Research On The Variant Chinese Characters In YuPian Of Song Dynasty Edition

As the first regular script (the standard form of writing in Chinese calligraphy) dictionary in Chinese philological history, YuPian is another important one following ShuoWenJieZi. The huge number of variant Chinese characters in it is a mirror of the chaotic use of Chinese characters in Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties. After a few considerable modifications, the present YuPian of Song Dynasty edition commonly used by us still follows the content and system of YuPian of the original edition; therefore, the former has become one of the Chinese character fossils from Wei Dynasty to Song Dynasty.In order to deeply get to know and understand the Chinese character used in those periods, the author of this paper takes variant Chinese characters as the research target and makes an analysis on their structure, origin and technical terms with large numbers of specific examples to a certain degree.This thesis is composed of five sections:The first section is literature review which gives a brief account to YuPian of Song Dynasty edition and the definition as well as achievement of the variant Chinese character in the present academic circle.With abundant specific variant Chinese characters as examples, the second section analyzes their formation causes and structural change. In YuPian of Song Dynasty edition, the structural form of variant Chinese characters is plentiful, in which the pictophonetic character,the pictographic character,the associative character and self-explanatory character et al are simultaneously existent. As far as their formal change is concerned, the pictophonetic character turned from other structural forms is the main style, which roughly conforms to the general evolutionary rules of Chinese characters.Based on the analysis on specific examples, the third section makes an exploration on the complex technical terms of variant Chinese characters in YuPian of Song Dynasty edition, which, to a certain degree, have a direct relation to the fact that this dictionary was completed by various writers.The fourth section briefly classifies some representative variant Chinese characters according to their origin, whose complicacy is closely related to the fact that YuPian of Song Dynasty edition not only adopts the system of ShuoWenJieZi but also is the long accumulation of Chinese characters in Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties.The last section is a conclusion that sums up the gain and loss of this dissertation.All these studies help readers generally get to know and understand the variant Chinese character in YuPian of Song Dynasty edition and provide them some referential materials for investigating some complicated and uncertain Chinese characters, compiling dictionaries, sorting out Chinese characters and studying their history.