After knowing the ancients, Ben Li Dao was born
Xu Shen and the Interpretation of Words
Wen 丨 Zhang Yiyun
Looking at the forest of the world's characters, Chinese characters are not only the only ancient self-originating scripts that have survived to this day, but also the only ideographic system that is constantly moving towards perfection. Behind this exuberant vitality is the endless Chinese nation and the long-standing Chinese civilization, and with the survival of the two, Chinese characters can continue to develop. In the course of the development of Chinese characters, ancient scripts such as oracle bone, jinwen, and xiaozhu and modern characters such as Lishu and Kaishu are very different in glyphs and structural intentions. How do ancient and later scripts communicate? How is the cultural spirit and historical information contained in it transmitted? This requires an intermediary that carries on from top to bottom, and Xu Shen's "Explanation of Words" (hereinafter referred to as "Shuowen") was born for this purpose.
Xu Shen (徐慎), courtesy name Shuzhong, was a native of Zhaoling District, Luohe City, Henan Province, and a famous scribe and philologist of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He realized that the script has the important role of "the predecessors are therefore backward, and the posterity is why the ancients are known", so he wrote the "Shuowen", hoping to sort out and explain through the system of Chinese characters, and establish the basis of the script to give birth to the way of culture. As "the master of primary schools", "the first dictionary for analyzing glyphs, explaining the meaning of words, and recognizing phonetic reading", Shuowen is a milestone in Chinese philology; Even if it is viewed on a global scale, the clear theoretical consciousness and huge historical influence of the Shuowen are rare in the linguistic works of the same period. How did such a strange book come about? Why has its impact flourished? This is not only to find the answer from within the "Sayings", but also to approach its author, Xu Shen, the "Character Saint".
Early ambitions and academic origins
This house is on the verge of daring to step into the Holy Gate
The year of Xu Shen's birth and death is unknown, but it is still controversial today, but this article is set from Zhang Zhenze's "Xu Shen Annals" to the tenth year (67) of the Han Ming Emperor Yongping to the second year of the Han Huan Emperor Jianhe (148).
The Book of later Han has a limited record of Xu Shen's family lineage, only "Xu Shenzi ShuZhong, Runanzhao Lingren also", which has a more detailed account in the "Shuowen Shu": "Zeng Zengzi, Zu Ziyan God ... Hou Yu Xu, the relic of Shi Zuo. Since the other call, the house is on the verge of death. Combining the two, it can be seen that Xu Shen's ancestors were far away from the Shennongyan Emperor and closely related to the Xu Kingdom sealed by the Western Zhou. After the fall of the Xu kingdom, the clan moved away, and one ethnic group settled on the shore of Rushui and the place of Zhaoling. However, after this, Xu Shen did not recount the prominence of his family lineage, and he himself did not receive a knighthood; His son Xu Chong (許冲爵) was not yet exempt from the service of the officials and was still a low knight. It is speculated from this that the Xu clan of Zhaoling is only a cold door, and Xu Shen is the third son in the family, and there are no special material conditions.
Portrait of Xu Shen
Thanks to the developed system of official and private schools, Xu Shen received a good education in his hometown. The Han Dynasty attached great importance to folk basic education, and set up "primary schools" in ordinary villages for children to attend school in their spare time; It also attaches great importance to the popularization and standardization of writing: since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, schoolchildren have been required to master thousands of words to be competent in grass-roots clerical work, and officials have written letters to express their feelings, and if the writing is not standardized enough, they will be reported. Correspondingly, the literacy rate and culture of the Han Dynasty reached a considerable level, which greatly promoted the atmosphere of studying classics and studying and asking questions. Xu Shen was naturally no exception, and in the Shuowen Shu, he said that he "stole the scenery and dared to step into the Sacred Gate", that is, he had already determined his ambition to study the Confucian classics in his early years.
When Xu Shen was 16 years old, that is, in the eighth year of the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty (83), Emperor Zhang issued an edict and ordered Qun Confucian to select high-caliber students and teach classics such as "Zuo Zhuan", "Gu liang zhuan", "ancient Wen Shangshu", and "Mao shi" to support the study of extinction and widely search for different meanings. It was on this occasion that Xu Shen was able to go to Luoyang the following year and follow Jia Kui to continue his studies. Coming to the capital, Xu Shen was at the forefront of the academic trend of the Eastern Han Dynasty, feeling the collision and fusion of different schools of classical learning, and returning to the roots from them, starting the road of writing "Shuowen".
