Chapter 283 Door Wall
This book is the foundation work of scientific philology and documentary linguistics of Chinese language and characters. It 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 key to the interpretation of the "Five Classics" by readers for thousands of years, explaining every word in the book in the form of a dictionary.
The second is the font. For the purpose of rigorous academic research, Xu Shen tried his best to find the oldest form of each character.
These include the "Tadpole Prose" in Confucius's Bi Zhongshu and "The Chunqiu Zuo Shi Zhuan"; the Zhou Prose in the "Shi Zhou Pian" of the Western Zhou Dynasty; and the "Cang Jie Pian", "Yuan Li Pian" and "Bo Xue Pian" in the Qin Dynasty Zhengzhuan, There are also "Erya", "Fanjiang Pian", "Jijiu Pian", "Yuan Shang Pian", "Xunzhuan" and "Dialect" in the Western Han Dynasty; "Pangxi Pian" in the Eastern Han Dynasty; as well as inscriptions and tripods from mountains and rivers. Inscriptions on Yi.
This preserved the oldest writing system known to the Chinese civilization at that time.
What is even more valuable is that this book has preserved a large amount of ancient pronunciation data for us, which is of great value for the study of the history of Chinese phonetics, especially the study of ancient pronunciation.
There are two main types of materials that can be used for ancient phonetic research: the first is the rhyming situation of pre-Qin texts such as "The Book of Songs", and the second is the homophony of "Shuowen".
Based on the actual situation of rhyme used in pre-Qin rhymes, the results obtained by summarizing ancient rhymes are relatively reliable. However, on the one hand, the results summarized in this way need to be tested by other materials. On the other hand, , due to the limited rhyme characters in ancient rhymes, it is still not enough to determine the ancient rhyme part of each Chinese character based on rhyme materials alone.
This requires the use of the harmonic system of "Shuowen" to verify and supplement.
Shuowen contains more than 7,000 pictophonetic characters, from which more than 1,000 homophonic radicals can be analyzed.
Although the pronunciation of words with the same homophonic radical in later generations is very different, the sound may be transferred, the rhyme may be changed, or the rhyme may be lost, but when the characters were created in ancient times, the pronunciation was the same.
Therefore, the homophony of "Shuowen", like the rhymes of pre-Qin rhymes, also reflect the basic appearance of ancient pronunciation. Combining the two can roughly restore the pronunciation of ancient pronunciation.
Of course, with the introduction of scientific methods, the dialects Zhou Zhi is studying now are actually first-hand information.
Zhou Zhi believes that Xu Shen has another very important contribution, which is his academic attitude and academic thoughts that are worthy of imitation by researchers of any discipline.
The first is to "learn widely and understand people" and "to conquer with faith".
"Shuowen Jiezi" covers everything in the world. The method adopted by Xu Shen is to "collect widely and understand people, as for the small and big, trust and conquer", "".
Xian Zongcheng said that everything has its source, which is for belief;
Everything is salty, and it is not included in it, which is a sign.
Translated, it means that the evidence is accurate, credible, detailed and comprehensive.
The second is "seeing doubts after hearing doubts" and "not knowing the answer".
Xu Shen's explanations of words and texts are all based on the old text. If there are differences in interpretation in the old text, if they can be identified, they will be identified; if they cannot be identified, they will be coexisted; if there are no differences in the old text, , or if you don’t know something, you would rather leave it blank than interpret it randomly.
If you know what you know, you know what you don't know, and if you don't know it, you don't know it. It is a matter of controversy and left to posterity.
This is a fairly rigorous and scientific codified ideological system. Xu Shen defines it as "the origin is established and the Tao is born."
It must first be invincible theoretically, and then its absolutely lofty status can be established.
The third is flexibility. Although Xu Shen collected many ancient characters, he finally chose "Xiaozhuan", a character that can access "ancient characters", as the object of explanation.
Because Xiaozhuan can uniformly cover all the texts in the Five Classics, Xu Shen first considered the overall needs in this regard, and only required "understanding the ancients" instead of blindly "advocating the ancients".
The achievement is so high that Yan Zhitui, a writer in the Northern Qi Dynasty, commented on Xu Shen: "I have examined six articles and integrated them into parts so that no mistakes can be made, and mistakes will be discovered. I believe it is a book, and I have hidden it." To analyze the root causes of poverty, Zheng Xuan's annotations are often cited as evidence. If you believe what he said, you still don’t know what the meaning of every bit of painting is.” Li Wenzhong, a scholar of the Yuan Dynasty, believed: “It is the predecessor of Shuowen, which cannot be explained without Shuowen; it is after Shuowen.” There is no way other than Shuowen."
Qing Dynasty writer Yao Wentian paid attention to "Shuowen" from the ancient pronunciation: "The ancient pronunciation has completely changed in Jiangzuo, and the only thing that relies on it to survive is the book "Shuowen Jiezi". Its homophonic essays are divided into factions and levels. Zhiru. "
This style of study has been passed down from generation to generation, and the same is true for the Gu family.
I heard Gu Youwen say: "If you read five o'clock sentences, can you recite most of the passages in "Shuowen"?"
Zhou Zhi nodded: "Sixty-seven out of ten."
"Okay." Gu Youwen patted his palm with a piece of bamboo: "Unlock one, congratulations."
"Zhu, the person who praises the worshiper. From the indication, from the population. One said: From the province of Dui. "Yi" said: 'Dui is the mouth and is the witch.'" Zhou Zhi opened his mouth and came.
"Well, the emperor, the emperor's emperor."
"The emperor is the great one. From self. Since, the beginning. The first emperor is also the king of the three emperors. Read it like a nose. , it is customary to regard the first child as the nose. "
"Dong, winter in winter."
When Zhou Zhi was about to speak, Gu Youwen raised the bamboo piece and said, "Go and write it down."
"Shuowen Jiezi" does not contain complete information on its own, because it also contains the fonts of ancient characters.
Zhou Zhi took out a pen and paper and wrote down two strange characters: "This is Xiaozhuan, and this is ancient Chinese. Dong, Du Zongqie, 仌bu, the shape of Xiaozhuan is like this, and the explanation is: The four seasons are over. Congqi, Congguan. The second word in ancient Chinese is winter, Congri. "
"What do you think of this statement in "Shuowen"? Is it right? "
"The font of the word winter that Xu Shen can get comes from bronze inscriptions, but it is not the earliest word for winter."
Zhou Zhi said and drew another shape on the paper. , like a skipping rope hanging on a nail: "This is the first character for 'winter' in Oracle. It is a rope knotted at the beginning and end, which means 'end, end'."
"The knot pattern of the Jinwendong characters collected by Xu Shen is still retained, but in the middle of the rope, a '日' representing the sun is added to express the concept of 'winter', which means the end of the year."
"Xu Shen believes that '傂, the last character in ancient Chinese characters', and '傂, the last word in ancient Chinese characters', and '古文 Winter Cong Ri' are both correct, but they are not completely correct. That is, '傂' comes from the knot tied at the beginning and end of the rope."
"Later on, when the font evolved, everyone thought that this could not convey the impression of cold winter, so two strings of ice were added below the word. This is the origin of the two dots under the word winter."
"Later, in order to It was convenient for writing, and Xiaozhuan evolved into the word "dong" with ice instead of the sun, and based on it, it developed into the word "dong" used today. "
"Master, am I right?"
"Hahahaha..." Gu Youwen laughed heartily and threw the bamboo piece on the table: "There is someone who will succeed me!"
My godfather was immediately overjoyed: "Elbow, thank you, master, ancestor. I promise to put you on the wall!”
(End of this chapter)