"Qian" originated around the late Warring States Period, and its original meaning refers to scissors or cutting with scissors. In ancient books, "front" is often used to mean "forward", and the meaning of scissors is expressed by the word "cut".
Xu Shen said: "To move forward without progress is called stopping, and to stop is on the boat." From common sense, "stop" represents a person's feet, and stopping on the boat means that the person is standing on the bow. symbol.
The whole word means that although people do not walk, as the boat moves forward, people also move forward. The implication is very obvious. Zhuangzi said, "The one who can reach Yue State by sitting on it is a boat" (the one who can reach Yue State by sitting on it is a boat) is nothing more than an annotation of the previous word.
It is probably after the Spring and Autumn Period that "advance without progress" is regarded as the original meaning of "qian" and used to explain the glyph of "stop on the boat". An anecdote about Confucius recorded in "Hengbo Biography" cited in Volume 758 of "Taiping Yulan" can be used as a reference: Zigong was away for a long time and did not return. Confucius and his disciples divined and got the Ding hexagram. Everyone said, "There is no foot." ", Zigong will not come.
Only Yan Hui was smiling secretly. Confucius said, Yan Hui is smiling, it means that Zigong will come. Yan Hui said: The so-called "no feet" means that we are coming by boat and we are about to arrive.
Zigong came back the next morning, fulfilling Yan Hui's inference. The credibility of this story is of course limited, but "coming by boat" implies the previous word, and the idea of ??"the homeless came by boat" should have been representative at the time.
According to the analysis of oracle bone inscriptions, this word does not come from boat, but from "fan" (the ancient Chinese word for pan), which means "stop in the pan", which should mean washing feet. Descendants are used as forward and forward, which is a pretentious relationship.
In ancient times, the shapes of Zhou and Fan were relatively close, so it was easy to write them incorrectly. It is possible to write Zhou as Fan (pan) and Fan as Zhou.
It is true to say that it evolved from oracle bone inscriptions to bronze inscriptions. From the Shang Dynasty to the Zhou Dynasty, the plate for washing feet gradually turned into a boat as a means of transportation; although "foot washing" and "taking a boat" both belong to Comprehensive range, but too far apart from each other.
No matter how the glyphs evolve, the ancients always found a way to make what they thought was a correct explanation based on the changed or even distorted glyphs, and even described it as the original meaning of the character.