買（mǎi）To buy - The Evolution of Chinese Character

 

In the previous videos, I have introduced two categories for classifying characters: pictograms 象形字 (山、刀、貝) and ideograms 指事字（刃）. In this video, I want to introduce another category: compound ideographs 會意字, also called logical aggregates. Compound ideographs are compounds of two or more pictographic, or ideographic characters, to suggest the meaning of the new word to be represented. In other words, compound ideographs are like jigsaw puzzles, putting together characters to logically create a new meaning, often abstract.

Here we have two pieces of a character puzzle.

The first piece: What character is this? That's right, this is 貝, I've already introduced it in the previous video.

The second piece: What about this character? Let’s see the picture it originated from. It's a net. 網（also written as 网、冈、罒）

If we put these two pieces together, which character can be created?

The ancient Chinese people used this character to express the action of “buying” 買.

It makes sense! To buy something, it’s just like catching something valuable with a net, or putting something valuable in a bag.

The next obvious question is: how did the ancient Chinese people express the verb “to sell” with a character?

Originally, the meaning of 買 was “to buy” or “to sell”. In an excavated document from the Qin state during the Warring States period, we can see 買 was often used as ”to sell”. In order to distinguish “to buy” and “to sell” more clearly, the character 賣 was born. Therefore, the earliest form of 賣 appeared during the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC).

The character 賣 is also a compound ideograph.

It's made up of three pieces: 出 (which means “out”)、罒 (which means “net”) and 貝( which means “shell”) When you sell something, you take something valuable out from your net or bag, and give it to the buyer.

It’s interesting, right?

However, you may be wondering why the upper part of 賣 we use today is "士" instead of “出".

This is because there has been an erroneous change（訛變） in the transformation of the character from the Small Seal Script form to the Clerical Script one.

Looking at the evolution of  賣, we can clearly see that “出” was gradually and incorrectly written into "士". The U-shaped strokes in “出” were flattened little by little,  turning them into horizontal strokes that resemble the character “士” more. This simple, but oblivious, mistake led to the character 賣 losing an important part of its meaning.Nowadays, the correct way of writing 賣 is with “士”, not “出”. Don't forget!

Note that 買 and 賣 have the same spelling "mai", but different tones. 買 is third tone. 賣 is fourth tone.

Here is the evolution of 買.

Notice that the net had different ways of writing in ancient times.

Here is the evolution of 賣.

Notice the erroneous change from 出 to 士.

Let’s see how to write 買.

The general rule of writing Chinese characters is from top to bottom and from left to right. So the first step is the upper part, the part of the net（罒）. Vertical strokes go from top to bottom and, in this case, horizontal strokes go from left to right. There are five strokes in this top part.

The second step is the lower part 貝. We have learnt it in the previous video. We repeat similar steps as 罒 before, but now we do horizontal strokes instead of vertical ones inside the box. For the final pair of diagonal dots, remember that they’re also written from top to bottom.

If you want to write 賣, the first step is the upper part 士. The first stroke is a horizontal line. The second stroke is vertical. The third stroke lies under the first stroke. Note that the third stroke must be shorter than the first stroke.

 The lower parts 罒 and 貝, are written the same as 買. 

Let’s see that again at normal speed.

This is 買

This is 賣

Finally I want to share a short but interesting story of the characters 買 and 賣. In Chinese, there is an idiom “買櫝還珠”. The literal translation is ”buying the case but returning the pearl”

This idiom originated from a classical text by Legalist philosopher 韓非子  written during the Warring States period. It says:

A man from the State of Chu sold pearls in the State of Zheng. One time, he used the finest wood and precious stones to make an exquisite case for the pearls. A man from the State of Zheng bought the case but returned the pearl to him.

韓非子 told this story to say that substantial content (the pearl) is more important than external decoration (the case). People are often fascinated by beautiful words but forget the message of such words. We can also use this story to inspire us in our lives.