The Research On The Variant Characters In The Warring States Period

The Warring States period is a great period of significant changes of Chinese society, in which profound changes in many fields such as economy, society, culture occurred. In this period, range extension and high frequency of using of characters which were caused by social development, and the independent administrative of the seigneurs gradually caused great changes of characters which caused rapidly increasing of variant characters.Scholars have given attention to the phenomenon of numerous variant characters in the Warring States period. But truly systematically study of the variant characters in the Warring States period is very late, and the study of the variant characters in the Warring States period is only about a part of the variant characters in the Warring States period, the range of which is narrow. This thesis studies the characters of eastern seigneurs, which includes the great majority of the variant characters in the Warring States period. There are two parts of characters in the Warring States period, which are characters of western seigneur Qin and characters of eastern six seigneurs. This thesis focus on the characters of eastern six seigneurs, doesn’t relate to the characters of western seigneur Qin.This thesis completely observes the variant characters in the Warring States period which focus on characters of eastern six seigneurs, and classify the variant characters systematically by their concrete characteristics. There are two types of the variant characters in the Warring States period in this thesis, which are heterogeneous words and different writings. There are five types of heterogeneous words, which are heterogeneous words which are caused by the difference of the forms in the phonetic and semantic component, heterogeneous words which are caused by the difference of the configuration modes, heterogeneous words which are caused by accumulating characters, heterogeneous words which are caused by bianxingyinhua, heterogeneous words which are caused by rouhe. There are two types of different writings, which are different writings of component, and different writings of strokes. These types are just an outline, there are detailed types of most of these types, and there are more detailed types of some detailed types.This thesis illustrates the reasons of the formation of the variant characters in the Warring States period, and the characteristics of the variant characters in the Warring States period. There are five reasons of the formation of the variant characters in the Warring States period, which are society; characteristics inherited from the variant characters in the Shang and Zhou dynasties; long period; characters carriers and writing tools; writing style. There are four characteristics of the variant characters in the Warring States period, which are high numbers; complex types; new and old variant characters used at the same time; obvious regional characteristic, and the obvious similitude between variant characters of different seigneurs.