The Research Of The Zhuanzhu In "Zhouyi" Of The Warring Stats Chu Bamboo Book Collected By Shanghai Museum

The Book of Changes or ZhouYi(often I Ching) has been recognized as a historical masterpiece by Scholars for more than two thousand years. As the root of Chinese traditional culture, ZhouYi is listed as the principal classic and given the first priority by both Confucianism and Daoism. The traditional Yi-ology mainly focuses on divination and Yi philosophy, but obtainable linguistic researches on ZhouYi is rather rare. In history, many scholars have tried to interpret and explain ZhouYi in terms of language and words, but the truth beneath the literal meaning is less discussed. The linguistic researches on ZhouYi have seen rising since the unearthing of Chu bam-boo slips. This bamboo ZhouYi transcription of Chu dynasty in the period of Warring state is one of the earliest ever found, which preserved a large quantity of Chu texts in the form of Mutually Explanatory Characters(Zhuanzhu). As one of the ‘Six-etymology’(Six Ancient Chinese Character Categories), Zhuanzhu(or Mutually Explanatory Characters) plays an important part in Chinese coinage. Therefore, the discovery of this Bamboo ZhouYi transcription of Chu Dynasty has extremely high research value. The book named “Systematic Research on Zhuanzhu” has clearly revealed the nature of Chinese Zhuanzhu system. It has introduced the ‘three leaps’ in Chinese character transformation process, and provided scholars with the fundamental research methodology in this field. Using the bamboo ZhouYi transcription of Chu Dynasty as the main reference and research object, this paper also draws on the Zhuanzhu Characters found in the silk book of ZhouYi that excavated from Han Tombs at Mawangdui and in the Thirteen Classics Explanatory Notes and Commentaries- YiJing published in Jiajing period of Qing Dynasty. Through adopting the methodology introduced by ‘Systematic Research on Zhuanzhu’, this paper studies and classifies the theoretical evidences of Zhuanzhu in coinage and provides solid corpus proofs for it. So that, readers can have a glimpse of the generation and development process of Chinese Characters, and have an insight into our ancient ancestors’ profound cognition of all creation.This paper is divided into four parts:The Introduction part first briefs the background of the Chu bamboo ZhouYi transcription, then summarizes and discusses the existing literatures and studies on this topic. Then, it specifies the research materials used in this article. Last, it states the methodology and significance of this research.Chapter I defines the definition and classification of Zhuanzhu characters in the Bamboo transcription. Through comparing the definition of Variation, Variant characters, Cognate characters, ancient and modern words, compound characters, Analogous characters, and the E characters etc. with Zhuanzhu Characters, this part detailed discusses the nature and influence of the Zhuanzhu characters in Chu bamboo slips.Based on the comprehensive study of the Chu bamboo ZhouYi transcription, also in accordance with the logical order of ‘three maturity levels of Chinese character configuration method’, Chapter II classifies those Zhuanzhu characters into three direction types: the Consequent Transformation, Reverse Transformation, and Parallel Counter-rotating Transformation. Each Zhuanzhu character is carefully examined and systematically analyzed according to its specific direction type.The Conclusion Part outlines the weighting of each direction type in the Chu bamboo ZhouYi transcription, then lists and epitomizes the phenomenon of etymon mixture usage in the character transformation process. In the end, conclusions and future work are summarized.