Learn from Kuiwen and learn well
The Xianxue of the Han Dynasty was the "classics" for the study of Confucian classics, and since Emperor Wu set up the "Doctor of the Five Classics", this has become a way for scholars to participate in politics. The classics are divided into two major schools, modern and ancient, with their own traditions. In the face of the Qin Dynasty's burning of scriptures, there are two ways for Confucians to preserve the classics: one is to memorize memories and pass them on by word of mouth; The second is to hide scriptures on walls, underground, and so on. After entering the Han Dynasty, the former used the content of oral transmission in the popular affiliation at that time, forming the tradition of modern scriptural classics; The latter, through excavations, book offerings, and other means, reappeared in the form of ancient scripts, which is a tradition of ancient scriptural studies.
It is not difficult to imagine that the scriptures recorded in ancient texts are difficult to recognize and difficult to understand, and the sorting is slow, so the first to be appointed as doctors are the more mature modern classicists at that time, which will inevitably lead to disputes over academic discourse. Just before Xu Shen entered The Capital, Emperor Zhang gathered Confucians at the White Tiger Temple and launched a great discussion on scripture, which greatly improved the status of the ancient texts represented by the Zuo Zhuan. The only one who led the discussion was Xu Shen's teacher Jia Kui. Jia Kui character Jing Bo, is the ninth grandson of Jia Yi, he grew up in Taixue since he was a child, diligent and inquisitive, sometimes people call it "asking things endlessly Jia Long Head". Jia Kui is an important hub in the lineage of ancient classics: his father, Jia Hui, collected all the schools and combined ancient classics and scriptures, while Jia Kui "passed on his father's business" and taught in Taixue. In addition, Jia Kuizhi's study was not limited to ancient classics, and he was also very familiar with modern classics and was good at composition. Therefore, Jia Kui was able to exert a strong fighting force in the controversy of scripture and became the leader of the school, "writing more than a million words of scripture and righteousness and discussing difficulties, and composing poems, praises, recitations, books, lianzhus, and wine Lingfan nine articles, the scholar Zongzhi, and later generations called TongRu."
In Jia Kui's body, we can clearly see a broad and extensive "tongren" atmosphere, which is a major feature of the ancient literary school. Wang Chong of the Han Dynasty commented in the "On Balance": "Rich people are not as good as Confucians, and Confucians are not as good as Confucians." "The Confucian style of study is the opposite of that of tongren, which refers to the method of modern scholars who exclusively adhere to one scripture. So, how can ancient scriptures be unobstructed in different scriptures? This is fundamentally due to its unique approach to learning. As mentioned earlier, because the ancient literary school needs to start from accurately reading and interpreting the text, unlike the modern literary school that has been arbitrarily played, they have paid more attention to the objective basis of language and writing, and formed a study style of "cultivating the ancient and seeking truth from facts". The text of the sutra is recorded in Chinese characters, and once the words are correctly interpreted, they can be pushed step by step to the meaning of the text and the meaning of the scripture, thus refuting the far-fetched theory. This method is effective for any classic, so the ancient literary school can start from the correction and annotation of the scriptures, step by step to occupy the academic position, and finally form a situation of integration. It was in this context that Xu Shen came to Jia Kui's side and asked for advice. Since he had studied the study of modern scriptures in his hometown, he quickly adapted to the environment of classics research and systematically learned the methods and doctrines of ancient classics.
The teacher-student friendship and the "Sayings" were written
Draft a letter book to refute fallacies
Five or six years have passed since he entered the capital at the age of 17, and Xu Shen's rich and convenient academic resources in Luoyang have catalyzed Xu Shen's growth, and he has gradually become a scholar who is familiar with both ancient and modern literature. In the process, he was both amazed at the universality of exegesis through words, and gradually realized that Chinese characters are actually a double-edged sword. The development of Chinese characters to the stage of Lishu, the objectivity of the image is far less obvious than that of ancient characters, and many of the original pictographic components are even converged and easily mixed due to the change of the square fold of the strokes, which greatly increases the possibility of misunderstanding and misunderstanding. Coupled with the han people's general emphasis on writing, there have been a large number of phenomena that only rely on the glyphs of Lishu to explain Chinese characters and attach their own meanings. Xu Shen described this chaos in his Shuwen Shu:
The "Spring and Autumn Zuo Clan Biography", the county state is also often in the mountains and rivers to get Ding Yi, its inscription is the ancient text of the previous generation, all of which are similar. Although it is far away, its details can be said to be slightly. And the people of the world are not confused, thinking that the curious are also, so the trick is more textual, the village wall is fabricating an unknowable book, and chaos is often done to shine in the world. Zhu Shengjing said that the characters were interpreted, and the Book of Qin Zhili was called the Book of Cangjie, Yun: "Father and son pass on, why should it be changed!" "It is the lewd horse-headed man who is the chief, the man who holds ten for the fight, and the worm who is bent in the middle; Ting Wei said the law, to the word breaking: harsh people receive money, harsh zigzag stop sentences also. If there are many of them, they are not in line with the ancient texts of Kong, and they are fallacious to shi... See also the "Young Son's Edict" in the "Cangjie Chapter", because the title "The ancient emperor's work is also, and his words have the art of the gods", and his mistakes are not true, is it not contradictory!
