Page 16 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

Introduction 9
vii

The genesis of this book goes back to the studies which my teacher, Ferdinand Lessing,
published in the periodical Sinica in 1934–5. To him also I owe my first introduction to
modern colloquial Chinese. For the lexical material in my book I have drawn to some
extent on Western and Japanese specialist literature, in so far as it was available to me,
but the main source has, of course, been Chinese literature itself, the novels, the theatre
and, on occasion, the erotica. I have also learned much from paintings and frescoes, from
folk-art and from popular beliefs. It is impossible to list all my sources: they would add
unacceptably to the book’s length, and in any case, most of these sources are accessible
only to sinologists.
My selection of symbols is limited to those which are still in active use today, or
which are, at least, still understood. The symbolism used in ancient China – i.e. the China
of some two thousand years ago – differed quite widely from that described in my book;
and in the absence of elucidatory source material, the meaning of this ancient symbolism
must remain doubtful. Attempts have of course been made to decode it: it is enough to
mention the names of Carl Hentze and Anneliese Bulling. In very many cases, however,
the researcher is left with nothing more to go on but his own more or less inspired
guesswork; and the Chinese experts to whom appeal is often made rarely have anything
better to offer. As an example, see the article in this book on Tao-tie – an extremely
frequent symbol in ancient China, for whose use no satisfactory explanation has been
found in the intervening two thousand years.
Furthermore, my book is concerned only with those symbols which were and are
familiar to all Chinese. Specifically Buddhist and Taoist symbols are only occasionally
mentioned. There are indeed many of these special symbols, but they are familiar only to
a restricted circle of adepts and specialists. Such an avowedly specialist work on
symbolism as that by Erwin Rousselle, breaking as it does completely fresh ground,
deserves very special praise.
I have not attempted to deal with the corpus of symbols developed and used by
carpenters, masons and smiths in the course of their work. My book is intended to be no
more than an introduction to the subject, and much remains to be done before the

treasure-trove of Chinese symbolism can be thoroughly evaluated.
It now remains for me to express my thanks to all those who have helped me in this
enterprise: first and foremost, my publisher, Mr Ulf Diederichs, who not only improved
the text stylistically but also provided many quotations from scholarly works in the
sinological field. My thanks are also due to my friend and colleague, Professor Alvin
Cohen, to Mrs Hwei-lee Chang for the Chinese calligraphy in each article, and to the
Ostasiatisches Museum in Cologne for help in providing the illustrations.
Wolfram Eberhard