Research Of The Structural System Of The Tsinghua University Scripts On Bamboo Slips

Since late 2010,ten series(58 articles)of classics contents scribed on Tsinghua University’s collection of“The Bamboo Slips of the Warring States Period" have been published.Among others,the Chu State characters displayed on the Bamboo Slips are found especially distinguished from other unearthed documents.Most of texts are written in rigorous specification,in which the structure of Chu characters was found ever changing while in stability.For more than ten years,under the guidance of the continuous improvement and perfection of ancient character structure theories,academies have conducted a lot of detailed and in-depth research on the characters written on Tsinghua Bamboo Slips.Comprehensive and systematic studies on this subject,which is the purpose of this dissertation,are however still rare.This dissertation was composed through a wide-ranging classification on the character structure of Tsinghua Bamboo Slips and taking various published research opinions as the reference framework.It attempted to describe the overall appearance of the character configuration of Tsinghua Bamboo Slips,revealed its main structure principles,and evaluated the status of this character structure system in the development history of ancient words of the Chu State in the Warring States Period and even the entire evolution of Chinese characters.Chapter One introduced the general situation of the contents of the research object,Tsinghua Bamboo Slips Series 1 to 10,and outlined their general characteristics of the text structure with a brief description of the research status of the text structure of Tsinghua Bamboo Slips,then described the contents and characteristics of this research and pointed out its significance.Chapters Two to Six are the dissertation’s main contents which respectively summarize and analyze the phenomena of "simplification",“complication","assimilation","alienation","preservation" and "variation" in the characters of Tsinghua Bamboo Slips.Each chapter first examined the related concepts and classifications in various related works,then concretely put forward the analysis framework of the respective chapter,carried out inductive analysis subsequently,and summarized the findings of the analysis finally.Chapter Two summarized and analyzes the phenomenon and rules of the simplified characters of Tsinghua bamboo slips from two aspects:strokes and radicals.Stroke "simplification" was divided into four parts:stroke simplification,stroke reduction,stroke borrowing,and edge borrowing.The radicals were classified into six parts:components,pictographs,meaning signs,sound signs,decorative signs,and homographs.Chapter Three analyzed the "complication" phenomenon of the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips characters through its functions of "stroke-complications" and "radicalcomplications".Stroke-complications were categorized into simple addition and filling-the-blanks.Radical-complications covered the addition of decorative signs,meaning symbols,sound symbols and the similar-shape components.Chapter Four started analyzing the“assimilation" phenomenon of the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips characters from the reasons of character assimilation.Four aspects of character assimilation:internalization,externalization,"assimilation within the text",and "similarity of the heterogeneous form" were analyzed to explore the convergence phenomenon under the influence of the assimilation.Chapter Five analyzed the "alienation" phenomenon of the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips characters from three aspects:strokes,radicals,and structural alienation.Stroke alienation included nine parts:disconnection,adhesion,contraction,extension,penetration,bending,displacement,tilt/straightness,and attribute change.Radical alienation included two parts:symbol replacement and imitation symbol replacement.Structural alienation includes two parts:the positional change of the radical and the positional alienation.Chapter Six analyzed the phenomenon of "preservation" on Tsinghua Bamboo Slips characters mainly based on the evolution sequence of the glyphs.The ancient form factors and their sources as retained by the glyphs were explored.Chapter Seven inductively analyzed the phenomenon of character "variation" on the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips character from the reasons for the variation as the classification standard.It is divided into eight parts:simplifying variation,complicating variation,alienating variation,assimilating variation,preservative variation,compound variation,whole-character variation,and radical confusion.An additional section of"Suspected Erroneous Variation by Handwriting",which analyzed the character shape variation caused by various factors leading to handwriting errors,is attached.The final chapter concluded and summarized the contents of the whole research and attempted to respond to the two major issues of ancient Chinese character configuration researches:categorization rule and configuration rule.