The Six Books are the basic principles of Chinese character composition. The Six Books are mentioned in Zhou Rites, but the specific content is not explained. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen elaborated on the construction principles of Chinese characters of "Six Books" in "Shuowen Jiezi": pictogram, referring to things, understanding, pictophonetic, transliteration, and pretense.
Pictographic: This method of making characters is to depict the object according to its appearance characteristics. The so-called painting is to follow the object. The four characters such as sun, moon, mountain, and water were originally used to depict patterns of the sun, moon, mountain, and water, and later gradually evolved into the current shape.
Referring to things: This refers to the method of expressing abstract things. The so-called "each refers to his own thing and thinks of it". Ru Bu writes "Shang" above it, and Ren writes "Xia" below it.
Phonetic: This is a unique sound represented by a specific shape (root) in the text. For example: Hu, this character can also be a root. Combined with different attribute roots, it can be synthesized into: butterfly, lake, gourd, hu, 鐐, etc., and with the same pronunciation (some only have the same initial consonant), the expression Different things. However, due to changes in the phonology of ancient and modern languages, many pictophonetic characters of the same type in ancient times no longer have the same phonemes in today's Mandarin.
Knowing: This word-making method is to combine two radicals to derive new meanings. For example, when "sun" and "moon" are combined, sunlight plus moonlight becomes "bright". The word "人" and the word "言" are combined into the word "信", which means what a person has said in the past; "faith" means that this person always abides by what he has said.
Annotation: This is used when two words are annotations for each other, which are synonymous with each other but have different shapes. Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty explained: "To build a similar poem, we agree to accept each other, and it is always the same as Kao and Lao Shi." , how do you say this? These two words, "kao" in ancient times, can be used as "longevity". "Lao" and "kao" are connected and have the same meaning. That is to say, the old person is kao, and the person who is kao is old. The Book of Songs' "Daya·Pu Pu" also says: "The King of Zhou has a longevity test." Su Shi's "Qu Yuan Pagoda Poetry" also has a saying about the ancients who will not die, so why bother to test it. The word "kao" in it all means "old". What is particularly noteworthy is that later generations of philologists also made a lot of explanations for Xu Shen's aforementioned definition. It includes three categories: "Xing Zhuo theory, Sound Zhuo theory, and Meaning Zhuo theory". However, some people think that these three theories are not comprehensive enough. Mr. Lin Yun, a contemporary ancient calligrapher, also explained that "Zhuan Zhu" is a form (root) recording two Two words with completely different pronunciations and meanings. For example, "broom" and "wife" and "mother" and "female" in oracle bone inscriptions, etc.
Borrowing: In short, this method is to borrow a word to express something else. Generally speaking, when there is a new thing that cannot be described, a root with similar pronunciation or similar attributes is used to express this new thing. For example: "And" originally refers to the right hand (first seen in oracle bone inscriptions), but later it was used as the meaning of "also". Smell means to listen to something with your ears. For example, in "University·Chapter 7" there is "turn a blind eye, hear but not hear, eat without knowing the taste", but it was later used as a verb for smell (although some people think this is a misuse).
To summarize the above six books, the first two are "methods of creating characters"; the second two are "methods of forming characters"; the last two are "methods of using characters". These six principles are the theories of calligraphy summarized by ancient philology scholars. The composition rules of Chinese characters contained in it have evolved over a long period of time and are not the original creation of any one person.