Ch] _hsing sheng_ or [Ch][Ch] _hsieh sheng_, phonetic compounds.

4. [Ch][Ch] _hui i_, suggestive compounds based on a natural association
of ideas. To this class alone can the term "ideographs" be properly
applied.

5. [Ch][Ch] _chuan chu_. The meaning of the name has been much disputed,
some saying that it means "turned round"; e.g. [Ch] _mu_ "eye" is now
written [Ch]. Others understand it as comprising a few groups of
characters nearly related in sense, each character consisting of an
element common to the group, together with a specific and detachable
part; e.g. [Ch], [Ch], and [Ch], all of which have the meaning "old."
This class may be ignored altogether, seeing that it is concerned not
with the origin of characters but only with peculiarities in their use.

6. [Ch][Ch] _chia chieh_, borrowed characters, as explained above, that
is, characters adopted for different words simply because of the
identity of sound.

The order of this native classification is not to be taken as in any
sense chronological. Roughly, it may be said that the development of
writing followed the course previously traced--that is, beginning with
indicative signs, and going on with pictograms and ideograms, until
finally the discovery of the phonetic principle did away with all
necessity for other devices in enlarging the written language. But we
have no direct evidence that this was so. There can be little doubt that
phonetic compounds made their appearance at a very early date, probably
prior to the invention of a large number of suggestive compounds, and
perhaps even before the whole existing stock of pictograms had been
fashioned. It is significant that numerous words of daily occurrence,
which must have had a place in the earliest stages of human thought,
are expressed by phonetic characters. We can be fairly certain, at any
rate, that the period of "borrowed characters" did not last very long,
though it is thought that traces of it are to be seen in the habit of
writing several characters, especially those for certain plants and
animals, indifferently with or without their radicals. Thus [Ch][Ch] "a
tadpole" is frequently written [Ch][Ch], without the part meaning
"insect" or "reptile."

Styles of writing.

[Illustration]

In the very earliest inscriptions that have come down to us, the
so-called [Ch][Ch] _ku-wen_ or "ancient figures," all the
above-mentioned forms occur. None are wholly pictorial, with one or
tw