The Research On The Ancient And Modern Chinese Characters In Books Annotated By Zheng Xuan

Ancient and modern characters are the hot point of the discussion of modern academic world. However, up to now, conception of ancient and modern Chinese characters is not settled yet. Modern scholars are enthusiastic about discussion on ancient and modern characters in the works of critical interpretation of ancient texts after the middle ancient times. However, the technical term of "ancient and modern characters" appears in Han Dynasty. Zhen Xuan is the person who first used the technical term of 'ancient and modern Chinese characters'. Research on the ancient and modern Chinese characters in books, which are annotated by Zheng Xuan can help people to understand correctly the conception of ancient and modern Chinese characters in traditional linguistics.Zheng Xuan brings forward the technical term of "ancient and modern characters" in his historical context. He lives in Eastern Han Dynasty, when large amount of scholars, who understand lots of ancient books and records thoroughly. What is more, most scholars at that time are in the plight of the press of large amount of knowledge handed down by their masters and parents. In the context of this kind of academy, appearance of Zheng Xuan, who understands thoroughly the studies of Confucian classics in ancient and modern writings, is In accordance with the developing trend of the studies of Confucian classics. Early in first years of Eastern Han Dynasty, conception of regarding linguistic phenomenon from the developing perspective has appeared in scholars. The bringing forward of the technical term of "ancient and modern character" is the embodiment of Zheng Xuan's regarding diachronic wording phenomenon from the developing perspective.Zheng Xuan thinks that conception of ancient and modern characters should mainly consist of the following aspects:according to Zheng Xuan, ancient and modern characters are different only in diachronic wording instead of word-formation. Ancient and modern characters are different in some semantic items and their pronunciation is identical or similar.Though Zhen Xuan is the first person who brings forward the technical term of "ancient and modern character", he only used it for one time. His conventional way of annotating ancient and modern characters is to cite them contrastively. Through Zheng Xuan's analysis of ancient and modern characters, it can be analyzed that his conception of ancient and modern characters is to view them from the integral wording habit and is neither restrained by time, nor by the difference between some book and other books. Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters relate each other in pronunciation in a identical or similar way. In the aspect of meaning, there is the condition, in which modern characters undertake the original, extended and guised meaning of ancient characters; in the aspect of form, many of Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters has no relationship. It can be seen from the analysis of relationship between Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters, variant characters and cognate characters that ancient and modern characters, variant characters and cognate characters are studied on characters phenomena from different perspectives and excessive discussion of their relationship is of no help to correct understanding of ancient and modem characters conception.Generally speaking, Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters refer to the phenomenon of diachronic variant characters from the same word in classics. It belongs to the problem of wording, but interrelated with word-formation problem. In the category of wording, ancient and modern character is a different wording phenomenon from guised character and variant character.Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters greatly influences later generations. Through analysis of ancient and modern characters in Confucian classics annotation of commentators before Qing Dynasty like Zhang Yi, Guo Pu and Yan Shi et al., it can be seen that most of them carry on Zheng Xuan's conception.Research on ancient and modern characters in Qing Dynasty is next to system. Duan Yucai's research on ancient and modern characters is the conclusion of Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters conception, while Wang Yun's ancient and modern characters conception also carry on ancient and modern characters conception in Han Dynasty. Xu Haofeng thinks that ancient and modern characters contain not only phenomenon of diachronic variant characters from the same word, but also the phenomenon of Chinese characters abundant differentiation and his discussion lays particular stress on the phenomenon of Chinese characters abundant differentiation. In summary, ancient commentators generally carry on Zheng Xuan's ancient and modern characters conception.