has barely changed: I love it when that’s the case. It is quite simply a drawing of a double-winged gateway, and that’s how I translate it. Combined with tiān, we get: Heaven (that sky level above the human head)–double-winged gateway. Usually other translators call it heaven’s gate, gates of heaven, or heavenly gate.
  • tiān dì: Right here in the first chapter we see one of the most common uses of tiān: it’s combination with dì (地). Lâozî most likely would have drawn dì like this: The left side of that character, by itself, looked like this: That’s a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel and means earth, soil, clay, dust. The right-hand side of dì is considered the phonetic side, though as is often the case, that seems like a stretch to me… this sub-component’s pronounced yê. How does that tell us how to pronounce dì? As usual, I suspect the so-called phonetic component also contributes to the meaning. There’s a lot going on in that right-side, and I’m still trying to figure out all the little sketches in there, but apparently in Lâozî’s era, it was drawn more simply, just with this:There’s been a difference of opinion on whether this was a pictogram of female genitalia, a washbasin or funnel, or a mouth with air coming down out of it. It’s translated as too, also, and as well or as neither/either in the case of negatively phrased sentences. In other words, it’s a sound you make to add emphasis. Where it occurs by itself in this book, I’ve naturally translated it as —yes, that too, vagina! Of course, you know by now that I’m not intentionally being provocative just on this character since I throw in the whole kitchen sink on every, character, yê?! And too, you may be seeing a trend where over time characters’ seem to have undergone some puritanical “cleanups,” at least in the English translations. We see that with English words too. Some still reference their very earthy origins and we don’t even notice it when we say them. For example. when things are messed up and you say there’s a “snafu,” you may not know that was a military acronym for “situation normal: all fucked up.” So for now we’ll assume all these missing references to women with breasts, nursing women, etc. are probably normal and not an effort to sanitize or gender-wash the Dào. Nonetheless it may feel profane to some that I’m reintroducing these old words and images into a sacred document. Please know, I truly don’t think of it that way as I consider none of this profane and furthermore consider it an honor to Lâozî to try getting close to the original writing as best we can. And of course, most importantly, nothing I or anyone can do is able to diminish the Dào or the Dào Dé Jīng. And with that big disclaimer… my translation of dì is Earth (this soil vagina). Altogether with tiān, we have: Heaven (that sky level above the human head)—Earth (this soil vagina). Or you can silently say in your mind Heaven-Earth or heaven and earth, as most translators do.

~

The sky just above your own head—the fresh air, the perfect oxygen level, the way it renews you not just to breathe it in but to look up at it. No matter your religion, it is heavenly. That, I think, is my favorite part of today’s word, of where I live, and of most days. I hope you have some time today to lift your eyes and breathe in this heaven that we have access to everyday. Thank you for using part of it to join me here.

Categories
#1 Mû Shî Xuán

beginning in and by a woman

shî

Remember how, during my post about wú, I changed my own translation to include more of the actual picture shown in the script from Lâozî’s own time? I just did it again with today’s character, shî. Writing out my rationale to you is having a big effect on this project and shaping my perspective on translations I’d settled on over a year ago! So thank you for reading along and for your ideas and support. It’s results in a powerful alchemy.

So, back to today’s character. The modern version might look familiar to you:

始

The left hand component is the same kneeling woman (person with breasts) we saw in xuán, the mysterious feminine essence:

The right-hand component (台) is considered the phonetic part of the character, giving us a pronunciation cue—it’s pronounced yí which rhymes with the overall word’s sound. You can see it is itself a compound character. I find two different ways of looking at the top sub-subcharacter. On one hand, 厶 comes from an old pictogram that looks like this:

This character is from the Warring States (WS) era bronze inscription, so more than likely this came from just after Lâozî, but it’s the closest I can get for now. It’s considered to be a picture of revolving around oneself or self-circling and meant private.

Even though I would have tended to think that was the origin of this sub-sub-component, more sources say it’s the character 㠯, and that this is the phonetic clue for yí. Not much else besides the pronunciation seems very certain. The pictogram and meaning are mysterious. The Western Zhou Bronze Inscription character from Lâozî’s time looked like this:

Some say that’s a plough; others say its a turned version of the pictogram for a snake or a fetus. In modern times, its use is mainly in a different word also pronounced yî, 以, where it’s morphed into being written in the form of the left-hand component you see there. It’s meaning is by, according to, or by means of.

The lower sub-sub-component (口) is another one that’s familiar to you. It’s a mouth, which sometimes means mouth, sometimes indicates someone is “saying” the thing in whatever other picture it’s drawn next to, and sometimes refers to a hole in something (entrance, exit, mouth of a cave, etc.) :

Together, these two added up to a compound character 台 that was the original character meaning happy. In the 4th-3rd centuries BC it came to mean I or me. I can’t find an old image of this word, so I drew how it might have looked when Lâozî drew them together:

And when we put that with the kneeling woman in the left sub-component, it would look like this:

That’s the complete old glyph style drawing of today’s word, shî, usually translated as begin, start, beginning, starting, or initial. But… after I saw the etymology described as “beginning in and by a woman,” I decided to re-think those ordinary translations.

