The Research On The Selection Of "Zitou" In Shuowen Jiezi

Shuowen Jiezi was written by Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty. At that time, the official clerical script was commonly used, and Small Seal Script variants were in great numbers, so in order to reflect the panorama of Chinese characters, all the variants are included. According to the system, only a word can act as "Zitou" before the explanation, and the other variants should be regarded as the appendix of "Chongwen". Xu Shen did not point out the selected principles of "Zitou",so that he made some errors of the judgment. Taking "Zitou" which have Chongwen as the research scope, this paper, selects "Guzhou Zitou" and "Zhengzhuan-Huoti " as the main object of study and tries to reveal the selected principles of "Zitou".The full paper is divided into five parts: the first part makes a brief introduction of the reason, the status and the range of the study. The second part discusses the origin and nature of "Zitou" in Shuowen Jiezi.The third part, through the analysis of "Guzhou Zitou", reveals that in Shuowen Jiezi, the choice of selecting the Guwen or Zhouwen as the "Zitou", sometimes depend on the requirement of unification, and sometimes because the shape of the weakening of the function cannot reflect the characters of the original meaning. By comparing the "Zitou" and "Huoti", the fourth part finds that Xu Shen’s selection of "Zitou" is directly determined by the adaptation of the form and the meaning.The final part is concluding remarks, showing that the "Bushou Zitou" are adhering to the "Tongzi" principle and the "non-Bushou Zitou" are adhering to "the adaptation of the form and the meaning", which can be seen as the first selected principle.