The Shanghai Museum last year released the contents of certain bamboo slips containing Confucius’s The Book of Odes 詩經. They originate from the State of Chu3 during the Warring States Period and display many characters with the graphic yuan 肙. The author of the original paper on the Museum’s collection understandably claims that the word shaowan少□, means xia03- wan 小宛. However, certain other claims of the authors remain highly debatable. Yuan 肙was generated from the complicated, archaic version of wan □. This paper discusses characters with the yuan graphic in four chapters of this text: “Bao-shan 包山,” “Wang4-shan 望山,” “Guo-dian4 郭店” and “Shang4- p02 上博.” This paper concludes that wan 宛 is closely derived both synonymous and semantical1y from wan □, as is xian4 鞙 (castrated bull) from xian □; wan3 宛 (a place name) from wan □; juanm 絹 (a very thin and tough type of silk fabric) or yu4 黦 from juan □ or juan肙, and wan3 婉 (tactful and euphemistic ) from wan □ or wan □.
