| In thousand years of the Tibetan history, the Tibetans created their colorful material and spiritual treasures, and documented their beautiful and unique ancient civilization. As the carrier of spreading the Tibetan culture, the Tibetan writing system is not only great importance of the philology and literature, but also of the value in linguistics, anthropology and history. In the history, as the basic subject of the Bon culture and the Buddhism Rig Gnas Lnga (The Five Disciplines), with research of the Tibetan grammar, orthography and Bzo Rig Pa (Technology), the writing system obtained scholars’great interests. However, it was not considered a direct research subject and there was not an independent subject of itself. In the past40years, scholars both inside and outside of China have made some breaking progress in the research of the subject in the Tibetan philology and literature, especially in the appearance of the first Tibetan grammar, origin of the writing system, the three improvements of the orthography and the Tibetan fonts, which laid a fundament for a deeper understanding of the Tibetan philology. However, most of these works are just unsystematic and general studies, without considering the dynamic changes of the writing systems. And these scholars did not own the materials from the early history since they did not collect and compile the vivid and rich orthographic materials existing in the Tibetan society then. In order to deepen the research, it is necessary to start a specific study on the philology and its history, which is helpful to establish the discipline of the Tibetan philology and passing down the Tibetan culture, because as a ethnic group with a long history and a unique cultural tradition, most of its long history and culture is carried by the documentation written in the Tibetan orthography. It is impossible to understand the origin and development of the history of the Tibetan civilization without knowing the origin and development of the writing system. Therefore, it is necessary to make a new exploration and explanation to the outline and the related historical culture of the Tibetan writing system by a extensive and deeper study, so that we can change the general studies into the specific ones, find some common and systematic rules from the concrete cases, establish a new idea of developing the Tibetan orthography and the theory system from the new aspects, and create a new research domain for the Tibetan orthography.This dissertation consists of seven chapters except the introduction as the followed:In the introduction, this paper introduces the writing systems in the worlds with a bird’s eye, and under the background of the world’s orthographies and cultures discusses the appearance background, the characteristic and function of the Tibetan writing system. With the research of the history of the Tibetan cultural development and civilization, this dissertation states it is necessary and important to do a deeper study on the development history of the writing system in the current time, and explore and explain the Tibetan writing systems and the related religious and historical culture with a new aspect. It also introduces the previous research about this topic, the main contents, the basic idea, the methods, the conclusions and the innovative part of this work.Chapter one briefly discusses the appearance, the development and the characteristics of the expressive memorial signs before the birth of the writing system, including the origin and the development phase of some visible and touchable signs like the body language, the spoken language, the knot, the engraving signs and the drawings so on. It discusses the temporal and spatial disadvantages of these signs which brought out the appearance of the writing system.Chapter two is about the Zhang Zhung writing system. From the aspects of the archaeology, the language family and the typology about the Zhang Zhung, This paper discusses its appearance, the characteristics and the reason of its disappearance, and attempts to give an outline of the economic and cultural exchanges among the ancient Central Asia peoples, and under the cultural relation of the ancient Indian-Iranian people and the Zhang Zhung people, based on the theories and methods of the subjects like the historical literature, the linguistic typology, the religions and the writing systems, this paper states that the Zhang Zhung is from the Persian Spungs Yig and it is kind of a phonogram, analyzes the complication and the oldness of the Zhang Zhung writing system, which along with the religious conflicts, the social cultural and the language problems resulted in the replacement of the Zhang Zhung writing system by the Thon Mi writing system. Chapter three is about the Thon Mi writing system in the Tibet Dynasty. This paper discusses the reason why Thon Mi Sam Bho Tra created a new writing system, how he created it and what the characteristics of the Thon Mi writing system are. This paper argues that:based on the Tibetan language of the center area of the Tibetan Dynasty; the Thon Mi writing system was created taking the Zhang Zhung Smar Yig as a blueprint and referring to the ancient India Nagara., and the new writing system spread all over the Tibetan area then; the new writing system had two font variation, Dbu Can and Dbu Med. Thon Mi Sam Bho Tra’s main contribution to the Zhang Zhung writing system was he refined and simplified it, and he organized the Tibetan letters and created a spelling rule. His effort made the Zhang Zhung a typical phonetic system.Chapter four is about the writing system in the Tibetan Dynasty. Based on the rich and different writing materials like the epigraphy, inscription on the bronze, engraving on the wood, excavated documentations, applying the demonstrable methods like the archaeology and textual research, synchronic and diachronic studies, this paper explores the Thon Mi grammar and its spelling rules, the two improvements and the change of the old Tibetan writing system, unscrambles and explains the characteristic eight Dbu Can and the Ldan Lugs and Li Lugs of Dbu Med which all were based on the Thon Mi blueprint, further describes the styles of the writing system, fonts and punctuation of the old Tibetan writing system in the Tibetan Dynasty which were different from the later writing system. Chapter five is the Titan writing system during the Tibetans separated each other from the middle of the10th century to the end of the13th century. Although the whole Tibetan area was splitting then, the Tibetan culture made unprecedented progresses. Many famous translators and scholars combined their old knowledge with the new ones they learned from people of other ethnic groups, published lots of books and gradually enriched the religious culture. Among this movement appeared the Dbu Can Khyung Bris,’bru Tsha, Dpe Tshugs, and many