Research On He Songling's "Liu Shu Yuan"

Traditional Chinese works and studies on Shuowen and "Liushu" in late Qing Dynasty are not only purely engaged in textual research,but also focused on constructing an argumentative philosophy.However,scholars in late Qing Dynasty did make certain achievement by studying traditional Chinese linguistics.In the process of academic change,by giving equal weight to practical and academic fields of late Qing Dynasty,these scholars advocated conciliating between Song and Han Study,appealed to worship Confucius,to put it simply,writing books,regarding as the primary means of academic research and political participation.HE-Songling,a scholar of the late Qing Dynasty,wrote the book LiuShuYuanShi which combines regular script with the form of "chuan","chou" and other ancient writing forms.Based on ShuoWenJieZi(written by XU-Shen),ShuoWenXiZhuan(written by XU-Kai)and ShuoWenJieZiZhu(written by DUAN-Yucai),this philological work imitated example of the received fonts in LiuShuGu(written by DAI-Tong)and changed the radicals of ShuoWenJieZi.LiuShuYuanShi is a work of Chinese Etymology to explore the origin of Chinese characters,and a book can be attached to "Liushu"(rules for character-formation with the image-numerology and meaning-pattern from The Book of Changes.And also,this book aims to correct errors and fill in omissions made by XU-Shen.By adopting advantages of Han and Song studies,HE-Songling explores the original meaning of Chinese characters,and investigates the origin of characters in its popular forms.Since the book was published,it has not been accurately positioned and evaluated so far,just because it is not conformed to the mainstream of scholarship at that time,and be considered to offer outlandish explanations by most scholars.On the premise of a comprehensive collation of HE-Songling's Book,referring to relevant literature materials,the author's relevant situation,the style of the entire book,the characters and fonts,the origin of He's view on Chinese characters,the theory of"Liushu",and the interpretation system were objectively studied.And make a review in the sense of the academic history of philology.So,this paper is divided into the following parts:The "Introduction" mainly introduces the reason for choosing the topic,the current status of the research on LiuShuYuanShi,the main purpose,significance and research method adopted in this paper.Chapter ? "The Author and his Works":it mainly introduces the author's life and friendships,and organizes the author's works.This part makes an in-depth analysis of the writing purpose,version circulation and style of the LiuShuYuanShi,and further expounds the style from four aspects:radicals by which characters are arranged in his book),uses of different character forms,ways of describing phonetic notation and interpretation.Chapter ? "Character Collection and Font Analysis in LiuShuYuanShi":one of the purposes of HE-Songling's book is to "fill in omissions".The so-called "fill in omissions"is an instant supplement to ShuowenJieZi.This part will first discuss the principles of the collections of characters in LiuShuYuanShi,and makes a textual research on the characters that Songling thought were not accepted;second,it summarizes and evaluates the sources,analysis methods and the determination of characters in LiuShuYuanShi.Chapter ? "Study on Origin of Characters in LiuShuYuanShi":first of all,this paper combs the existing views on the origin of characters that have a relatively large impact in history,and grasps the source of the evolution of Chinese characters,and then makes comments on Songling's viewpoints on the origin of Chinese characters,such as"all characters shared same origin and might gather together in One" and "the evolution theory of image-numerology from The Book of Changes",all those viewpoints together create a system of HE's own.Chapter ? "Study on 'Liushu' Theory in LiuShuYuanShi":from the perspective of"Liu shu" to analyze the "origin of the characters".This chapter not only discusses Mr.HE's view on "Liu shu" exact chronological order,but also analyzes and summarizes the theory of "Liu shu" in the book.There are two kinds of pictographic("hsiang hsing")? characters:positive and variable;and self-explanatory("chih shih")can be divided into two categories:"single body" and "combined body";associative compounds("hui yi")be discussed from "following XU's theory" and "disagreeing with XU's theory";pictophonetics("hsing sheng")can be divided into three categories,"the doctrine of suitable for the sound-sign","the doctrine of based on the shape-sign" and"the doctrine of possesses the sound and meaning of the component".Songling believed that the above four categories of characters were characters making rules.Transcription ("chuan chu")is based on "shape transformation" and "annotation";character-loaning("chia chieh")is related to "word meaning" which includes "extension of word meaning","similar sounds" and "shape change".As for above two categories of characters,Songling thought they were wording regulations.Chapter ? "Study on Paraphrase System in LiuShuYuanShi":from the semantic change,it analyzes the paraphrase system of the LiuShuYuanShi.This part studies the paraphrase from method,the source of related paraphrase(that is quotations),and constructs the paraphrasing system of LiuShuYuanShi.Chapter ? "Value and Deficiency of LiuShuYuanShi":by evaluating the content of the book and comparing it with the same period works on studies of the ShuowenJieZi,we summarize the achievements and deficiencies of the book and clarify its position in the history of Chinese character study."Conclusion":make a summary of the research in LiuShuYuanShi.Through research,we can see that part of "Liushu" theory in LiuShuYuanShi and the construction of the meaning system have indeed been invented;the interpretation of some glyphs is also in line with the development and evolution of Chinese characters and should be given positive evaluation.The Compiling Summary of Complete Library in the Four Branches ofLiterature("Xuxiu SiKu QuanShu ZongMu TiYao")was criticized he's book as "the interpretation of the body,just like a nightmare,the whole book is inadequate".However,HE-Songlin believed that all the characters were differentiated from "one"(beginning),according to "Tai Chi" and accompanied by the "YinYang"&"Five-elements" theory,and feudal ethical thoughts to supplement the "Liushu".Based on his own views which impose on Chinese characters,the book Tui Shi Shu evaluated that most parts in this book were too far-fetched and this evaluation is in line with the fact.