Radical 194

Radical 194 or radical ghost meaning "ghost" or "demon" is one of the 8 Kangxi radicals composed of 10 strokes.
鬼 is also the 184th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.

Evolution

The character is historically composed of "legs", representing a large demon's head and a curl looking similar to taken to represent a swirl of vapour, or a demon's tail.
The character can be traced to the oracle bone script, where it depicts a man kneeling on a monster head.

Derived characters

Most of the characters derived from the radical have meanings related to ghosts or souls, including "devil, demon", "black magic", "nightmare", "soul". In some signs, however, the radical is present purely as a phonetic marker, for example in, the State of Wei during the Spring and Autumn period.

Variant forms

Literature

Li, Leyi: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993,
Harbaugh, Rick, Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, Yale University Press,.
Childs-Johnson, Elizabeth, 甲骨文的“鬼”与假面具, International Conference Celebrating the 95th Anniversary of the Discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions", Anyang, China, 1994.