480531170

757
L1
銭
SEN, zeni
sen, coin, money
14 strokes
kozenismall change
KINSENmoney
SAISENoffertory
OBI ; bronze ; seal . The graph consists of
() 723 ‘offering table, altar; deity’, with
1135 (originally, a burial mound with piled-up
earth, or cairn, but now meaning ‘furthermore’)
759
L1
素
SO, SU, moto
element, base, bare
10 strokes
GENSOelement
YŌSOfactor
SUashibarefoot
Seal . The graph consists of / 29 ‘thread’
(‘silk thread’), and (originally, tree blossoms
or leaves hanging down); the function and
meaning of the latter element – which has been
modified through simplification in the block
script version – is disputed. One view takes as
a phonetic with an associated sense of ‘white’,
to give ‘white silk’ (Katō, Yamada, Mizukami), or
‘separate into two’ (Mizukami), to give ‘white silk
threads hanging separately’. Tōdō, by contrast,
considers ‘white threads/silk’ to be an extended
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen). Has 16
‘metal/gold’ (in ancient China, often used for
‘bronze’), and 545 (two halberds > ‘fight,
injure’) as phonetic with associated sense ‘tip
is scraped away’, to give ‘metal implement
with tip/edge scraped away’; taken to signify
tools – often agricultural implements – such as
spades, hoes, or knives. The connection with
coinage and money is that, dating from the first
millennium BC in China, there have survived
examples of metal currency (separate from
shell currency) actually in the shape of small
knives or spades, and featuring short inscrip-
758
祖
SO
ancestor
L3
9 strokes
SOSENancestors
SENZOancestors
SOFUBOgrandparents
tions; Qiu suggests that before the beginning
of the formal use of money, spades probably
served as a kind of currency in trade relations.
In Japan, a new monetary system was adopted
officially in 1871. The main unit in this decimal
system was the yen, so called because the yen
coins were round ( 4 ‘round, yen’), unlike the
earlier oblong coins. As a lesser monetary unit,
the ‘sen’ was adopted (one-hundredth of a yen);
sen coins are no longer legal as currency, but
the sen is still used sometimes in financial transactions.
KJ1970:626; YK1976:319; QX2000:258-9.
We suggest for the first mnemonic taking in
its meaning of ‘gold’, and for the second,‘ money.
Mnemonic: TWO GOLD HALBERDS REDUCED
TO MERE SEN COIN
Or: HAVE ENOUGH MONEY IN SEN COINS TO
BUY TWO HALBERDS
taken either as semantic and phonetic meaning
‘pile up, put on top’ (Katō, Yamada), or as
a phonetic with an associated sense of ‘past,
beginning’ (Mizukami, Ogawa). Either analysis
gives the overall meaning ‘shrine to the ancestral
deity’, later extended to being a general
term for ‘ancestors’. KJ1970:642; YK1976:323;
MS1995:v2:946-7; OT1968:721.
Mnemonic: FURTHERMORE, AT THE ALTAR
ONE WORSHIPS ONE’S ANCESTORS
sense, and the original meaning to be ‘the
original state’. Normally, however, the words
and meanings represented by individual graphs
progress from the concrete to the abstract,
not vice versa, so the first interpretation above
is probably the one to follow. Yamada gives
a useful view regarding the overall semantic
progression for this graph, namely ‘white silk’
generalized to ‘white’, then to ‘plain’ and ‘raw
material’; ‘element’ may be regarded as coming
within the same semantic spectrum. Mizukami
looks to identify a corresponding bronze form.
KJ1970:640; YK1976:323; MS1995:v2:1008-
9,v1:22; TA1965:368-71. We suggest taking the
upper part of the graph as an ‘odd’ variant of
315 ‘master’.
Mnemonic: THE ODD MASTER’S BARE
THREADS HAVE BASIC RAW ELEMENTS
The 185 Fifth Grade Characters 241