other fine fonts. Some works specialized in the Tibetan writing systems were also published. Especially there was another improvement of the Tibetan writing system,"Standardizing the new terms", which made the Tibetan writing System better. For example, they united the variant founts, simplified the spelling rules, like changing i/I into I. However, the writing system in this time in some degrees was still complicated comparing to the later ones and it shows its transitional features.Chapter six is about the writing system from the13th century to1949. During the middle of the13th century, the Tibetans ended the300year’s split and set up a theocracy state. However, the long time’s feudal separation resulted in many Tibetan dialects, which affected the standardization of the written language and the writing system in some degrees. Fortunately, the Buddhism and Bon sects were growing fast, many scholars and linguistics like Sa Pan published lots of classical works, and especially books about the traditional grammar, the writing system and the fonts, further standardized the writing system. On the other hand, during the14th century the Tibetan area introduced the technology of woodcarving printing, and with its spread, the spelling rules and punctuations usage of the Tibetan writing system improved a lot. Except the Dbu Can and the Dbu Med fonts spread in some regions, based on own interests and skills calligraphers created many different font styles like the Brda Yig,’Phrul Yig, Gter Yig, Skyogs Lo Yit Gsar, Chag Lo Yig Gsar,’Gos Lo Yig Gsar, Rdor Gdan Yig Gsar, Rin Spungs Yig Gsar, and ’Gro Mgon’ Phags Pa’i Hor Yig so on. So many different calligraphic fonts are a significant feature of the development of the writing system in this period.Chapter seven is about the usage and development of the Tibetan writing system in the modern times. After the establishment of the new China, the Tibetan writing systems got a better development. The Tibetan writing system was forbidden during the Cultural Revolution, and under the influence of the radical left ideology it was reformed curtly, ignoring its own characteristics. The result was it become too simple. However, it got deserved respects and developed soon, and from the1980s the Tibetan writing system spread very fast and there was a breaking advance in the information process. The Tibetan number code, Tibetan braille, Latin Tibetan writing system, Tibetan computer software like the Tibetan processing system and the system of the laser editing, makeup and printing all appeared, and the Tibetan writing system is getting more standardized. The development and spread of the technology of information processing have made a good contribution to the Tibetan economic development.Under the guidance of the historical materialism and dialectics, applying the basic theories and methods of cultural linguistics, literature, history and philology, the author tidies up, reads and explains the materials about the appearance and development of the Tibetan written language. Appling the methods of literature research and archaeology, empirical study, this paper analyzes the appearance and development process of the Tibetan written language, and many other disputed issues, summarizes the different features of the Tibetan writing system in each period and its diachronic changes, especially analyzes the Tibetan spelling rules, types of fonts, the writing skills, the cultural function of the written language and its way of development, finds out its inner causation and the relation of the mutual consequences, and makes a theoretical summary, which would be helpful to study the history of the Tibetan writing system and establish related theories. Based on this kind of idea, the basic viewpoints and main innovation of this work are as the followed:1. This paper tries to break though the traditional Tibetan philological theory and linguistic viewpoints, observes the relation of the social culture and the development history of the writing system from the multiple views, explores the Tibetan language and its grammar, the writing system and the movements for improving it, the religious literature reform and the development of the writing system, hopes to change the general studies into the specialized studies and describe the historical traces and outline of the emergence and development of the Tibetan writing system in a multiple angles.2. Applying the theories and methods of the modern cultural linguistics and philology, this paper analyzes the emergence, characteristics, spelling rules, structural features, the function and way of development of the writing system, and distinct it, as an independent subject-----philology, from the traditional grammar and orthography. This work deepens the specific study of the writing system and its development history, points out its inner causation and developing pattern from the philological view. It is an innovation of this paper.3. The important and difficult part of this study are:the emergence and characteristics of the Zhang Zhung writing system, the relation among the Zhang Zhung writing system, the Thon Mi writing system and the ancient Indian writing system, the Thon Mi grammar, the writing of the ancient writing systems like the epigraphy, inscription on the stone and the bronze, the old Dunhuang Tibetan scripts and their spelling rules, the improvement of the writing systems and its orthography, the common features of the different periods and the diachronic changing patterns and so on. It is a significant feature of this work explaining some disputed issues with a substantial evidence research.4. Combing the old Tibetan philology theory with the theories and methods of the modern philology, applying the method of the synchronic and diachronic comparison, this paper demonstrates the periodical features and the diachronic changing traces in different phases, points out the relation between the synchronic development and the diachronic one, makes a highly abstract summary and a vivid analyzing, states the unknown relation of the mutual dependence and the reciprocal causations between the written language and writing system in different times, and aims to create the development views and theory of the Tibetan writing system in order to fill the gap of research about the Tibetan writing system.5. As a typical phonetic system, the Tibetan writing system’s spelling rules, fonts, punctuations and the combination of sound and meaning are the main thread of this paper, and discussions are based on it. This work explains the Tibetan orthography, types of fonts and way of writing, systematically illustrates the Tibetan writing system’s changes and features in the different times. The huge body of the materials, types and unique forms of the writings are also a noticed feature of this research. |
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