The museum asked specialists to take a rubbing of this stone tablet.
Tips
usage
This reading only shows up in the vocabulary of rubbings: 拓本 a rubbing, 拓片 a sheet taken from a tablet, 拓印 to take one. Everywhere else the character is tuò, to open up.
culture
A rubbing is made by pressing damp paper into a carved surface and tapping ink over it, so the cut strokes come out white on black. Before photography this was how famous calligraphy circulated, and a good 拓本 of an old stele was collected like a painting.
Left-side hand radical, the three-stroke form of 手. It marks the physical work behind this reading: laying paper over the stone and tapping ink across it by hand. The same radical runs through 打 to hit and 按 to press.
Right side 石 stone, historically the phonetic, with shí drifting to both readings of the character. Under 拓 it doubles as the object itself: the carved stone the impression is lifted off, as in 拓片.