It can be seen that although there have been physical transmissions of ancient texts such as ancient texts and golden stone inscriptions, scholars at that time did not fully accept these difficult to understand characters, and also believed that Lishu was passed down from generation to generation, that is, the Chinese characters created by Cangjie. According to the explanatory text of the Lishu, many jokes will be made, as shown in the following table:
Today, these erroneous explanations may seem as comical as "slippery as the bone of water, and slope as the skin of earth", but in Xu Shen's time, it was a matter of great importance. In the Han Dynasty, both the government and the public believed in the doctrines of yin and yang disasters and induction, especially in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was prosperous because of the saying that "Liu Xiu should be the son of heaven". The arbitrariness of Chinese character interpretation fits precisely with the model by which Wee makes prophecies and fulfillments, and is more likely to be used to interfere in politics. Moreover, in the above examples, there have been phenomena of misunderstanding the law because of the inability to correctly interpret Chinese characters, and attaching the contents of the TongMeng character book to the historical narrative, which will directly disrupt the normal order of social life.
Behind all kinds of chaos is the shaking and confusion of the relationship between the name and the real. Chinese characters are originally a sign of the progress of civilization and the division of labor in society, and they are a symbol system that maps the external world through concepts, and if you arbitrarily explain Chinese characters and disrupt the correspondence between names and realities, you will inevitably face a chaotic situation of "strange words, chaotic names, unclear shapes of right and wrong, then although law-abiding officials, Confucians who recite numbers, are also chaotic". It was precisely because of the great destructive power contained in the arbitrary interpretation of characters that Xu Shen felt that it was necessary to determine the standards and correct the chaos in the most fundamental field of Chinese character interpretation, so he decided to draft a character book, "rationalize the group class, explain the errors, know the scholars, and reach the will of the gods" - this is the opportunity for the birth of the "Explanation of Words".
I got to see the secret collection and wrote the "Sayings"
Although he criticized the chaos of random interpretation, how to ensure that his interpretation was not another kind of fallacy became the primary problem facing Xu Shen. However, in the years of ancient learning, Xu Shen has also found a way to cure this disease: "Confucians play with their habits, hide their hopes, do not see the general learning, and have not seen the rules of the scriptures." He believes that the subjectivity of explaining words at that time was mainly due to the lack of a "general learning" vision and the concept of "articles of character examples". And these are precisely the two aspects that the ancient literary school is best at: "general learning" corresponds to the systematization of classical literature language, and "articles of character examples" corresponds to the systematization of Chinese characters themselves. In this system, it is possible to ensure that each specific Chinese character has a solid position and is associated with the surrounding Chinese characters. As Huang Kan said: "The so-called scholars have a systematic organization, and they can also be complicated by simplicity." When Xu Shen had a systematic concept, his writing research gradually broke away from the subordinate status of the tools of scripture and moved into the field of Chinese character theory research, which was an extremely advanced idea.
Under the guidance of advanced ideas, Xu Shen embarked on a long road of writing, and his profound accumulation and keen sense of language heralded the success of this book. However, it is difficult for Qiao women to cook without rice, and the necessary condition for writing calligraphy books is to possess ancient and modern texts and documentary materials as much as possible, but the books of the Eastern Han Dynasty are still relatively precious, and most of them are hidden. As a student studying in Beijing, Xu Shen could not find a solution for a while.
The turning point of events came in the eighth year of the Han And Emperor Yongyuan (96), when Xu Shen was 29 years old, and Jia Kui was reused, "Reinstated as a waiter, leading the lieutenant." Inside the curtain, and the secretary of the near signature, even see the credit." The "Secretary's Near Office" that Jia Kui was arranged to manage was the great library of the Eastern Han Dynasty. For scholars of the ancient literature school, managing and proofreading the royal collection is a mission and honor that has been passed down from generation to generation, with Liu Xiang and Liu Xin father and son before, and then important scholars such as Jia Kui, Ban Gu, Xu Shen, and Ma Rong, all of whom were secretaries of the school. Following the teacher's ascension, Xu Shen stepped into the library of books of the Eastern Han Dynasty for the first time and participated in the proofreading of the Dongguan collection, thus seeing a large number of classic and written materials, expanding the semantic reserves of literature, and having a deep understanding of the principle of combining the shape and meaning of Chinese characters. In this process, whenever he encountered any doubts, he asked Jia Kui for advice, and left 17 confirmations of the honorific title "Jia Shizhong Sayings" in this "Sayings", which shows the friendship between teachers and students.
