, which meant ten thousand gods. The Greeks borrowed it from the Indians also, and then the Third
Reich in Germany borrowed it from the Greeks. The Germans wrote it backwards, however. Chinese first wrote it like this It is pronounced MAN.
. The
, and finally ICHIMAN, one-ten-
, ten-
thousand, is ten thousand;
ten-thousand, is one hundred thousand.
The next group of characters take their form from weapons. These weapons are all the hand-held type, of course, since these were the only weapons the Chinese had to fight with in the days before they invented gunpowder. A picture of a bow and arrow
The final form of this character is
, means pull.
. It is pro-
nounced HIKU by itself and IN in compounds. This character is often written on the handle of one side of swinging doors. The handle on the other side has written on it the character for push.
IN-
R Y O K U , pulling-power, means gravity.
An arrow by itself full tip and feathers
the Chinese drew first with , then later squared it off to
. This character means arrow, and is pro108