In fact, fittingly, this is the very first, the beginning etymological reference I noticed on Hilmar Alquiros’ website. It’s what started this project of mine. I was quite taken with its beauty and amount and quality of interesting information. To keep the original feel, I decided conception was a better translation, and you saw me use that in my initial translation of Chapter 1 in my very first post.

The thing is, typing all this to you, I remember that when I decided on that word, I was still trying very hard to come up with simple, preferably one-word translations to make it easier to read and in keeping with the one-word nature of each character in the Tao Te Ching. Heck they are all one syllable!! But in the last year and a half, I’ve evolved more and more to believing it’s valuable to include as much information as I can to give the reader—be it me or you—regarding the experience of the old glyph as LâoZî may have drawn it.

For that reason, I’m now going with the translation I first saw:

beginning in and by a woman

One thing immediately reinforced my belief that this way of interpreting the characters is valuable: the recurrence throughout Chapter 1 of this kneeling person with breasts.

~

Remember the context of this character in Chapter 1: it’s when Lâozî’s telling us that “Not-Being, its name is Sky-Earth’s beginning in and by a woman.” I’m going to get into how in the world we can interpret this phrasing, probably the day after tomorrow. But meanwhile, just note that in the very next pair of lines, we learn that “Being, its name is The TenThousand Things’ suckling.” Of course suckling was the term I decided to use back in my one-word translation days. Let’s look at it again.

The actual word, mû (母), looked like this:

Yup, the kneeling person’s breasts now have distinct nipples a lá a nursing woman, female, older woman relative, or mother. Most translators use that last word. I want to keep the word “woman” so we can “see” it shares a sub-component with shî, so I’m modifying my original translation to this:

suckling from a woman

And then a few lines later, and in the very last line also, we see our kneeling woman in the form of xuán, the mysterious feminine essence—a few drops of that womanly essence:

All these female-specific words do notably contrast with that male-specific image in the word cháng, the ever-present square fabric which our grown men wrap around the ‘little bird’ top knots on their heads after receiving their public courtesy-names—or what we know as the timeless, whole-cloth ‘ji’ version of… things and, for that matter, in the word ér, and yet—now bearded. It remains to be seen what we can make of these gender-specific terms. Other characters (the dancer in wú, the loose-haired chieftain in dào, the person being named in míng) have no specific gender, nor do most terms and pronouns in Chinese.

I had considered wrapping up Chapter 1 today, but I felt negligent not talking to you about these other concepts and so instead dove into these words, and thank goodness since it led me to some worthwhile tinkering. I best not move on without delving into a few more. Tomorrow I think we’ll get into Heaven… or at least the sky and its heavenly implications. I’ll see you then. Thanks for visiting here again and following this translation’s evolution. I look forward to your comments!

Tinkered with 3/10/20

Categories
#1 Zhī

this has

zhī

This pictogram of a foot used to mean the beginning place. For awhile I translated its very common modern character, 之, as steps off from here for… although the more modern definitions are this, to go, and to sprout. (That makes me wonder if this isn’t a drawing of a plant?!)

But I would say that Dào translators most often interpret it as the possessive particle—it’s placed between two words to indicate that the following word is possessed by the previous word. Here’s an example albeit one mixing Chinese and English words: “cat zhī hat” would mean the hat belongs to the cat: the cat‘s hat.

To make their translations flowing, translators use pretty much every variation of this word. I really want to follow my rule of using the same translation every where for any given term, so I translate it as:

this has

Even though it’s shorter than my more complete, pictogram-oriented first-draft above, it’s still awkward. So, as I describe in the Rules and Exceptions tab, I sometimes use ‘s. I may change this in the future, but my effort steps off from here for… now. 🙂

Today’s post is short and sweet because tomorrow’s is on the cosmic side and may even wrap up this encompassing summary that Lâozî’s given us in the first chapter! We shall see. But for sure you’re going to find out that any internal logic in Chapter 1 hinges on our ability to use today’s word, zhī, with clarity.

Meanwhile, thank you for popping in here, being open to this new way of looking at The Way, and keeping me company. I’m enjoying the comments you’re sending to me. Keep ’em coming!

Categories
#1 Ér

and yet now, bearded—

ér

A beard. That’s the pictogram for ér in the old Western Zhou Bronze Inscription script that Lâozî seems likely to have used— and the modern character looks almost exactly the same:

而

Modern translations include and, and also, and yet, whereas, while, nevertheless, and from___to___, however the most common interpretation is but. “Literary” (which often means “older”) use includes you and your, but (ha!) Dào translators most often stick with some variation of but.

But. But… how do you get but from a beard? My guess is that with a beard, something indeed has changed from __ to ___. Even so, the first version of the thing is still there. And yet it also has this different quality now, at this time. Whereas and while there’s a smooth face underneath, nevertheless there’s definitely this hair on top.