The opening of the Dongguan collection strongly promoted Xu Shen's writing process, and in just 4 years, the draft of the Shuowen was completed. Xu Shen excitedly wrote at the back of the book: "Guangye Zhenwei, bachelor knows the fang." Probe so hidden, the friendship can be passed on. Yue in Yongyuan, the year of hardship. The Moon of Meng, Shuo Ri Jia Shen. From this, we can see that he believes that his works will be of great help to scholars in reading the classics, filling in the gaps in the basic field of scriptural research, and can be said to be a work of inheritance. Therefore, Xu Shen specially selected the first lunar day of the twelfth year of Yongyuan (100), that is, the day of New Year's Day, to write an afterword, coincidentally, this year is also exactly 100 AD. However, this manuscript, which had been drafted for 10 years, was interrupted by an accident before it could be approved and played. The following year, his mentor Jia Kui died hurriedly at the age of 71, and Xu Shen, who had traveled to study and worship his teacher and had no formal official position, had to leave Beijing to return to his hometown, temporarily ending the period of concentrated writing of "Shuowen".
The eunuch experience and the finalization of the "Sayings"
The school book Dongguan is unparalleled in the Five Classics
Ancient scholars had many ways of humanism, generally known as Shi Yin, Xu Shen left Beijing at the age of 34, and finally embarked on the road of eunuchs. This may be because at this time, it is the heyday of the reign of Emperor Han'an, the political clarity and national strength are strong, and the prosperity of the "Yongyuan Dragon" is being created, and it is a natural choice to pursue the pursuit of fame and ambition in such a context.
Although Xu Shen left Luoyang, he was not lonely, and as soon as he returned to his hometown, he was made a county gong cao by Zhang Min, the taishou of Runan. According to Ying Shao's "Han Guanyi", "The postmaster, Gong Cao, the extreme position of the county." "The Governor is the inspector general within a county, and Gong Cao is in charge of personnel recommendation and has the post of educating the atmosphere, and these two positions occupy a very high position in the state and county under the Taishou. Xu Shen's virtues and abilities are widely known, and his appointment as a county gong Cao is true to his name, he "offers righteousness and righteousness, and leads the way to be generous", and after 3 years, he was promoted as filial piety for his excellent performance. In the official selection system of the Eastern Han Dynasty, filial piety was a channel for transporting talents from the local government to the central government, and it was also the only way to obtain official positions. According to Xu Chong's "Table of Sayings", "The late Taiwei Nange Sacrifice Wine Prudent", Xu Shen was immediately promoted by the famous minister Zhang Yu as a subordinate official of the Taiwei Mansion, and later received the Nange Sacrifice Wine, that is, the chief official in charge of the documents and archives of the Taiwei Mansion. During the 6 years of working in the Taiwei Mansion, Xu Shen never forgot his original intention of studying and governing the script and inventing the classics, not only did not put down the proofreading of the "Shuowen", but also wrote down the annotated works such as "Huainan Hongliejian" and "Chu Ci Notes" that have been lost.
Xu Shen's persistence and painstaking efforts were eventually rewarded, and at the age of 43, Empress Deng issued an edict and opened a new round of Dongguan Library School. Xu Shen once again stepped into the door of the Royal Library, but the difference was that by this time he had inherited the cause of his mentor Jia Kui and changed from a follower to a leader. There are also many famous scholars who also participated in the school book, and they were all amazed by Xu Shen's knowledge, such as Ma Rong, who later became Zheng Xuan's teacher, and "often respected it". Of course, the mutual proofreading of different scriptures is bound to lead to new academic controversies, which also opens up new horizons for Xu Shen, so that he wrote a comprehensive review of the Five Classics literature and commented on the similarities and differences between the present and the ancient. This work of sutra and discussion " aided a hundred ancient and modern families, all citing the will of the five classics of the ancestors", "the hong da of the ceremony, the chapter of the famous things, the scholars to follow the principle and discuss the yan", with a profound and systematic appearance of the broad and systematic, the crowd was taught by the scholars at that time, and brought Xu Shen the reputation of "the five classics are incomparable and unclely heavy".
Xu Shen's influence reached its peak after the compilation of the Five Classics and Different Meanings, and he became a first-class figure among Eastern Scholars, which also provided favorable conditions for him to revise and disseminate the Commentaries. According to the "Table of Commentaries", Xu Shen used the "Commentaries" to "teach Xiao huangmen Mengsheng, Li Xi, etc.", and later scholars will also refer to and quote the Commentaries (such as Zheng Xuansan Li Notes) when commenting on the classics, which shows its circulation. However, at this time, Xu Shen had not directly played the manuscript, and he still needed time to do the final work.
