Research On Texts In Pre-Qin & Qin & Han Periods:A Materiality Perspective

Materiality is an opposite concept to textuality.They respectively represent the form part and content part of a text.Specifically,texture,specification,punctua tion,typesetting of text-carriers and textual visualizing all belong to the scope of Materiality.In the paper,I used this concept to discuss under three quesetions:(1)The difference between separate and combine of the sections and chapters of texts in early China is not only bucause of the different understanding of contents,but also bucause of the different understanding of materiality of text-carriers.Text will never has a constant definition between section and chapter.Which the text will be,it depends on the personal understanding of definer and specific context.(2)In the perspective of the text-carrier,the annotate works and main texts were respectively spread at first.Gradually,some scribes and scholars put the m together.In the late period of Eastern Han Dynasty,the books contained annotation and main text were becoming popular.There was less division between annotation and main text when they were wrote together at first.Peole only knew to use the word like zhuanyue??to mention that the the following sentences are annotations.Or they used dialogues to replace narratives to worte the annotations in order to distinguish them from the main text.But the ways are not intuitionistic enough.Later,peole learned the format from official documents which worte the main contents by big characters and wrote the details by small characters to typeset the books combine annotations and main texts.These kind of books make peole read conveniently of course.The popularity of them are also based on the invention and popularity of paper.(3)Texts of tabulation in early China always use columns to separate each part.They are always written or read breadthwise but sometimes slantly.Few calendars are written or read lengthwise or circularly.Base on the common situation about amount of columns and wordage on each bamboo or wooden slip in early China,we realise that the form of tabulations of Shi Ji??and Han Shu??dynasty have already changed in Song?dynasty at least.The new form of tabulations can present by paper but not bamboo or wooden slips.The form of tabulations of Shi Ji??and Han Shu??in early China may be written in batches.