One of the two (c. 168 BCE) Mawangdui silk manuscript versions of the Daodejing, discovered in 1973 by archeologists excavating a tomb, uses a rare textual variant character for pu 樸: wò 楃 "a house tent (esp.
with a wooden roof)", written with the "tree radical" and wu 屋 "room; house" phonetic.
These variant words pú < *phrôk 樸 "unworked wood" and wò < *ʔôk 楃 "house tent" are semantically and phonologically dissimilar.
Bao 枹 is usually read fu "drumstick", and Guo noted this name bao denoted "a kind of oak [樸] that grew in clumps", and quotes the Shijing usage as baoli 枹櫟 instead of baoli 苞櫟 "bushy oak" (see below).
The Bencao Gangmu says there are two varieties of hu 槲 "Quercus mongolica, Mongolian oak", the bao 枹 is small and grows in clumps while the li 櫟 is tall and has large leaves.
While xin "heart; mind" is a common Chinese word, this Erya definition is the only known context in which it names a tree.
The Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary of characters, simply defines pu 朴 as mupi 木皮 "tree bark; wood with bark", and pu 樸 as musu 木素 "plain wood; unworked lumber" (later meaning "lignin" in scientific terminology).
"[2] Citing the pu translations of Séraphin Couvreur[3] "wood that has not been worked on; simple, without ornament, without disguise" and Bernhard Karlgren[4] "wood in its natural state, not worked: rough, plain, natural, simple"; Pas and Leung conclude: "it is obvious where the expression 'uncarved block' came from, but the addition of 'block' is an interpretation.
[11] Axel Schuessler[9] says the etymology of pú < *phrôk "to trim wood" could either be an "aspirated iterative derivation" from bāo < *prôk 剝 "cut up, peel, pluck", or "belong to the homophonous etymon with the basic meaning 'in a natural state, unworked', as in pú 樸 'in a natural state', 璞 'unworked precious stone' ".
Yupu 棫樸 is the name of Ode 238, which records using this tree for firewood: "the yih and the p'oh",[15] "the oak clumps".
The Shujing "Classic of History" (Zhoushu 周書, Zicai 梓材 "Chinese catalpa lumber" section) uses pu once in the compound pozhou 樸斫 (po "trim unworked wood" and zhuo "hack; chop off"): "as in working with the wood of the rottlera, when the toil of the coarser and finer operations has been completed, they have to apply the paint of red and other colours",[21] "It is as when one works on catalpa wood; when he has toiled in trimming and carving it, he should take measures for making it red or green".
Chapter 19 parallels the near-synonyms su 素 "raw silk; white; plain; simple; quiet" and pu 樸 "unworked wood; plain; simple", and was the source for Ge Hong's pen-name Baopuzi "Master who Embraces Simplicity".
Holmes Welch describes pu "the Uncarved Block" and su "Raw Silk" as symbols that Laozi used to expound his basic doctrine of "the return to our original nature".
[34] The (c. 3rd century CE) Heshang Gong commentary version of this Daoist text interchangeably writes pu as both 樸 and 朴.
For examples, Welch paraphrases the Daodejing relationship among pu, de "inherent character; inner power", and wuwei "non-action; non-doing".
[43] A frequently occurring Zhuangzi metaphor contrasts returning to pu 樸 "unhewn log" with carving qi 器 "vessels" (which means "specialist; official" in Daodejing 28).