Returning home and living in seclusion, the achievement of "Saying"
Eight or nine years have passed since re-entering the Dongguan School, during which time the country has gradually fallen into a situation of internal and external troubles under the interference of foreign relatives, and even so, those in power have not sought change. Xu Shen's good friend Ma Rong was imprisoned in Dongguan and could not be promoted because he had angered his foreign relative Tang Shi for several years of advance, which made him feel the changes in the external environment even though he was in the inner province.
In the sixth year of the first year of the Han Dynasty (119), Xu Shen was 52 years old, "In the spring of February, the forty-two earthquakes in the capital and the county, or cracked, the water spring gushed out". With such a serious earthquake occurring throughout the country, post-disaster disposal and recovery became a top priority. Therefore, Emperor An of Han issued an edict that the governments in the capital should select officials with outstanding abilities and able to rest with the people to fill the vacancies in the local orders, chiefs, lieutenants, and beggars, and Xu Shen was one of the five people selected by the Taiwei government. Being elected from the capital to the local area was a sign of the maturity of the Eastern Han officials, but perhaps tired of the complicated administrative affairs and personnel exchanges, Xu Shen did not accept the appointment, and in the same year he returned to his hometown due to illness, and since then he has lived in seclusion for 30 years.
Away from the whirlpool of political and scriptural struggles, Xu Shen was finally able to concentrate on completing the final draft of the Shuowen. Two years later, the fifteen volumes of the Shuowen were compiled, and Xu Shen ordered his son Xu Chong to make offerings on his behalf, and wrote in the "Table of Sayings":
The way of the Five Classics is bright. And the writer is born of his original body. From the "Zhou Li" and "Han Law", they should all learn the six books and penetrate their meanings. I am afraid that I will say evil words and make scholars suspicious. Shen Bo asked the people, examined Yu Kui, composed the "Explanation of Words", the interpretation of the Six Arts Group Book, all of which trained their meanings, and the ghosts and gods of heaven and earth, the grass and trees of mountains and rivers, the birds and beasts, the strange things, the royal etiquette, and the world's personnel affairs were all complete.
This passage traces the background, goal and writing process of the Shuowen, puts the text in the fundamental position of understanding the world and inheriting culture, and connects the heavens and the earth from classic documents to daily miscellaneous objects, which can be said to be both a phased summary of the development of Chinese characters and a portrayal of the spiritual climate of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Therefore, the Shuowen was naturally valued and was able to enter the official library and be listed among the classics that Xu Shen had read. After 30 years, the Shuowen was finally written, and Xu Shen's scholarship and thought were also mature. After making a wish, he immersed himself in teaching apprenticeships in his hometown and no longer paid attention to political affairs. According to historical inscriptions, among Xu Shen's students in his later years, there were gao biao, Yin Zhen and others who came from Wuxi and Mumu (near present-day Guiyang City, Guizhou Province), which shows that his reputation has not diminished.
In the second year of Emperor Jianhe of Han (148), Xu Shen died at home at the age of 81. Behind him, only a short record of 85 words in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty is left, and the secret of a thousand years contained in the strange book of "Shuowen" has yet to be discovered by future generations.
"Explanation of Chinese Characters": an immortal monument in the history of Chinese character civilization
The Shuowen condensed Xu Shen's life's work, but because it was not a direct work of scripture, the influence of the Shuowen after Xu Jun's death was not as good as that of the Five Classics, and there were few echoes in the field outside the zishu. However, when the tide of classics receded, works such as Shuowen, which were based on the objective facts of language and writing, showed their eternal value and became an immortal monument in the history of Chinese character civilization.
Since the Tang Dynasty Li Yangbing published the "Shuowen", through the Song Dynasty Xu Xuan, Xu Kai, Li Tao and others to edit and annotate, to the Ming Dynasty Mao's Ji Guge printing large characters, "Shuowen" has been passed down from generation to generation, laying the foundation for further academic research. Entering the Qing Dynasty, under the trend of returning to the classics and paying attention to puxue, the "Shuowen" study rose sharply, and the evaluation of the famous scholar Wang Mingsheng can represent the status of "Shuowen" in the hearts of the Qing people:
The text should be based on the Xu clan. However, it is necessary to study the text first, and then to exhort it, so that the text is the first kind of book in the world, and if you read the book of the world, you will not read it, and if you do not read it, you will not read it. However, if you can speak the text, the rest of the books have not been read, and it cannot be said that it is not a Confucian.
