Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 282 Door Wall
This book is the foundational work of scientific philology and documentary linguistics of Chinese language and Chinese characters, and has a very important position in the history of Chinese linguistics.

There are several aspects that illustrate its importance.

First of all, it is the door key for readers of thousands of years to interpret the "Five Classics", explaining every word in the book in the style of a dictionary.

The second is the font type. For the purpose of rigorous academic research, Xu Shen tried his best to find the oldest form of each character.

These include Confucius Bizhongshu and "Tadpole Wen" in "Chunqiu Zuo Shi Zhuan"; the "Zhou Wen" in "Shi Zhen Pian" in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the "Cang Jie Pian", "Yan Li Pian" and "Bo Xue Pian" in the Qin Dynasty Zhengzhuan, as well as "Erya", "Fanjiang", "Jijiu", "Yuan Shang", "Xun Zhuan", "Dialect" in the Western Han Dynasty; "Pangxi" in the Eastern Han Dynasty; and from the mountains and rivers Inscriptions on steles and Ding Yi.

This preserved the oldest writing system known at that time for the Chinese civilization.

What is even more valuable is that the book preserves a large amount of ancient phonetic materials for us, which is of great value to the research on the history of Chinese phonetics, especially the research on ancient phonetics.

There are mainly two kinds of materials that the Institute of Ancient Phonology can rely on: the first is the rhyming situation of pre-Qin texts such as "The Book of Songs", and the second is the harmonics of "Shuowen".

According to the actual situation of rhyme used in the pre-Qin rhymes, the results obtained are relatively reliable. However, on the one hand, the results obtained in this way still need other materials to be tested. On the other hand, due to the There are limited rhyme characters, and it is not enough to rely on rhyme materials alone to determine the ancient rhyme of each Chinese character.

This needs to be verified and supplemented by the harmonic system of "Shuowen".

"Shuowen" has more than 7000 pictophonetic characters, from which more than 1000 harmonic radicals can be analyzed.

Although the pronunciation of the characters with the same homophonic radical is very different in later generations, or the sound has been transferred, or the rhyme has been changed, or the sound and rhyme have been lost; but when the characters were created in ancient times, the pronunciation was the same.

Therefore, the homophony of "Shuowen" is the same as the rhyme of the pre-Qin rhyme, which also reflects the basic appearance of the ancient sounds. Combining the two, the pronunciation of the ancient sounds can be roughly restored.

Of course, with the introduction of scientific methods, the dialect that Zhou Zhi is currently studying is actually first-hand information.

And Zhou Zhi believes that Xu Shen has another very important contribution, that is, his academic attitude and thinking that researchers of any kind of knowledge can emulate.

First of all, "common people" and "trustworthy and conscientious".

"Shuowen Jiezi" is all-encompassing in the world, and Xu Shen's method is to "gather a wide range of people, as for the small and big, trust and have signs", "".

Xian Zongcheng said that everything has a source, it is a letter;
It is a sign that all things are seen in salt, and they are not contained at the same time.

Translated, it means that the arguments are accurate, credible, detailed and comprehensive.

The second is "seeing doubts when hearing doubts", "not knowing what to say".

Xu Shen said that all texts and interpretations are based on the old texts. If there are differences in the interpretations of the old texts, those that can be identified should be identified; those that cannot be identified should be kept together; I would rather leave it blank than interpret it indiscriminately.

Know what you know, what you don't know is what you don't know, and this is a dispute that will be left to future generations.

This is a fairly rigorous and scientific system of codification.Xu Shen defined it as "the origin is established and the Dao is born".

It must be invincible in theory first, and then its absolute lofty status can be established.

The third is flexibility. Although Xu Shen collected many ancient characters, he finally chose "Xiaozhuan", a character that can understand "ancient seal", as the object of explanation.

Because Xiaozhuan can uniformly cover all the characters in the Five Classics, Xu Shen first considered the needs of the whole in this regard, and only asked to "understand the ancients" instead of blindly "respecting the ancients".

The achievement is too high, so Yan Zhitui, a writer in the Northern Qi Dynasty, commented on Xu Shen: "Check the six essays and connect them to the parts, so that you can't make mistakes. If you make mistakes, you will be aware of them. I regard it as a book, hidden and organized, and analyze the root causes of poverty. Zheng Xuan's annotations are often quoted as evidence. If you don't believe what he said, you will have no idea what the meaning of each stroke is."

Li Wenzhong, a scholar in the Yuan Dynasty, believed: "Those who are the first of the "Shuowen" cannot be clarified without the "Shuowen";

Yao Wentian, a litterateur in the Qing Dynasty, paid attention to "Shuowen" from the ancient pronunciation: "The ancient pronunciation has changed all the way to Jiangzuo, so the only one that survives is the book "Shuowen Jiezi". rank as."

This style of study has been passed down from generation to generation, and it has also been passed down to the Gu family.

I heard Gu Youwen say: "Five-point sentence reading, can you recite most of the passages in "Shuowen", right?"

Zhou Zhi nodded: "Six out of ten."

"Okay." Gu Youwen patted his palm with a bamboo slice: "Untie one, congratulations."

"I wish, those who offer praise to the Lord. From the instructions, from the population. One said: from Dui province. "Yi" said: 'Dui is the mouth and the witch.'" Zhou Zhi opened his mouth and came.

"Well, the emperor, the emperor's emperor."

"Emperor, Da Ye. From Zi. Zi, Shi Ye. The first emperor, the three emperors. The self-reading is like a nose, and today the custom is to use the first child as a nose."

"Winter, winter's winter."

Just as Zhou Zhi was about to speak, Gu Youwen held up the bamboo piece: "Go and write it down."

"Shuowen Jiezi" has incomplete information on the bare back, because there are ancient characters in it.

Zhou Zhi took a pen and paper, and wrote down two strange characters: "This is Xiaozhuan, and this is ancient Chinese. Dong, Du Zongqie, Wubu, Xiaozhuan is shaped like this. Explanation: Four Seasons. From Wu , from 夂. 夂, the end of the ancient text. The second one is the ancient text of Dong, the ancient text Dong, from the day."

"You think this saying in Shuowen, right?"

"The winter characters that Xu Shen can obtain come from bronze inscriptions, but they are not the earliest winter characters."

As Zhou Zhi spoke, he drew another figure on the paper, like a skipping rope hanging on a nail: "This is the first character for 'dong' in oracle bone inscriptions. mean."

"In the Jin Wendong characters collected by Xu Shen, the knot pattern is still retained, but in the middle of the rope, a 'day' representing the sun is added to represent the concept of 'winter', which means the end of a year."

"Xu Shen thinks that '夂, Gu Wen Zhong Zi' and 'Gu Wen Dong Cong Ri' are actually correct, but they are not complete, that is, 'Zu' comes from the knots tied at the beginning and end."

"Later, the font evolved. People thought that this could not express the impression of the cold winter, so two strings of icicles were added below the word. This is the origin of the two points below the word winter."

"Later, for the convenience of writing, Xiaozhuan evolved into Dong, which used ice instead of the sun, and based on it, it developed into the winter character used today."

"Master Zuzu, am I right?"

"Hahahaha..." Gu Youwen laughed heartily and threw the bamboo piece on the table: "There will be successors in my generation!"

The godfather was overjoyed immediately: "Elbow, quickly thank Master Zuzu, Master Zuzu promised to include you in the gate wall!"

(End of this chapter)