Amazing Chinese Characters (348) Disaster - 灾

 The shell bone script of character Disaster is

The far left is fire in a house, the second from the left is fire on the bottom and the top a triangle with a vertical line in the middle are house beam and column. The house is on fire. The right two are water (flood) surround the beam and column (the second from right), or passes by the beam and column, which means that the flood washing away the houses.

Ancient Chinese considered the disaster caused either by fire or by flood. 

The big seal script of the character is

The top is 川（River) with a horizontal line in the middle, which I think is the dam. The water is over the dam. The bottom is character Fire.  The character put fire and flood together to express the disaster.

The small seal script of the character is

Very similar to the big seal script.

There is another small seal script,

It is totally different from the older script. The cover 门 alike is house, inside is Fire, which is disaster caused by Fire.

 

Normally, the there should be one form of small seal script. I found two from different sources, I don't know why, and I couldn't decide which one is official form created by Mr. Li Si. But obviously, the original one including fire and flood is better than the latter one with only fire included.

The clerical script of the character is

which is only fire in a house.

The song typeface for traditional character is

災

The top is River (flood), the bottom is Fire, which is same idea as the shell bone and big seal script.

The song typeface for simplified character is

灾

Similar to the clerical script, only disaster caused by fire, which is not complete because the flood is as bad as fire, and many times worse than fire.

Its Pinyin is Zai1.