Quotations From The Book Of Songs In Sui, Tang And Five Dynasties’ Stone Inscriptions

As the first collection of Chinese poems, the Book of Songs has had a profound impact on both Chinese literature and Chinese society. The literary style of alluding to the Book of Songs to convey one’s aspiration or ambition began to occur as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, and textual examples of allusion and citations can often be found in handed-down historical literature and unearthed documents.During the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties period, the development of stone inscriptions entered upon the second peak since the Eastern Han Dynasty. From the perspective of their content, they mostly adopted a dignified and elegant style, with frequent quotations from the classics and abundant materials alluding to the Book of Songs. Stone inscriptions feature high authenticity and low susceptibility to tempering. Thus, the study of those which contain allusions to the Book of Songs is greatly significant for us to understand the features of the language(s) then, the spreading of the Book and its subsequent influence.In view of this, we focused on the words and sentences cited from the Book of Songs in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties’ Stone Inscriptions, basing this research on "the Sui Tang and Five Dynasties’ Stone Inscriptions Database" developed by the Center for the Study and Application of Chinese Characters, East China Normal University.In this dissertation, we calculated, classified and analyzed the materials cited from the Book of Songs in Sui Tang and Five Dynasties’ Stone Inscriptions, which would supplement the related researches formerly conducted by other scholars. In the meantime, we compared these materials with other documents, examined the influence and the spreading of the Book of Songs in different ages. Hopefully, this research would serve as a useful supplement to the academic study of the Book of Songs.This dissertation includes the following five parts:Chapter One, Introduction of the Research Backgrounds. This chapter includes the current research status, the methodology and the significance of this research. There have been a great variety of related researches concerning the unearthed and handed-down documents about the Book of Songs, with their foci on various perspectives such as languages and characters, textual interpretation and version variations, etc. However, there has not been any research yet about the words and sentences cited from the Book of Songs in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties’Stone Inscriptions.Chapter Two, The General Situation of the Words and Sentences Cited from the Book of Songs in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties’Stone Inscriptions. We calculated and compared the sentences cited from Feng, Ya and Song- the three parts of the Book of Songs. We discovered that the sentences cited from Feng account the most in these three parts. There are mainly two reasons:firstly, people had tried to understand the Book of Songs from its literal meanings instead of political reasons; secondly, the main purpose of Stone Inscription is to praise.Chapter Three, The Variants of the Sentences Cited from the Book of Songs in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties’Stone Inscriptions. We compared these sentences with the equivalences in the current version of the Book of Songs and analyzed these variants in the order of 305 poets in it. We find out that these variants include character, words and order differences.Chapter Four, The Chongyan Words Cited from the Book of Songs in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties’ Stone Inscriptions. The Chongyan words are very tidy and concise, which caters to the requirements of the Stone Inscriptions. By calculating the Chongyan words, we concluded that most of those words are adjectives and the main function of them is to describe and express feelings.Chapter Five, The Literary Quotation Words Cited from the Book of Songs in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties’Stone Inscriptions. We classified these words into "Virtue", "Kindness", "Friendship", "Love", etc. We also generalized the characteristics of these words.