numbers = characters

[randall_flagg]

Once more, I am looking for a book. This time it really is something special, though: I heard that, even in “old China” there used to be quite the numerical system that existed parallel to the normal one. That is, there is a list of 1,000 specific characters. Each of those characters is then associated with a number between 1 and 1,000. Characters are then used to express long numbers (kind of like on this other thread that has been generating many replies). Anyone know the name of the book where I can find this list? Or is there even an online list?

Thanks, Randall

[imron]

I know there's something called 千字文，which children used to use to learn characters. You can find it online here

[Long Zhiren]

很趣.

Hebrew does that too.

Why do the oldest languages have so many similarities?

The other parallel that keeps getting me is the weight given to genealogies. In Hebrew, the important ones were memorized. In Chinese, the important ones were also memorized--IMO easier to remember--they're poems! Genealogists worth their title had these things memorized. Europeans had this system too, but its last vistages disappeared with the Romans and large human migrations within a millenium of that time. The Britons, Welsh, Irish, Celts and Scots all had them.

The genealogy systems are all pretty much gone now. Some traditionalists from China and Korea still do it but they're last mohicans.

[randall_flagg]

tired? drunk? distracted? nah....i'm just going to tell it like it is: i don't get it!!! does each one of thesehttp://www.jiaoshu.pim.cn/home/jiaoshu/article/43177.html four-character expressions signify a number? and if that's the case, why isn't the number giving with the character?

or, which, after reading this, http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%83%E5%AD%97%E6%96%87 seems a lot more likely, is it simply not to be used the way I thought I could use it? That is, be able to use a character to express any number from 1-999?

[imron]

Yeah I don't think it's used to count numbers at all. It was primarily used to teach people how to write characters, but it was the only famous chinese text I knew of containing exacly 1000 characters Technically, because no characters repeat, it could be used to count up to 1000 if you were so inclined. Perhaps also you had it confused it with the concept of the 天干which are sometimes used for counting... but there's only 10 of them. Combined with the 12 地支 they used to be used to count years with a complete cycle taking 60 years (see here for the reason a cycle only takes 60 years and not 120).