[reposted and edited from earlier post]
I have come to realise that by the general logics that govern the Sinoglyph system, it is very likely that in the earliest days of the Hwahsia 華夏 civilisation, we used to have a matriarchal society.
A character is more likely to be a pictograph if it’s referent is observed by an earlier stage of the Sinitic civilisation. And an object that was not observed because it was unheard of or simply non-existent in the socio-ecological make up, but later observed as the civilisation expanded or came into contact with new objects, would more likely be represented (if it were represented at all by a single Sinoglyph) by phono-semantic characters 形聲字 or compound semantic characters 會意字 — with the former being much more likely than the latter.
A good series of examples to illustrate the truth of these claims would be the animal characters, where we shall take a look at some that are pictographs, and some that are not. Cow 牛, ram 羊, horse 馬, dog 犬, fish 魚, tortoise 龜, bird 鳥, small-bird 隹, tiger 虎, pig 豕, zi (a legendary creature)豸, deer鹿, scorpion萬, bug (wug)[1] 虫, snake 它 (蛇), elephant 象 and the like tell us much about the ancient ecological environment where the ancient Chinese civilisation first came into being. They tell us that even though nowadays there hardly any tigers and elephants left in China proper, there used to be such creatures roaming the land. And of course, the presence of fantastical creatures also inspire much rogue imagination. On the other hand, the non-pictographic characters representing animals such as cat 貓, jaguar 豹, crab蟹, shrimp 蝦 tell us they only came in later in the picture (pun intended). These are all phono-semantic characters, and their semantic components are 豸for the first pair and 虫 for the latter pair. This essentially maps cats, and jaguars into the same ontological kind as zi 豸, and crabs and shrimps into the same class as bugs 虫.
But it might not be merely a classificational scheme. Sure, the ancient Chinese classified cats and jaguars with zi perhaps because they saw them as the same kind. But why do they group cats and jaguars under zi but not under themselves? Why not group jaguars under a pictogram of “cat”, as modern biological schemes would? One reason might be because they simply didn’t have cats in their ecological environment then.
Cats became widely known to China in the Tang Dynasty from Persia (one thousand years after the Chinese character system was invented), jaguars and leopards were known only when China came into contact with Africa, and fresh water creatures such as crabs and shrimps, were only known to China when the civilisation expanded, annexed, and assimilated the water-based civilisation of the South, especially of the Tai Lake region. And it makes sense — where on earth would you be able to find crabs and shrimps in the muddy water of the yellow river? Or in Henan where it is completely land-locked? And of course, oftentimes it is the most general of concepts that are first recorded as a kind 類, and then objects of that kind are then identified through use of the phono-semantic characters. We can see this in how the characters for tree 木, metal 金, fish 魚 were first identified and given pictographic Sinoglyph, and objects of that kind were then subsequently given characters built on using the primitive Sinoglyph of which kind they belong to.
But there is another way to look at it. Perhaps a character is given to a particular kind, because that kind was socio-constructively deemed to be significant and important in that very society — and not necessarily because it was simply given us to by nature. This is particularly true of the characters who referents are man-made constructions (in every sense of the word): car車, silk 糸, roads行, weaponry戈, rice-paddy fields田, bow弓, etc.
A very very interesting observation can then be made. If we take a look at the characters for Man (capitalised and not necessarily masculinated), the Sinoglyphs give us 人. If we are then more specific about the genders, we are given female (woman)女 and male (man)男. This is very interesting because the character for female 女 is indecomposable, whereas the male IS decomposable into rice-paddy田and power力. The male is therefore one who toils in the fields with his power. This is very interesting because from our logic above, this entails the ancient Chinese likely saw the female to be prior to the male in sociological hierarchal terms. It is also likely that the character for the male came after the female, as pictographs, being more primitive than compound ideographs, are likely to be created prior to compounds time-wise. The conclusion of the unimportance of man in ancient China is perhaps further strengthened by the entry on the very character in the Shuowen 說文解字：男：丈夫也。从田从力。言男用力於田也 — — “male: husband, belong to rice-paddy and power, so as to say males use their power on the fields.”- Isn’t that extraordinary? The male is but only a husband! A tool that is only good to work the fields! A claim that precedes Valerie Solanas’s earth-shattering proclamation that “man is but only a walking dildo” by easily four thousand years!
There are other evidence that suggests ancient China (Pre-Qin and Pre-Zhou, like Xia-era China) was matriarchal. Wang Li 王力’s dictionary entry on the female radical contained a descriptive analysis and taxonomy of the kinds of concepts associated with the female radical, and the taxonomy contained six general categories: 1. Characters that indicate familial relations, 2. Characters related to hierarchal positions, area of employment, age, 3. Surname characters, 4. Characters related to marriage, 5. Characters related to female bodily appearance, and 6. pejoratives and derogatory terms.
The surname characters are most supportive of the matriarchy theory. Ancient surnames like 姬, 姜, 姒, 媯, 姚 all contained the female radical. In fact, 姬 was the royal house surname of the Zhou dynasty. And while we are talking about surnames, we need to understand in ancient times 姓 and 氏 were two different concepts, and what character is contained within 姓？
These are the mainstream arguments advanced to argue that ancient Sinitic Civilisation was matriarchal. There are also other isolated pieces of evidence that indicate that Ancient Chinese civilisation placed more emphasis and prestige on the female — especially through the various almost impeccably detailed characterisation of the female body in all its configurations and glory. The character 身, now meaning “body”, was literally a pregnant woman. The character for “mother” 母, was literally the character 女 with two dots added to accentuate and draw attention to her breasts embiggened by pregnancy. The character 乃, now borrowed and never returned by the rebus principle to mean “is”, originally meant milk, as in 奶, or rather, the milk-producing breast — as it is a sideways portrayal of the breast. The obscure character 毓 with uncertain modern meaning, was in fact an extraordinarily elaborate picture of a mother 母 giving birth to a child 子, who is drawn upside-down to make 𠫓 because the head comes out of the vagina first, while the 川-like component is in fact the Amniotic fluid bursting forth as the gestation sac is ruptured during delivery. Alas, even the now rebus-borrowed character for “also” and other grammatical particles 也 was literally — well, let us consult the ShuoWen: 也：女陰也。象形。What does it say? It says “也, the yang of the female (the female genitalia, i.e.: the vagina). A pictograph.”[2] The Sichuanese academic Liu Shahe 流沙河 even argues that the character 家 meant not “family” in its most ancient meaning but “the act of a man taking a male pig to his wife’s household to breed with the female swine owned by that family — so to enter and be adopted by that family.” (I personally I find this interpretation to be too astounding but that’s what you get). This all together, I think, offers a reasonably strong and interesting case for the claim that ancient Chinese society was matriarchal.
This would also naturally mean that the patriarchal make-up of the Sinitic Civilisation we are seeing today, in language, writing, and every component that makes up a civilisation, were but the result of some shift that occurred some time ago in the ancient past that usurped the matriarchy and replaced it with a patriarchy.
Naturally, this whole theory that there used to be a Matriarchal society and that ancient Chinese society was matriarchal, are both considered to be (as far as I know) deeply extraordinary claims by conventional anthropological opinions.
[1] Some Western sinologists argue that neither “bug” nor “worm” adequate captures the ontological status of 虫, so they have coined the term “wug”.
[2] There is considerable debate whether this entry from the Shuowen is credible. Some other theorists believe 也and 它 were bifurcations of the same character — in which case, the original version would be referring to snakes or wugs but not the vagina.
