The Shell Bone Script for character Book
A hand (upper right) holding a brush (center top) writing characters. The square shape resembling a mouth represents bamboo slips, animal skins, or other writing materials. Book means to write, functioning as a verb. The modern concept of a book (书, book) is the result of writing, functioning as a noun.
The Shell Bone Script for character Text
It depicts patterns carved on stone. The original meaning of Book is to carve characters or draw patterns. Where were they carved? On stones, tortoise shells, and ox bones—what we now call Oracle Bone Script.
The Seal Script for character Book
Though more complex, it still shows a hand holding a brush. The long vertical stroke in the middle represents the brush, with three fingers on top and three dots below representing the brush bristles. The character "日" at the bottom represents paper and the written characters on it.
The Small Seal Script for character Text
Similar to the Oracle Bone Script, it still represents patterns with no significant changes.
The Clerical Script for character Book
The top part shows five fingers, with the vertical stroke in the middle representing the brush. Though it doesn't pierce through, many people write it through, which is not incorrect. The character "曰" at the bottom represents paper and the characters written on it.
The Clerical Script for character Text
Similar to the Small Seal Script for Wén.
The original meaning of Book is to write. Calligraphy (书法, Writing Rules - Calligraphy) means the method or rules of writing, specifically brush writing. Strictly speaking, it refers to brush writing, not the modern hard pen calligraphy, as hard pens were introduced from the West only about a hundred years ago.
Printing books only came about after the invention of paper, and Volume - 册/冊 became one book in a series. This is because writing on bamboo slips allowed for very little text; if a book was completed and then tied together, it might be too bulky to bind together, necessitating division into multiple volumes. After the invention of paper, which is thin, it became easy to bind an entire book together, eliminating the need for multiple volumes. The original meaning of writing for book disappeared, and it became a noun meaning book. The verb form of book meaning to write only remains in some phrases like calligraphy (书法) and writing (书写).
The original meaning of Text is to carve characters. In ancient times, people said "Text Body", which is now called tattoo, meaning to carve characters onto the body.
The Shell Bone Script for character Volume
The four vertical strokes in the middle represent bamboo slips with written characters, and the oval shapes represent strings tying the bamboo slips together to form a volume, which was the form of a book at that time.
The Big Seal Script for character Volume
It still shows bamboo slips tied together with strings.
The small seal script for character Volume
Similar to older scripts.
The clerical script for character Volume
We refer to Shell Bone Script because it involves carving characters onto tortoise shells and ox bones. Although Shell Bone Script was also written on bamboo slips, we only find the bone inscriptions because bones can last thousands of years without decaying, unlike bamboo slips which decay and cannot be preserved. Seal Script was both carved on stones and written on bamboo slips. Li Si's "The Stele of Mount Tai" was carved on stone, so we refer to it as Seal Script (篆书, seal book) or Seal Text (篆文, seal text). However, we refer to Clerical Script (隶书, clerical book), Regular Script (楷书, standard book), Running Script (行书, running book), and Cursive Script (草书, cursive book), not as Clerical Text (隶文, clerical text), Regular Text (楷文, standard text), Running Text (行文, running text), or Cursive Text (草文, cursive text), because these are not carved but written on paper.
The Pinyin for the 文 is Wen2, for 书/書 is Shu1, for 册 is Ce4.
