Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty defined the Six Books in "Shuowen Jiezi" as follows:
1. One means to refer to things, and those who refer to things can be discerned by looking at them. It can be seen that Shang and Xia are also;
The first is called Zhishi, and the meaning of Zhishi is: the shape and structure of the characters may seem familiar, but the meaning of the characters can only be known after inspection. The two characters Shang and Xia belong to This example.
2. The second is pictography. Pictograms are drawn into objects, and they are drawn according to the body, such as the sun and the moon; The object is drawn using the method of painting, and the twists and turns of the strokes are consistent with the posture of natural objects. This is the case with the words "sun and moon".
3. The third is called phonogram. The phonogram is named after something, taking an example to complement each other, such as rivers; Compared with the sound symbols and meaning symbols that form characters, the word "jianghe" is an example of this.
4. The fourth is Huiyi. The person who understands the meaning is analogous to Heyi, so as to see the meaning. Wu Xin is also; The graphemes related to affairs constitute a character; by blending the meanings of the graphemes, the meaning or purport of the new character can be known, as is the case with the word Wu Xin.
5. The fifth day is called zhuanzhu. The person who transfers zhuanzhu builds a class, agrees to accept each other, and always tests; As the head and as the root, generic characters are created. The generic characters inherit the shape, sound and meaning of the root character and have the same meaning as the root character. Kaolao Erzi is an example of this.
6. The sixth one is borrowing under false pretenses. Those who borrow under false pretenses have no words at all. They rely on the voice to entrust things, and the commander-in-chief is so.
The sixth is called borrowing. The meaning of borrowing is: instead of creating a word for something, according to the name of something, find a homophone to represent it. The word "Ling Chang" falls into this category. example.
Extended information
The use of the Six Books
In fact, the ancients did not create Chinese characters after having the Six Books. Because Chinese characters had developed quite systematically during the Shang Dynasty, there were no records of the Six Books at that time. Liushu is a system that later generations summarized by analyzing Chinese characters.
However, after the "Six Books" system was established, people used this system as the basis when they created new characters. It seems that "軚" (dài) and "逿" (āi) are phonetic characters, "妚", "convex" and "彇" (dàng) are characters for things, and "瑑" and "奀" (ēn) are characters for meaning. .
In oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, pictographic characters account for the majority. This is because drawing things is the most direct way to create words. However, as writing continues to develop, there are more and more things that require careful division of labor. For example, things like "carp", "dace", "carp", "loach", etc. are all fish, and it is difficult to use pictographic methods to create characters carefully. Draw their characteristics and differences.
As a result, phonograms became the most convenient method. Just use the phonogram "fish" next to them to explain their genus, and then use the phonetic phonograms with similar pronunciations to distinguish these characters. Also because pictophonetic characters are very efficient in creating new characters, less than half of the characters in the Oracle era were pictophonetic, but in modern times, 80% of Chinese characters are pictophonetic.