| "Shuo Wen Jie Zi"("Shuo Wen" for short) written by Xu Shen in Eastern Han Dynasty is the first systematical philological work in China, as well as the important material in researching ancient writing. But the omissions and errors of the work were increased through several centuries. And it was worsen by Li Yangbing's distorting in Tang Dynasty.Later, the philologist Xu Kai in Southern Tang Dynasty wrote "Shuo Wen Xi Zhuan" and the philologist Xu Xuan in Song Dynasty checked "Shuo Wen" following the imperial edict. As a result, the original "Shuo Wen" was roughly recovered by the two persons' hard working. But their annotations were simpler and there were some mistakes so that it was difficult for readers to understand "Shuo Wen". Several hundreds of years later, the famous phonologist and philologist Duan Yucai in Qing Dynasty interpreted "Shuo Wen" thoroughly. He finished "the Annotation of Shuo Wen Jie Zi"("Duan's Annotation" for short) after 40 years' hard working. He engaged not only to recover the original of the work, but also to reveal its style in order to help the readers understand the author's aim.In the annotation, Duan Yucai checked and annotated the writing using Xu Shen's own ideas, but on the other side, corrected many mistakes by quoting various schools of thought, "Zhuan Zhu Zi Shu", dialects and colloquialism. Meanwhile, he made use of linguistic ideas and scientific methods to study the form, pronunciation and meaning of writing synthetically. Furthermore, he made a tentative study on phonology, philology, lexicology and critical interpretation of ancient texts of Chinese, which contributed a lot to the study of ancient writing.The thesis focuses on 63 correcting words among 540 radicals in "Shuo Wen", which comes from "Duan's Annotation". According to our statistics, "Duan's Annotation" corrected 63 radical words totally. In chapter 2, I lists the 63 radicals as well as their annotating words and correcting words in "Shuo Wen" and "Duan's Annotation", their corresponding inscriptions on bones and characters in Jin Dynasty in the chart. After comparing especially with the inscriptions on bones and characters in Jin Dynasty, I find 29 correcting words are correct, 20 ones wrong and the other 14 ones need to be further testified.In chapter 3, according to inscriptions on bones, characters in Jin Dynasty and corresponding ancient materials, as well as using modern studying achievements for reference, I classify 63 correcting words into 2 groups: one includes the words that were interpreted wrongly in "Shuo Wen" but corrected in "Duan's Annotation"; the other includes the words that were interpreted correctly in "Shuo Wen" but explained wrongly in "Duan's Annotation", which can be subdivided into 3 situations: 1. The meanings of radical words were extended in "Shuo Wenz" but interpreted wrongly as original meanings in "Duan's Annotation". 2. Some mistakes were made subjectively by Duan Yucai himself. 3. At that time the materials of inscriptions on bones and characters in Jin Dynasty were not enough.The reasons why Duan Yucai made some wrong interpretations can be reduced two: subjective reasons and objective reasons. The subjective ones are: 1. Duan Yucai took something too much for granted. 2. He believed in the later books such as "Yun Hui" rather than "Shuo Wen". 3. He praised Xu Shen blindly. The objectives ones are: 1. When "Shuo Wen" was finished, it was handed down for several centuries. So many mistakes were made in it. 3. The ancient writing materials such as inscriptions on bones and characters in Jin Dynasty were not enough.I also find the meanings of words corrected wrongly by Duan Yucai are more associated with their pragmatic meanings, which influenced him on understanding the words' original meanings.Although Duan Yucai made some mistakes in correcting words, he contributed significantly to it under the situation of lacking inscriptions on bones and characters in Jin Dynasty. And he is worth of commanding out great admiration.
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