In his Research Note, “Shun 舜 and the Interpretation of Early Orthographical Variation,” in this issue of Early China, Jonathan Smith made several claims about the early evolution of the graph 舜, in particular suggesting that it should be identified with the graph lin 粦 that occurs in certain Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. While showing that these claims are ill-supported, I nevertheless concur in the identification with the bronze-inscriptional graph, but show that the word being written is 濬 ~ 浚 “deep, profound” and in no way connected with lin 粦.
