ll characters, however, do not yield at once to the application of our
rule. [yao] _yao_ "to will, to want," is composed of [xi] "west" and
[nue] "woman." What has western woman to do with the sign of the future?
In the days before writing, the Chinese called the waist of the body
_yao_. By and by they wrote [yao], a rude picture of man with his arms
akimbo and his legs crossed, thus accentuating the narrower portion, the
waist. Then, when it was necessary to write down _yao_, "to will," they
simply borrowed the already existing word for "waist." In later times,
when writing became more exact, they took the indicator [yue] "flesh,"
and added it wherever the idea of waist had to be conveyed. And thus
[yao] it is still written, while _yao_, "to will, to want," has usurped
the character originally invented for "waist."

In some of their own identifications native Chinese scholars have often
shown themselves hopelessly at sea. For instance, [tian] "the sky,"
figuratively God, was explained by the first Chinese lexicographer,
whose work has come down to us from about one hundred years after the
Christian era, as composed of [yi] "one" and [da] "great," the "one great"
thing; whereas it was simply, under its oldest form, [Illustration], a
rude anthropomorphic picture of the Deity.

Even the early Jesuit Fathers of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, to whom we owe so much for pioneer work in the domain of
Sinology, were not without occasional lapses of the kind, due no doubt
to a laudable if excessive zeal. Finding the character [chuan], which is
the common word for "a ship," as indicated by [zhou], the earlier
picture-character for "boat" seen on the left-hand side, one ingenious
Father proceeded to analyse it as follows:--

[zhou] "ship," [ba] "eight," [kou] "mouth" = eight mouths on a
ship--"the Ark."

But the right-hand portion is merely the phonetic of the character; it
was originally [qian] "lead," which gave the sound required; then the
indicator "boat" was substituted for "metal."

So with the word [jin] "to prohibit." Because it could be analysed into
two [mu][mu] "trees" and [qi] "a divine proclamation," an allusion was
discovered therein to the two trees and the proclamation of the Garden
of Eden; whereas again the proper analysis is into indicator and
phonetic.

Nor is such misplaced ingenuity confined to the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1892 a Protestant missionary published and circulated broadc