A Study Of Difficult Characters In The French Collection Of Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts

Since the Dunhuang scrolls have been discovered in a hidden cave of Mogaoku, Dunhuang County, in1900, scholars from all sorts of fields have been doing research on it, including traditional Chinese medical literature. Written over a thousand years ago, the Dunhuang manuscripts have not been modified by later generations, but have retained their original face. Within traditional Chinese medical literature, Dunhuang manuscripts provide very valuable information. Comparing Dunhuang manuscript texts with other materials handed down from ancient times, they can illuminate a broader meaning. But as these documents were all copied by hand, there are popular forms of characters and character variations. This, as well as the texts being scattered and incomplete, makes text reading difficult and few scholars are willing to take this task. New advance in research of Dunhuang traditional Chinese medical literature has been made in recent decades, but according to published books and articles, there are still many questionable viewpoints. As only a few of the original medical literatures are known in the modern academic field, so prudent explanation of Dunhuang traditional Chinese medical literature is quite valuable to the theory as well as to practical clinical application.The distribution of Dunhuang medical manuscripts is almost the same as that of Dunhuang literature, they’re mainly hidden in Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Japan. Because of time limitations, this research only chooses Dunhuang traditional Chinese medical literature in France (divided into the following four parts:the medical classics, prescriptions, materia medica and acupuncture). Taking four systematic proofread books (Textual Research on Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts, Interpretation of Dunhuang Medical Documents, Dunhuang Chinese Medicine Encyclopedia, Proofreading on Ancient Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts) as reference, this thesis is about difficult and complicated characters in those four areas of medical literature. The characters are either read differently or in accordance but with mistakes. The thesis is researching "difficult and complicated characters" by using traditional linguistics including philology, phonology, explanations of words in ancient books and textual knowledge, combined with medical knowledge to obtain the correct result corresponding to the original version, in order to improve the arrangement of ancient Dunhuang medical manuscripts.