Search for Lishu character possible?

CWTurner

Member
I would like to find a particular Lishu character from a scroll I have seen, but can't figure out if it is possible to do this <without> knowing the modern character form. And I don't! Can anyone advise if this is possible? I tried handwriting the character in Li style but no luck.
 

Shun

状元
Hi CWTurner,

it probably can't be done automatically by drawing a 隶书 character in a character recognizer, but if you can find a table of all 2000-4000 common 隶书 characters, finding a particular character should be a relatively quick process. (It should be even quicker if they are ordered by radicals, of course.)

You could also run a couple of guesses through this Chinese character search engine, it has a lot of pictures of 隶书:


Hope this helps (at least a bit),

Shun
 

JD

状元
I would like to find a particular Lishu character from a scroll I have seen, but can't figure out if it is possible to do this <without> knowing the modern character form. And I don't! Can anyone advise if this is possible? I tried handwriting the character in Li style but no luck.
You could post a picture and see if anybody recognizes it.
 

CWTurner

Member
I've not been able to find the character in the Li dictionaries I have. Thanks for the suggestions. Here is a photo of the character, taken from Deng Shiru's four hanging scrolls of "Master Cheng's Admonition on Seeing, Hearing, Words and Actions":
Cheng.jpeg


Thanks for all the help.
 

Shun

状元
You're welcome!

Right after rizen: I'm not a 隶书 expert, but shouldn't it be this character (a variant form of 哲, with the two horizontal stroke having been merged into one)?

IMG_3131.png

I've enabled the full set of recognizable characters under Settings > Handwriting Input.
 

jurgen85

榜眼
You could ask Chinese StackExchange, they often have good answers to these kinds of questions. In my amateur opinion it could be 喆, as 土 tǔ and 士 shì were historically substituted in other characters like 在.
 

CWTurner

Member
Ah, I was thinking it was "cao" the grass radical over one horizontal stroke. rizen and Shun I think you are correct, certainly makes sense in the translation I do have of this calligraphy. I am very grateful to you both for the help. I have a couple of other characters that are unclear, that I think I'll put on Chinese StackExchange, jurgen85, thank you very much too.
 

JD

状元
Ah, I was thinking it was "cao" the grass radical over one horizontal stroke. rizen and Shun I think you are correct, certainly makes sense in the translation I do have of this calligraphy. I am very grateful to you both for the help. I have a couple of other characters that are unclear, that I think I'll put on Chinese StackExchange, jurgen85, thank you very much too.

Did you try turning on the full handwriting stroke recognition (as @Shun said) and see if it finds anything? When I tried drawing your posted pic, it popped right up in Pleco as one of the suggestions. You could try that with your other images.
 

CWTurner

Member
JD, yes, as soon as I saw Shun's post-- and I am continually surprised by the parts of Pleco I haven't utilized! : ) Your suggestion is a good one and I'll keep niggling around in my searches.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JD
Top