Abstract：Originally, 干 is an aggressive weapon. The ten characters under the category of天干 are but a list of weapons. The key to solve this riddle is: first, the original form of 甲, , may be an ideograph of a weapon, even though it later meant armor, and the characters following 甲, 丙、丁are also related to weapons, further proving the view of Guo Moruo etc. that the Chinese ordinal numbers are ideographs of weapons; second, the intellectual history shows that in an era when prowess worship replaced genital worship, the ancients used the names of weapons as the ordinal numbers to express their understanding that weapons were made by saints to punish the wrongdoers. The religious idea of “punishing the evil on behalf of Heaven” was formulated by the Yan and Huang tribes, the ancestors of Chinese, in their struggle against ransacking and bullying. It developed into an ideology of “Heaven Disposes” in the Xia and Shang Dynasties. It was imbued with humanistic color in the Zhou Dynasty and evolved into the view of “stopping war with war”, the important premise of The Art of War, in the Spring and War period.
蒋广学. 天干“甲”字串解 ——兼论从“代天伐恶”向“以战止战”战争观的转变[J]. 江苏大学学报（社会科学版）, 2011, 13(4): 17-24.
Jiang Guangxue. Why is 干Interpreted as甲(the First)? —Also on the Shift of Views on War from “Punishing the Evil on Behalf of Heaven” to “Stopping War with War”. Journal of Jiangsu University（Social Science Editi, 2011, 13(4): 17-24.
2011, Vol. 13 
