From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 05:17:03 EST
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 13:39:23 -0500 (EST), Thomas Chan wrote:
>
> The entry for U+534D in the _Hanyu Da Zidian_, vol. 1, p. 51 (as indicated
> in unihan.txt) includes a quote that it was originally not a Han
> character, "wan ben fei zi ...", suggesting that it now is. There are
> also serifs shown in that dictionary and the _Kangxi Zidian_ for both
> characters.
>
> Couldn't the above two characters be considerd a "CJK" or "IDEOGRAPHIC"
> version (like the spaces, zero, punctuation, brackets, etc. in the "CJK
> Symbols and Punctuation" block)?
>
If memory serves me, the swastika was formally designated a Chinese ideograph by
the redoubtable Empress Wu of the Tang dynasty during the late 7th century.
Empress Wu had a penchant for creating new ideographs, and decreed that the
Buddhist swastika symbol should henceforth be considered a Chinese ideograph to
be pronounced WAN4 (a deliberate homophone for U+842C "10,000"). This is why,
unexpectedly to some, the swastika symbols are found in the CJK Ideograph block
rather than elsewhere.
Incidentally, U+534D and U+5350 are rarely used within running text in Chinese.
In the decorative arts the swastika motif is generally described as WAN4ZI4
<842C, 5B57> "WAN ideograph", as in the word WAN4ZI4JIN1 <842C, 5B57, 5DFE>, a
type of turban with a swastika decoration that was the height of fashion during
the Ming dynasty.
Andrew
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