On the Chinese Characters 圂 and 厠

Abstract

There is a type of burial offering pottery in the Han period (s. the figure on p. 109), mistaken by Laufer for a granary, expressed by such characters as 〓, 倉, or 京. However it actually corresponds to the ideograph 〓 (hun), which appears in the Yin site, and means a privy. 〓 consists of 豕 (pig) and 〓 (a pen which encloses it). The method of using human excrement to feed pigs seems to have been practised in China from remote antiquity, but it was in the Han period that the method became common, even spreading among neighboring primitive peoples. The agricultural Yayoi pottery culture in Japan must have been influenced by the agricultural tradition of the Asiatic continent under the Han dynasty. It was because Japan was relatively favored with opportunities for hunting and fishing that pig rearing was almost unknown, and consequently the above-mentioned way of disposing of human excrement was not practised. However, the popular views that the ancient Japanese did not use human excrement as manure (though they knew to fertilize fields), and that the word kawaya (privy) meant a hut (ya) over a river (kawa), so that excrement might be washed away by the water, is highly doubtful. The Chinese character 厠 (ts'〓) which means a privy is an ideograph of a hut beside the main house. The Japanese kawa means also "side, " and kawaya most probably meant "a side-house, " as is evidenced also by the structure of old traditional farmhouses. In ancient Japan there were upland ricefields side by side with paddy fields and the problem of fertilizer was not so simple. The question of the privy should be dealt with from a broader view, taking connections with the continent into consideration.