I believe these two primitives are the same. Stamp (卩) comes just before frame 1395, and Chop Seal (bottom of 令) just before frame 1401.

It is confusing to have two images of different kind of stamps, especially when the kanji for "chop seal" uses the "stamp" primitive (印鑑）.

Regardless of preference for remembering, I'm confident that in Japanese they are considered as the same thing. Does anyone know what the criteria is that changes stamp to chop seal?

I was tentatively considering a rule like "when it comes under umbrella, it changes to chop seal."

Chop seal also has a version when it comes on top that changes it to a マ type shape, so all in all we would have three forms of the stamp primitive: the basic one, the under-the-umbella one, and the one on top.


edit: My main point of posting this here was to see people's opinions, and also see if there were any characters that I missed where chop seal does not come under an umbrella. Anyone know of any?

Heisig's criteria for distinguishing stamp from chopseal is that if the top line trails off to the left, it's a chopseal. If the 2nd stroke begins right where the 1st stroke began, then it's a stamp.

Edit: or do you just mean to ask what position, relative to other primitives, are the chopseal and stamp primitives found? In that case, I think you're right... chopstamp (version 1) is basically a squished stamp.

twofoe Wrote:Heisig's criteria for distinguishing stamp from chopseal is that if the top line trails off to the left, it's a chopseal. If the 2nd stroke begins right where the 1st stroke began, then it's a stamp.

Yeah, I'm aware of Heisig's criteria, my idea was that it would be possible to do away with the postage stamp image all together (cause i think both are the same image - a seal stamp used in japan and china for official documents). In order to do that though, we have to make both of them into one primitive, with a rule about when the top line trails off to the left.

Based on a really quick look, it seems to me like the line trails off to the left when it comes under an umbrella primitive?


edit: ok now I'm responding to your edit, lol. Yeah that is what I'm trying to figure out. The only problem is, there are certain squished forms of stamp that don't have the tail, like in 命... So does this one not have a tail because there is no room?

Even though they may be the same radical traditionally, in normal handwriting they're written very differently -- the computer font doesn't show it, but the bottom part of 令 is written like a katakana　マ, which may be why Heisig wanted to have two different keywords.

I think the point of Heisig making 2 different keywords was to easily distinguish between the different forms. You'll notice he did the same sort of thing with the heart primitive, with heart, state of mind, and valentine. Perhaps he thought that readers would get the idea after a certain number of chapters, and couldn't be bothered to stick them into the same frame together, like for primitives like heart?

I have no idea what I chop seal is, so the only thing I can relate the word "chop seal" to is that primitive. :p I have the same "problem" with mandala.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Even though they may be the same radical traditionally, in normal handwriting they're written very differently -- the computer font doesn't show it, but the bottom part of 令 is written like a katakana　マ, which may be why Heisig wanted to have two different keywords.

My computer displays the bottom part of 令 as マ, but only on this forum...