The Original Jade Text Study

The subject of this article is Yu Pian. written by Gu Yewang living in the Liang Dynasty during the time of the Six Dynasties.This article reflects the phenomena of ancient Chinese characters from many angles.The time of the Six Dynasties is a special period, and also a properous era on the study of Chinese characters. From the angle of the history of Chinese characters, regular script has come into being and developedproperously from the official script, an ancient style of calligraphy current in the Han Dynasty. From the angle of the usage of Chinese characters, it is very complicated during this period and many many phenomena of Chinese characters can be found. Newly-bom forms, complicated varients and flok forms of characters emerge in large numbers. Disintegration and mergence, simplification and complication, reason and symbolization of characters are the main conflicts. It is just in this period that many dictionaries appeared. The numbers and kinds of dictionaries during the Six Dynasties have unparalled superiority to other times. Yu Pian is the most anthentic and representative of these dictionaries. It is a pity that most of these dictionaries have been lost. Yu Pian is the survivor, yet it is uncomplete now. So it can be concluded that the original uncomplete Yu Pian is one of the most important materials to study the history of ancient Chinese characters during the Six Dynasties.The original uncomplete Yu Pian was faund more than 100 years ago, at the end of Qing Dynasty. But it isn't taken seriously by the acadmic circles till now. What's more, no one has a deep study on it by now as an important dictionary. This article will make an attempt.The article can be divided into 10 chapters, followded by several appendixes. The first three chapters introduce the author, Gu Ye wang's life and his works, the time when Yu Pian was written and some other information about Yu Pian . Narration as well as textual reseach can be found in these three chapters, which the forerunners of linguistics haven't mentioned before. For example, we infer that the year when Yu Pian was written is the fourth year of Da Tong, Liang Dynasty. No one has drown this conclusion by now except our study. Another example, we discover that the word "ff\" in Yu Pian through the Book Xin Zhuan Zi Jing is not included in the original uncomplete Yu Pian. Chapter V to Chapter IX are the special topics on the usage of Chinese characters in the original uncomplete Yu Pian. These parts mainly deal with the merged characters, the newly-born characters, the complicated varients and the characters used to mark characters' pronunciations, which the forerunners haven't referred to. Chapter X discusses some handwriting shortcomings of the original uncomplete Yu Pian from the angle of a handwriting book. The classifications and analyses of the folk forms of characters play a main role in this chapter. The appendixes are made up of a chronicle of Gu Yewang's life, examples of reorganizations of the original uncomplete Yu Pian, some reading notes etc.Though this article only focuses the readers attention on a speciale dictionary, it's meaningful to make a study on Chinese characters of the times of the Six Dynasties. As we all know, thestudy in this field is the weakest in the study of Chinese characters' history. The main reason is the lack of study on the points. It is well know that the study on the surface is based on the study on the points. Otherwise, it is hard to go on with the study. This article is just a breakthrough to make a study on the condition of Chinese characters during the times of the Six Dynasties through the original uncomplete Yu Pian. And it may gives some methods and materials for further study. At the same times, it can be regarded as a reference book to the construction of historical language material as well as to the study of modern Chinese characters.