Chinese Radicals (2) Rice Crop - 禾字旁

Rice Crop or Grain radical comes from character Rice Crop - 禾字旁

The big seal script for Rice Crop is

The big seal script for Fire is

If we put the above big seal Rice Crop and Fire together

which is Autumn or Fall. Each character is independent.

The small seal script for character Rice Crop is

The small seal script for character Fire is

We put small seal script Rice Crop and Fire together,

Which is Autumn or Fall. Each keeps its own form.

The clerical script of Rice Crop is

The clerical script of Fire is

If we put them together, we got

Two strokes are across to each other. If we exchange the positions of the two characters, put the Fire on the left, and the Rice Crop on the right, we would have the same problem: two strokes are across each other.

In order to avoid the problem, ancient people drew the right-falling stroke of left character shorter to give room for the left-falling stroke of right character. We could have

Then we have the left as

Which is called Rice Crop or Grain Radical.

Later, standard script, and song typeface Wood have the similar radical.

Now we know that the Rice Crop radical actually is Rice Crop character. There were no Rice Crop radical before clerical script because the two characters could keep their original forms. It is changed to avoid the across of the two strokes in late clerical, standard scripts, and song typeface.