In recent years, when the public and the media talk about the issue of traditional Chinese characters and simplified characters, they almost always use the simplified character "love" to talk about it. For example, those who advocate the restoration of traditional Chinese characters, advocate the addition of traditional Chinese character education in primary schools, criticize the decline of social morality, criticize the decline of traditional culture, etc. all regard the simplification of the word "love" as the target of criticism. In fact, those who hold the view may have little or no understanding of the original meaning of the word "love" and how and when "love" began to be reduced to "love".
"Shuowen Jiezi" (hereinafter referred to as "Shuowen") is an authoritative work on analyzing glyphs and explaining character meanings written by Xu Shen in the Han Dynasty. "Shuowen" places "love" in the "kui" (an inverted form of "zhi", the original form of toe) rather than the heart. In other words, the original meaning of "love" is related to the toes rather than the heart.
Looking at the definition again, it becomes clearer: "Love, appearance. Congyu, voice." Duan Yucai, a great scholar of "Shuowen" in the Qing Dynasty, commented on "love" as: "Heart part" Said: "Hui Ye". Today's word "love" means "behavior", so "Xu Junhui" uses this word. Those who reprinted Xu Shu changed it to "爱", which clearly shows that "爱" is the phonetic character of "夊" and "爱", and its original meaning is "walking" ( The meaning symbol is heart and the sound symbol is the phonetic character of 桡, which is very close to the ancient sound of love). "Heart" is only a component of the sound symbol "" and has no direct relationship with the sound and meaning of the word "love". Using "爱" to express benevolence and favor is a false use.
In the unearthed pre-Qin documents, the word "" was used to express benevolence and charity. The inscription on the royal pot of Zhongshan in the Warring States Period is "deep virtue means a wise man will love you". However, in the unearthed documents of the Han Dynasty, the meaning has been changed to the word "love", such as "Love is the world" in the silk scroll "Laozi" from the Mawangdui Han Tomb. The pre-Qin literature handed down today basically uses the word "爱" when expressing benevolence, benefit, love, and righteousness, and rarely uses "". This is the result of later generations changing "" to "爱" when reprinting ancient books.