The Qing Dynasty was the summary period and peak period of traditional Chinese scholarship, and the study of "Shuowen" was also an important town of Qing Dynasty scholarship, under the leadership of Duan Yujie, Gui Fu, Wang Jun, Zhu Junsheng and others, hundreds of special works emerged, which were spectacular. "Shuowen" science opened up the true sense of Chinese philology, and its influence continues to this day, and the reason why it can be so is precisely because the book "Shuowen" profoundly analyzes the genes of Chinese characters and has made a vital contribution to the establishment of Chinese character civilization.
"Shuowen Jiezi" and the theory of Chinese character conformation
The Shuowen is based on the written materials seen by Xu Shen and can basically cover the ancient and modern scripts of the Qin and Han dynasties. Its collection characters are mainly small seals, and under the small seal prefixes, other glyphs such as ancient chinese and zhengwen (called "heavy texts") are included, of which 9353 are small seal characters and 1163 are heavy texts, for a total of 10516 glyphs. In the face of such a huge volume of Chinese characters, where should we start to rationalize them? And how to analyze and arrange complex glyphs in a unified way? What understanding of the ontology of Chinese characters can be obtained from this? This is a problem that has never been faced before.
Xu Shen believes that the rationale for analyzing Chinese characters is hidden in the annual rings in which it grows. The Shuowen Shu describes the general trend of the development of Chinese characters in this way:
The Yellow Emperor's Shi Cangjie saw the traces of birds and beasts' hooves, and the knowledge of the division of reason can be different, the first book deed, the hundred works to be humbled, and the ten thousand products to be observed... Cangjie's initial writing of the book, Gaiyi pictograms, so it is called a text. It is followed by the sound of sound, that is, the zigzag. The word is the one who speaks and soaks more.
Dating back to the legendary era of the beginning of Chinese characters, the production of characters is to record the world's things and social life, and the earliest characters are hieroglyphs that depict things in separate forms; With the progress of the times and the increase in the complexity of things, many complex concepts can no longer be directly illustrated, combined with multiple characters, or ideographic meanings, or sounds, a new composite character has been created, and the text is like a hehe twin with infinite productivity. The single body is "text", the combination is "word", the text can be said with an image, and the word can be understood because of its combination, which is also the meaning of "saying that the text is explained".
Understanding the mode of Chinese character generation, Xu Shen used the six books and the design department to empirically analyze and arrange Chinese characters. The name "Six Books", first seen in the Zhou Li, is a literacy method learned by ancient schoolchildren, but the details are not detailed, and Xu Shen first elaborated on the Six Books Regulations:
A finger of things. The one who refers to things can be seen and recognized, and the "up" and "down" are also.
The second is the pictogram. The pictographer, painted as its object, follows the body to cross-examine, "day" and "month" are also.
Three-day shaped sound. Shapes and voices, in the name of things, take examples of each other, "river" and "river" are also.
Four will know. The person who will understand, the analogy of friendship, to see the finger, "wu" and "faith" are also.
Five-day transfer betting. The transferist, building a class of songs, agrees to accept, "examination" and "old" is also.
Six days of false borrowing. The pretend borrower, who has no words, depends on the voice, "order" and "long" are also.
Using the analysis of the Six Books, complex Chinese characters can be split into components that bear different functions, and thus explain the construction intention of the whole character and understand the meaning of the words they express; At the same time, there are single characters that cannot be separated as the basis for Chinese character construction, providing a standard for identifying whether the analysis of glyph meaning is reasonable. In this way, the meaning of individual Chinese characters can be obtained, and the overall Chinese character system can also be constructed. In the analysis, a number of components with strong ideographic ability and high word-building energy will naturally emerge, which can string together a large number of Chinese characters to achieve the aggregation of objects and meanings, just like the tribes where people live - a batch of characters is called a part, and the components they commonly have are the heads:
Separately living, not mixed toilets... Squares are clustered in groups, and things are grouped. It is consistent with the genus of the tie stripe, and the common reason is consistent. Miscellaneous and not crossed, according to the shape of the connection. By extension, to investigate the original.
Through the rule of the head of the ministry, the original chaotic Chinese characters have become organized, and under the jurisdiction of glyph aggregation, a clear path of composition has been formed, which can be linked to the source of shape and meaning generation upwards, and new characters can be created on demand downwards.
In this way, through two top-level designs, the Shuowen systematically stored and sorted out the small seal glyphs, and for the first time described the structural system of Chinese characters. According to the survey, all Chinese characters in the "Shuowen" can be composed of 1937 non-repetitive basic components, of which 1923 are the "Shuowen" positive seal, accounting for 99.28%, which is more rigorous and self-consistent than the Chinese character system that has not been sorted out before and since. At the same time, the proportion of shape-sound characters in the Chinese characters received in the "Shuowen" is more than 87%, which can already reflect the characteristics of the shape-and-sound configuration mode in which the development of Chinese characters has been based on the advantages of shape and sound. All this shows that Xu Shen's analysis and systematic arrangement of Chinese characters effectively reflect the characteristics of Chinese character ontology, which fully proves the success of the construction of Chinese character conformation system in the paleo script stage. Therefore, shuowen has become a milestone in the development of Chinese characters, and has had a profound impact on the compilation of dictionaries, character norms, and philological research in later generations.
