CJK Unified Ideograph-7B35

It names a bamboo mold or a rule. Shuowen glosses it as “law,” tying 竹 to bamboo-strip law; later glosses also use 笵 for a bamboo mold. The earliest clear record verified here is that Eastern Han entry.

Meaning moved from making forms to setting standards. The craft set is 型 for earth, 鎔 for metal, 模 for wood, and 笵 for bamboo. 範 began with a separate ritual sense but later overlaps in mold, model, and norm; 范, originally a grass character, carries those senses in modern usage. A 7th-century Asuka-period 塼仏笵 shows the mold sense in Buddhist production. Keep the graph your source uses.