Clothing-and-hand graph

A hand handling clothing, probably while dressing. This shape appears among early forms associated with 袁 in Shang oracle-bone inscriptions, records carved on bone and shell. The same early graph also wrote 擐, a verb meaning “put on” or “wear.” Scholars differ on whether the hand is holding a garment or putting it on.

How is 𮕧 connected to 袁 and 牽?

It preserves a shape linked to both 袁 and 牽. In the 袁 family, later additions changed the shape; one later form, 遠 (“far”), adds a walking element to 袁.

A proposed link reaches 牽 (“lead or pull”). On a lacquer-painted box from the tomb of Zeng Hou Yi, a garment-and-hand form is written in 牽牛, the name of a star, in the Warring States period. A paleographic analysis traces the later component read as 牛 back to a hand shape. This reading links the old outline to 牽; it does not give 𮕧 a modern reading.

Why was this exact glyph preserved?

A Buddhist canon preserves a documented instance of this shape. The University of Tokyo’s SAT project traces this exact glyph to the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō, a printed Chinese Buddhist canon published from 1924 to 1934. That record locates this coded form in a source text; it does not date the ancient graph.