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the real meaning in expression. It looks prosaic from outside, but
inside contain deep and far meaning. The most two famous “enigmatic
language” records, which were the phases that Chun Yu Kun wanted
to convince Qi Wei King “there is a big bird resting in king’s garden,
it has not flown and it also hasn’t cried for three years”, also
Shao Ru Zi tried to admonish Wu King fighting Jing “The mantis stalks
the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind”. The first one used analogy
method and the latter one also used movement. They all speak out
of meaning, and really mean something, there were really typical
“enigmatic language”
In these two stories, we could see some buffoonery meaning.
In fact, “enigmatic language” was the trick that “comedians” used
to abolish tedium and made jokes to please liege lord in early
Qin and Han dynasty, it was just one kind of entertainments or
games. However, someone liked Chun Yu Kun and Shao Ru Zi who used
those kinds of traceless and buffooning talk to mock and remonstrate
against monarch skillfully, had showed great results. Therefore,
literati and officialdom started to pay attention on “enigmatic
language”. Like Dong Fang Shao in HanWu monarch period, he was
one of famous scholars and “implication experts”. <Wen Xiao
Diao Long-Xie Yin> was written by Liu Xie had said: “Since
Wei dynasty, not comedians, but gentlemen liked to use implied
words and riddles”. Since then “riddle” appeared formally, and
became a new literature game for scholars.
According to Liu Xie’s explanation, “riddle” was “resound its
words, confused people”. The word “confuse” was intentionally
to confuse people with words various usage. It could use words
to make riddles was one of characteristics in Chinese Han words.
In the “Cao E Bei Mi” was written by Cai Zi, Eight words “huang
juan you fu wai son ji jiu (黃絹幼婦外孫虀臼)” had implied four words
“jue miao hao ci(絕妙好辭)”. “huang juan” was one kind of colors (colored
silk); “you fu” meant teenage girl (young girl); “wai son” meant
daughter’s son (grandson); “ji jiu” meant spicy (ji was one kind
of spice plants, it was often quashed in stone mortar before eating,
jiu in this sentence meant ji jiu and used to take spices, combined
spices as part of phase – ancient time writing). It was fully
used the shape of han characters – “separated-combined character”
(words could be separated and also could be combined), and it
was first developed skill in riddle language.
In Han Wei six dynasty period, scholars’ riddles were spread around,
and the major body was “separated-combined form” (separated or
combined character). The famous Kong Rong had written a poem which
hided six words “Lu Guo Kong Rong Wan Ju”; others like Yang Xiu
used the word “combined (合)” to imply “one person with one mouth”;
IV An in Jin dynasty had written a word “feng (鳳)” to deride JiXi
as “ordinary bird”; Xu Zhi Cai in Bei Qi dynasty mocked the family
name of Wang Xin,“ if it added Yan(言)”, it become the word Kuang
(誑, means deceive); if added Quan (犬), it became the world Kuang
(狂,means crazy); if it added neck and feet (頸足)”, it become the
word Ma (馬, means horse); if it added horn and tail (角尾)”, it
become the word Yang (羊, means sheep). They all use the same way
to make riddles. Even in the Tang dynasty, using separated-combined
form to make riddles was really popular. For example in the legend
story “Xie Xiao E Chuan”, LeeGong used the riddle “車中猴，門東草，禾中走，一日夫”
to imply the enemies who killed her father were Shen Lan and Shen
Chun. This was a great example.
In general speaking, from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty, it was
the time to originate Chinese riddle. Riddle makers often liked
to use character shape and it was less formal. It was just fun
to take the shape of the character.
After Song dynasty, “ShangMi(商謎)”(Shang meant discussion and study)
was incited by the WaShe artists . Riddle guessing was scholars
interests and became townspeople entertainments. At the same time,
riddle making had a great development, it could combine with the
meaning of words and opened up its imagination. For example, FoYin
monk used two hundreds and fifty Tong Qian (ancient money) to
make a ShangMi with Su Dong-Po. Dong-Po had to think for a while
and he suddenly realized there were four words on one Tong Qian(Mou
Mou Tong Bao某某通寶). If there were two hundreds and fifty of Tong
Qian, it would have one thousand words. Therefore, the answer
is the book called <Qian Zi Wen (千字文)>. This riddle had
used the principle of “words as articles ”.
In the Song dynasty, picture riddles also had been showed. In
the SongZhengHe year, painters like to hide few verses of poem
in their painting. For example, they would paint several butterflies
chasing after the horse which was to express the meaning of horse
running fast on the field. In the painting of SuWuMuYang(蘇武牧羊),
he was lying on the grass and several butterflies was flying around
him which was to express the meaning of homesick. Both painting
were not just paintings, they had contained some deep and far
meanings. It had added the fun of the painting. Another good example
was the poem made by Su Dong-Po “長亭短景無人畫，老大橫拖瘦竹筇；回首斷雲斜日暮，曲江倒蘸側山峰”(see
the picture), he used the shape, length and position of character
to express it. It was a very unique skill.
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