(Some linguists say this pictogram depicts roots. Interestingly, I can see how that would carry some of those same implications: a very new different surface thing is co-existing with some previous something that’s still there, underneath. But the trend with the most reputable sources seems to be beard, so that’s what I’m using here.)

I loved looking into this word because it made me consider the subtle meanings and differences of all the little connecting words we use to show there’s a change from the preceding word/phrase to the following word/phrase. As far as I can tell (and remember, I don’t speak Chinese), ér seems to capture most of the aspects of but, possibly with an emphasis on while and whereas. So I wanted my translation to capture, in particular, the classic linking and juxtaposition of two things that are different plus the time change (now), the continuity (and, yet), and of course the original pictogram:

and yet now, bearded—

What do you think? Would it be better as simply “but” or maybe… “but, as if bearded?” Something else? Let me know your ideas and reactions by clicking on the comment counter in this post’s header or using the form in the Contact tab. I love my translation BUT also remain open! (Ha!)

Thanks for joining me here. I will see you tomorrow to look at an even tinier character with potentially even more impact on the Dâo‘s logic. (Ha again!)

UPDATE: in this later post, you’ll see where I changed ny translation of this term after digging deeper and discovering that its “literary” translation is you or your.

Categories
#1 Míng Wèi 謂

what it’s called—from the gut

wèi

“What’s in a name?” Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t Lâozî’s most pressing question in Chapter 1 of the Dáo Dé Jíng. Consider the different kinds of naming presented in this first chapter:

  • public courtesy-names: Inside the cháng character, we learned that when young men go through a ritual to become a grown man, they get a formal adult name as well as a jīn head cloth to cover their topknot. Women also received courtesy-names.
  • its personal, childhood name—what it whispers to identify itself by moonlight: This kind of name, míng (名), is what we in the U.S. would call your “given” name. It’s what everyone calls you when you’re a kid. In ancient China, after you received your adult, public courtesy-name, only your intimates would still call you by your childhood name and usually only in private. In the Western Zhou Bronze (WZB) script that I think Lâozî used, this beautiful character, was depicted by a pictogram of a moon:
  • what it’s called—from the gut: Lastly, there’s today’s word-of-the day: wèi. Modern definitions are to say, tell, or call. In the Dào, it’s usually translated as name but also as called, means, says or, is. For this reason, the reader usually can’t tell when Lâozî uses wèi and especially can’t tell if Lâozî was writing wèi or míng. But I think the two have different significances. The modern way of writing wèi is this compound character:

謂

This is another case in which I can’t find an image of the compound character in WZB Inscription script, though I can find images from that era of each of the sub-components. Of course, I like to imagine Lâozî mashing things up to invent these words, but I must confess I haven’t done enough research to know if these words appeared in documents earlier than the Dáo Dé Jíng, so this is just fancy for now.

The left sub-component in today’s character is considered to be a person speaking with their mouth. The pictogram looks like a person coming up out of a mouth): The right sub-component is itself another compound character meaning gizzard of a fowl or stomach and inexplicably, at least to me, depicted by a drawing of a field above a moon: This right-hand component also is pronounced wèi. For that reason, it’s considered to be a phonetic component that tells the reader how to pronounce the overall compound character. As you remember and will see again below, I like to include the phonetic part in my translation. You will notice however that I decided to stick with the established meaning—gizzard or stomach—and not specifically call out the sub-sub-characters because that starts to gets a little complicated even for me! I’m hoping this sub-character simply meant stomach to Lâozî, but who knows; maybe in the future I’ll explore the field/moon symbols.

So now you can see how I combined these components to hand-draw a WZB version of the compound character:

Initially, as you saw in this blog’s first post, I translated this as what it’s really called—from the gut. Because I thought the tendency of translators to stray into very confident, emphatic words—like is and means—combined with that “gut” image to make this form of naming seem more objectively true. I now think I may have gotten a little carried away (!) and have removed the word really. Now I’m using:

what it’s called—from the gut

But still, I do feel this kind of name’s somehow higher level than the very personal míng. Not better, just more universal.

What do you think? And what do you make of these three different kinds of naming all showing up in Chapter 1? Maybe it’s too early to tell, but somehow I don’t think there’s a lot of accidental coincidence in the way Lâozî puts characters together in a word, line, chapter, or book. Click on the comment icon in the header or use the comment form tab to let me know your questions, ideas, concerns, feelings, or experience with naming, here or in your own world.

Many thanks for joining me here—we’re close to the point where we can step back and look at Chapter 1 as a whole with all new eyes as to how the pictures there work together to… make a story… or lead us into the rest of the book.. or whatever it is we find they do! See you next time.

PS: Check out the new Dates, Dynasties, and Their Scripts tab if you’d like a simple timeline where you can see how everything dovetails together.

Last tinkered with 3/10/20.