A Study On The Structure Of Qin

A large number of materials of Qin Character, which, in this thesis, refers to all the written texts on a variety of carriers from the Qin Kingdom in the late Western Zhou Dynasty through the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) to the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), have been unearthed in succession since 1970s, providing convenience for our in-depth study of the evolution of Qin characters. This thesis consists of the following parts:First of all, in the introduction the purpose, significance, scope and methodology of research are presented, and a literature review is made.The first chapter, titled "Exploring the Origin and Evolution of Qin Characters", traces the origin of Qin characters and discusses the emergence of official and cursive scripts in the development, standard writing of characters, and relations between Qin characters and Shuowen Jiezi (shortened to Shuowen, or Explaining and Analyzing Characters literally) and so on. By combing through the published materials of Qin scripts, the author makes a comprehensive survey of the development history of Qin characters.In the second and the third chapters the dissimilation of Qin characters unrelated and related to sound and meaning are discussed respectively. The second chapter, focusing on the characters simplification, accumulation, erroneous transformation of font style in the evolvement, and changes of part or radical layout, seeks to explain the variation of Qin characters with rich examples; and the third chapter includes six parts:substitution of phonetic components, phonetic components accumulation, turn part of the character into its phonetic symbol, semantic components substitution and the general use of radicals of similar meaning, semantic components accumulation, and semantic components simplification.In the fourth chapter the apperception of Qin characters is stressed. Based on the studies by predecessor scholars and with reference to their classifying the apperception of Qin characters into four categories, examples are given in the discussion in each section.The fifth chapter centers on "the confusion caused by similar forms in Qin characters". The phenomenon of confusion caused by similar forms in Qin characters is subdivided into five categories based on the causes of misidentification, and 24 pairs of characters are listed one by one for discussion from the first to the fifth section in this chapter before 40 pairs of Qin characters with radical misidentification being summarized in the sixth section. This chapter also summarizes the laws of font changes in the variation of Qin characters based on the exploration from Chapter Two to Chapter Five.In Chapter Six, "the criteria of period segmentation study of Qin characters and the changes of character pattern" are the focus. Firstly, the author makes a brief discussion of the periodization criteria of Qin characters materials, and then from the second to the sixth section illustrates the changes of character forms in Qin scripts that can be used as the criteria by giving specific examples, the 18 characters including "造(zao)", "雝(yong)", "丞(cheng)", "法(fa)" and "秦(qin)", for instance.Finally, in Chapter Seven the author discusses the relations between Qin characters and those in other six feudatory states. In the first section of this chapter, an overview of the major achievements in the topographic study of characters in Warring States period is presented by introducing the four types of scripts:bronze inscriptions, bamboo slips, seals, and terracotta characters. The second section, as the focus of this chapter, treats the unique writing of Qin characters by classifying the writing into 8 categories with 71 examples of characters through the analysis of the differences of strokes and configuration between Qin characters and those of other six feudatory states, and sorts out the attached Table of Similarities and Differences between Qin Characters and those of Six States. By collecting the character patterns of pre-Qin writing and Qin characters as completely as possible, the discussion of each character helps finding the clue to the evolution from pre-Qin scripts to Qin characters as well as the Qin character’s influence on the subsequent characters.