The Study On Chinese Characters Written In Vietnamese Literature During The Chinese Domination

The history of Chinese characters’application in Vietnam is over two thousands years, which can be divided into two stages, respectively the periods of Chinese domination (BC179-AC937) and the self-governance (AC937-1945). During the period of Chinese Domination in Viet history, Chinese characters were begun introduced into Vietnam. By accepting and using it consciously or unconsciously, either mandatory or non-mandatory, the Vietnamese people gradually adopted Chinese as a second language. Such a long and complicated history has formed a diverse overview of the application of Chinese characters in the period of Chinese domination in Vietnam. However, due to the remote past, only a small volume of the literature written in Chinese characters of the Chinese domination and only one piece of work on the literature collection and explanation of that period are kept. So far no works on systematical collection and research of all the Chinese character literature has been found. Because of the above reason, it makes the Chinese character research on the Viet literature written in the Chinese character lingering on the dynasty division, even rigidly limited to the one-sided judgment. Therefore this dissertation will probe into the overview situation of the Chinese characters’application in the Viet literature in the period of Chinese domination by the continuance of work collection and rearrangement on the basis of previous study.This paper consists of three parts, namely the body, appendix and reference.The Chapter One describes the route of the spread of Chinese characters into Vietnam and the details of the Chinese characters’spread in the period of Chinese domination, which mainly focuses on when the Chinese characters were begun spread into Vietnam in what historical background and how the Vietnamese accepted and adopted the Chinese characters. Afterwards this paper divides the process of the Chinese characters’spread in Vietnam into three stages according to the three times of Chinese domination in Viet history. The paper is based on the historical records in China and Vietnam and explores the research in the Chinese characters’spread and application by the stages.The Chapter Two is divided into two sections, which stresses the rearrangement of the Viet literature written in Chinese characters in the period of Chinese domination. The first section categorizes the Chinese characters in the period of Chinese domination in the Viet history, which sorts out the collected data according to the three stages in the Chinese domination and gives the general introduction of each category, such as the data’s chronology, the authors, the time and location of founding, the description of the data’s appearance, content and character numbers. In order to enable the reader to understand the Chinese character literature during this period, this paper carries out the text analysis and table creation from different perspectives, such as data types, materials, version. It is expected that the tables will reflect comparatively complete information. The second section is for the rearrangement of the Chinese character literature in the period of Chinese domination in the Viet history, which is divided into three parts. The first part is the supplementation of the works numbers, which conducts the exhaustive search for the undiscovered Chinese characters collection on the basis of the previous studies and for the works in China and Vietnam during the period. The second part is the version rearrangement and supplementation, which collects the versions of each category and makes the supplementation with the newly-discovered heritage. The third part is the version comparison, so that we can find the best version of each data and carry out the work of character supplementation and explanation.The Chapter Three is the study on character collection in the period of Chinese domination. This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part is about the overview of character frequency, the second part on frequency distribution characteristics, and the third on the interpretation rate of the character frequency. By means of the application of access database, this paper carries out the arrangement, analysis and summary on the character quantity and frequency in the period of Chinese domination.The Chapter Four emphasizes the script types in the Viet block-printed literature written in Chinese character during the Chinese domination. The paper analyzes the script types of the collected 27 block-printed literature and makes the judgment of their font, which leads to the conclusion that the main character types of block-printed literature in this period are Zhuan (seal script), Li (clerical script), Kai (regular script) and the majority is Kai. The second section is about the script styles, which focuses on the character quantity statistics of the above script styles in the block-printed literature and analyzes the character structural features of a variety of fonts. Meanwhile, re-interpretation is made to the difficult characters of each type.The Chapter Five is the research on variants in the block-printed literature written in Chinese character during the Chinese domination. There are two sections in this chapter. The first section is divided into three parts, which is the research of variants in the block-printed literature written on Chinese character during the Chinese domination. The first part is about the recognition and definition of variants. The second part conducts the analysis of character variants, involving changes in the strokes, components, whole characters’addition and subtraction, summarizes the variation characteristics and explores the character relationship between Vietnam and China. The second section aims at the quantitative study of variants, by the statistics of the number of characters and their variants in order to seek the character variants frequency in the block-printed literature written in Chinese character during the Chinese domination in Vietnam history.This paper is targeted to answer the following three questions:1) the time and phases of the spreading of Chinese characters; 2) the versions of block-printed and the written literature in Chinese characters during the Chinese domination and the value of the arrangement; 3) to explore the overview of Chinese characters’application in Vietnam during the Chinese domination, to summarize their structural features and to discuss the heritage and change of Chinese characters in Vietnam.Appendix:on the basis of the above, the glyph table in the block-printed literature written in Chinese character during the Chinese domination in Viet history is created.