Study On The Issues In Fifteenth Rhyme Group Of Old Chinese Sounds By Duan Yucai

The Confucian scholars of the Qing Dynasty deviated from the study on the Tang rhyme and revisited old Chinese sounds.Among those scholars,Gu Yanwu divided old Chinese sounds into ten parts,Jiang Yong did so into thirteen parts,and Duan Yucai integrated the achievements of his predecessors and did so into seventeen parts,where he put forward:1)The three parts of Zhis(之,脂,支);2)Zhen(真)and Wen(文)as separate parts;3)Hou(侯)as an independent part.Duan elaborated his thoughts in Liushu Yinyun Biao,which was considered a work representing his remarkable achievements.The fifteenth rhyme group of this book,Zhi(脂部),was the most complicated.It contains zhi(脂),wei(微),qi(齐),jie(皆),hui(灰)as the main content,containing the corresponding rhyme of rising tone and departing tone.In addition to the above,Duan also included into Part Fifteen several departing tone ji(祭),tai(泰),guai(夬),fei(废)and entering tone shu(术),wu(物),qi(迄),yue(月),mo(没),he(曷),mo(末),xia(黠),xia(鎋),and xue(薛).However,scholars held various attitudes towards Duan’s categorization in his Fifteenth rhyme group,for instance,Wang Niansun regarded zhi(至)and ji(祭)as separate parts;Zhang Taiyan would separate dui(队)from the zhi(脂)section;Wang Li considered zhi(脂)and wei to be independent,while also insisting that Zhang Taiyan’s departing tone and entering tone should be classified into wu(物).Actually,the intricacy of this part has already been pointed out by Duan from the perspective of mixed rhyming and sound-shift,and some adjustments have been made to the sub-chapter in the later phases of Duan’s creation.Based on the materials from Liushu Yinyun Biao and Annotation on Shuowenjiezi,this paper attempted to further investigate some of the existing problems concerning Fifteenth rhyme group of Duan’s old Chinese sounds.This paper consisted of four parts: part one briefly describes the current research background of the book;part two is focused on the statistics of the characters that appeared in Duan’s Annotation;part three mainly discusses the three most significant problems concerning Fifteenth rhyme group.The first problem is the intrinsic complexity of the part,especially the complex classification of the characters recorded.The second problem deals with the mixed rhyming and sound-shift as embodied in san(帴)of the jin(巾)radical,which was classified into the mixed rhyming part involving Fourteenth rhyme group and Fifteenth rhyme group.Additionally,latter scholars added more and more categorizations of the archaic rhymes,mostly due to the different opinions pertaining to the mixed rhyming,making it an issue worth discussing.Meanwhile,the second problem involves the distinction between “Li(礼),Fifteenth rhyme group” and “Shi(视),Fifteenth rhyme group,according to old Chinese sounds”,which embodies the sound-shift concept in Duan’s thoughts.Besides,it summarized the problem discussed previously and further explores the relationship between this part and the rest of the rhyme parts.The third problem is whether Fifteenth rhyme group can be further divided based on the discussion of the mixed rhyming and sound-shifts.On the basis of Duan’s classification,modern scholars including Jiang Yougao and Wang Li have further divided the part into a couple of sub-parts,such as ji(祭),yue(月),zhi(至),dui(队),wei(微),and wu(物).Actually,in his later years,Duan had made some adjustments to some practical problems existing in Liushu Yinyun Biao,i.e.,the confrontation between the entering tone wu(物)and yue(月)in Part Fifteen.Nevertheless,the adjustment is so often ignored that it is usually hard for modern scholars to make an objective evaluation of Duan’s archaic tone system.Considering this,it is both significant and necessary to investigate the foundations upon which Duan relied for his further classification as well as the discrepancies of classification of later scholars.In the end,the thesis offers an overall review on Duan’s thoughts concerning the archaic tone system on the principle of the previous investigation.