On The Study Of Punctuation In Bamboo And Sick Books Of Chu, Qin And Han Dynasties

The punctuation history of Chinese language is as long as Chinese Characters. Punctuation has been found in the Shell and Bone Characters-inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells during 16th-11th B.C.- the earliest Chinese language.Therefore, the study of how punctuation came into being and its development is a very important research subject in the study of Chinese language history. Before the Bamboo and Sick books were unearthed, the research conditions were not enough to see through the punctuation usage situation in Qin, Han and Chu periods. Because most of the documents that people see are those passed down generation after generation, it is hard to say that they still keep the original taste of them. Now, with the earliest book of our country - bamboo books and sick books - being unearthed, we are provided with the possible conditions to do some research.This paper selects some representative bamboo and silk materials of different stages to describe 12 kinds of Chinese punctuation to illustrate how these punctuations were used in different development stages and historical periods, to compare the same punctuation in different handwritten copies, its shapes and usages in different periods respectively. Moreover, the paper gives a comparatively detailed description of the newly emerged types of marks in different periods. Thus a tentative research of the punctuation marks on the Bamboo and Silk materials is carried out. The research materials used are the bamboo slips in a Chu tomb unearthed in GuoDian; Chu bamboo slips in Waning States (475-221 B.C.) collected and stored in Shanghai Museum; bamboo slips at a Han tomb in Zhangjiashan etc.Through the research, we came to the conclusion that punctuation development is a gradual and successive process. The pre-Qin Dynasty was the beginning period of the ancient punctuation marks. At that time, there were a few kinds of punctuation marks and their shapes were not identical. Ancient people used them in writing as casually as they pleased. Then, Han Dynasty was the developingperiod of punctuations, which made great progress based upon the past development. Not only were the numbers increased, but also their shapes and written styles were more unified than before. Moreover, the situation that a single mark represented multiple meanings or different marks shared one meaning was apparently changed and improved. Some punctuation functions were stabilized, for instance the two short horizontal sticks "=".In short, the usage and development of the punctuations in Pre-Qin, Qin and Han dynasties, lay a solid foundation for punctuation development afterward.