"Explanation of Chinese Characters" and the Cultural Picture of Chinese Characters
After determining from the ontology that Chinese characters can be reasonably analyzed consistently, it is possible to depict the cultural picture of Chinese characters. As mentioned above, Xu Shen neutralized in the Shuowen Shu (說文·Shu) as "rationalizing groups, interpreting errors, knowing scholars, and reaching the gods... The ambition of "seeing all things is salty, and not being carried at the same time" is not only to systematically interpret the shape and meaning of Chinese characters, but also to map all things with Chinese characters, and to reflect the humanistic order between heaven and earth with Chinese characters. So, how did Xu Shen "rationalize the group class" and even "see all things salty"?
First of all, Xu Shen set two endpoints for the Shuowen to characterize the principle of endless life. "Its founding head also, the establishment of one for the end ... Bi finally came to an end, knowing the poor meditation. "One" and "Hai" are the first and last words of the Shuowen, respectively:
But in the beginning, the Tao stood in one, created the heavens and the earth, and became all things. (Volume 1, Part 1)
Oh, Tsutomu also. In October, the sun rises and falls. From two. Second, the ancient text on the word also. One man, one woman also. From B, like the shape of a cough in the womb... And the son is born, and the resurrection is from the same. (Vol. XIV· Haibu)
"One" is the simplest Chinese character, and it also has the first and original meaning, which precisely represents the initial state of all things in heaven and earth, and is a sign that the Dao generates everything. And "Hai" is the last of the twelve branches, Xu Shen interprets it as "荄", that is, the root of grass and trees; At the same time, the ancients often interpreted "hai" as meanings such as "阖" and "nuclear" (including Tibet). These explanations are not contradictory, because the root cause is both the destination of all things in heaven and earth and the starting point of a new generation process, so Xu Shen interprets the glyph of the word "Hai" as the image of a husband and wife having children, symbolizing the endless life of all things with the inheritance of life. In this way, the two characters complete the closed loop of the Shuowen as a whole, so that the Chinese characters in it are no longer a single linear sequence, but form a cyclic structure connected from end to end.
Secondly, through the establishment and connection of the head of the ministry, Xu Shen built a world framework of "heaven-man-earth" under the way of life. The principle of the construction of the radical system of the "Shuowen" is "according to the shape of the system", according to the configuration, the composition of the first map obtained, the formation of a polymerization of individual objects, in these aggregations, there are three obvious nodes: "one (day)", "people", "two (earth)".
Heavens, upside down also. Supreme, from one to great. (Volume 1: Part I)
Man, the most noble of the nature of heaven and earth. The shape of an elephant arm shin. (Vol. VIII: Humanities)
Second, the number of lands also. From even one. (Vol. XIII, Part II)
Earth, the spit of the earth creatures also. Under the earth and in the middle of the earth, things come out of form. (Vol. XIII Tobe)
Obviously, "one" and "heaven" are at the beginning of the book, "man" is in the middle, and "two" and "earth" are arranged at the end, which constitutes a typical pattern of the relationship between heaven and man: the birth of heaven is above, the transformation of the earth is in the bottom, and the patronage of man is in the middle. This active arrangement can also be found in other explanations of the Shuowen, such as: "Third, the way of heaven, earth, and man." Yu Wen one couple two is three, and the number is also. "King, the world has returned to it." Dong Zhongshu said: "The creator of the ancients, the king of three paintings and even the king of them." Three, heaven, earth, and man, and the king of the one who participates. The explanation of "three" and "wang" just shows Xu Shen's initiative in constructing the framework of heaven and man through the arrangement of the head of the ministry and reflecting the idea of the unity of heaven and man. Under this framework, everything in the world is seated through the Chinese characters and orderly.
Finally, xu Shen reproduced the order of specific natural and humanistic events within the head of the ministry through the arrangement of the order of the jurisdictional characters. The Shuowen records everything, but it is not a chaotic pile, but a structure that commends things and related concepts through the order of Chinese characters. Among the heads of departments, they can be roughly divided into two categories: nature and personnel, which have different arrangement principles. We take the "Water Department" and "Mouth Department" as an example and summarize it as follows:
Taking the Ministry of Water as an example, 468 Chinese characters with "water" as the head appear in the following order: (1) the names of various rivers, lakes and seas, such as "Fu", "Tong", "Zhejiang", "Dian", etc.; (2) The state of the water flow, such as "flood", "hedge", "trickle", "mixed", etc.; (3) Sand and gravel land in the water and waterside, such as "sand", "set", "pu", "沚", etc.; (4) Man-made waterways, such as "ditch", "canal", "decision (decision)", "wo", etc.; (5) Water-related sports, such as "crossing", "swimming", "diving", "pan", etc.; (6) Precipitation and drying up and other phenomena, such as "Min", "Shu", "Dry", "Elimination", etc.; (7) People's treatment of water, such as "soup", "overflow", "polyester", "mu", etc.; (8) Other water-related Chinese characters, such as "sweat", "cry", "leak (timer)", "澒 (mercury)", etc.
In the personnel category, taking the mouth as an example, 180 Chinese characters with "mouth" as the head are arranged as follows: (1) mouth and mouth movements, such as "kiss", "throat", "swallow", "snort", etc.; (2) Children's crying and laughing, such as "croak", "chirp", "㘈 (children have knowledge)", "cough (children laugh)", etc.; (3) Eating related Chinese characters, such as "sipping", "phagocytosis", "containing", "feeding", etc.; (4) Chinese characters related to breath speech, such as "wheezing", "啍", "name", "ask", etc.; (5) Diseases of breath and speech, such as "miserliness" and "mourning"
"嗼 (嗼" is "lonely", people die and are silent) and so on; (6) Chinese characters related to the mouth of animals, such as "bark", "peck", "scare", "yo (deer singing)", etc.
It can be seen that the natural Chinese characters are arranged by things and people, and the Shuowen first lists the Chinese characters related to the nature of the natural object, the secondary and similar things, and the artificial objects or human behavior, and finally other related things; Chinese characters for personnel consist of people and things, first of all, various things related to people (among which there are people's life cycle, praise and depreciation order), and then non-human related words. These two arrangement principles, which are in line with the order of understanding of nature and human affairs, are respectively organized to realistically organize the worldly vientiane reflected in Chinese characters.
In addition, the "Shuowen" also retains traces of the humanistic thought of the Han Dynasty, which can help us understand the thought of the Han Dynasty. If 540 parts are set up, they can be decomposed into factors of 6×9×10, of which 6 is the number of yin-yang transitions, 9 is the number of yang-yin transitions, and 10 is the complete number, which is in line with the mathematical logic of yin-yang harmony and complete harmony. Another example is that the "Shuowen" has a special humanistic explanation for the numbers and the representative words of the heavenly stem and the earth branch, and also sets up some of them as the light pole head without jurisdiction (such as the words "hai" and "three" mentioned above), which is also to highlight their particularity in ideology and culture.
After the above arrangement, the "Shuowen" reflects a complete set of humanistic world systems about the birth of the Dao, the unity of heaven and man, and the relationship between all things through Chinese characters. Any external thing can find its place in this system through Chinese characters, and has a wide relationship with the surrounding things, and Chinese characters, concepts, and things have never been so closely linked. This is the cultural world that Xu Shen saw through Chinese characters, so "Shuowen" is also a milestone in the cultural history of Chinese characters. By unveiling the macroscopic Chinese character culture picture shown in "Shuowen", we can more deeply feel the flesh-and-blood connection between Chinese characters and Chinese civilization. Grasping the overall scientific principles, cultural spirit, and the historical and cultural information contained in specific Chinese characters, it can naturally be analyzed through the "Shuowen", and there are already quite rich results, which will not be repeated here.
epilogue
Xu Shen and his "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Characters" are strange people and strange books spawned by the accompaniment of Chinese characters and Chinese civilization, and their influence is far-reaching and timeless. From today's point of view, the Shuowen is still flawed in specific glyphs, explanations and styles, especially after the rise of paleography, we can correct the omissions of the Shuowen through more ancient Chinese character glyphs. However, the advanced judgment of the development trend of Chinese characters in shuowen, the confirmation of the construction of chinese character conformation system, and the creation of Chinese character conformation analysis methods are far more valuable than individual omissions. Because of this, posterity finally determined Xu Shen's status as a "character saint" and commemorated this philologist who was the most famous in ancient and modern times by establishing the Xu Shen Cultural Park and holding the International Seminar on Xu Shen Culture. The Shuowen is also constantly integrated into the current era, and continues to play its guiding value for the study of Chinese characters through media means such as informatization.
(Notes to this article have been omitted)
This article was published in Biographical Literature, No. 4, 2022
Cover feature "The Past and Present Lives of Chinese Characters"
About the Author
Yiyun Zhang, a 2021 doctoral candidate at the Research Center for Folklore classics and characters of Beijing Normal University, majoring in exegesis.
Special thanks
Dunhe Foundation
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