Research On Qi Peirong's Philology Theory

Chinese graphology has a long history,which began in Zhou and Qin Dynasties.Besides,it began to prosper in Han Dynasty and had a prosperous time in Qing Dynasty.At the beginning of the twentieth century,linguistics began to spread in China and more and more cultural relics was discovered,which promoted the studying of basic questions of Chinese characters.Also,the scientific system of Chinese graphology began to set up.Qi Peirong was proficient at Chinese graphology and Chinese traditional exegetics,who had two monographs:Introduction to Chinese characters and Introduction to Chinese traditional exegetics.And he also had lots of papers about Philology.Scholars had different understandings of the concept of Chinese graphology in the first half of the twentieth century.Some scholars pointed out that Chinese graphology including the study of Chinese characters,Chinese traditional exegetics and phonology.Qi Peirong thought that Chinese graphology mainly researched the configuration of Chinese characters and he tried to set up a scientific system of Chinese graphology.This paper tries to assess Qi Peirong equitably basing on sorting out and researching huge volumes of materials of his theories of Chinese graphology.The paper can be divided into 4 parts:Part ?,introduction.The introduction is composed of two parts.Firstly,providing an overview of the previous studies about Qi Peirong's theories on Chinese characters and pointing out its achievements and shortcomings.Secondly,introducing the purpose and method of this study.Part ?,explaining Qi Peirong's monographs.Qi Peirong had two monographs:Introduction to Chinese characters and Introduction to Chinese traditional exegetics.And he also had lots of papers about Philology,in which some were not be published.Part ?,analyzing and concluding Qi Peirong's theories about Chinese characters.His theories include the relation between Chinese characters and Chinese language,the origin of Chinese characters,the nature and characteristics of Chinese characters,the form of Chinese characters and Liushu.About the relation between Chinese characters and Chinese language,Qi Peirong thought that the process of Chinese characters recording Chinese language was gradual.About the origin of Chinese characters,Qi Peirong thought that the pictographic symbols were the origin of Chinese characters which inherited Shen Jianshi's view.Besides,Qi Peirong pointed out that Chinese characters have been produced in Xia Dynasty.About the nature and characteristic of Chinese characters,generally speaking,Qi Peirong thought Chinese characters look pictographic and ideograph as its basic feature.Also he observed the the nature of Chinese characters by studying the relation between Chinese characters and Chinese language and the process of character-building.About the form of Chinese characters,Qi Peirong analyzed it from different aspects and described oracle bone inscriptions,inscriptions on ancient bronze objects,etc.Meanwhile,Qi Peirong put forward his own opinions on the evolution of Chinese characters,the reform of Chinese characters,reform of writing system movement,etc.About Liushu,Qi Peirong gave a new definition according to Xu Shen's definitions.Moreover he thought Liushu was a way of word building in Chinese.In addition,Qi Peirong contrasted pictograph method,deictic method and associative method.But we found that his research was pretty blurry.We also found that his explanations of example words were insufficient.Part IV,summing up advantages and disadvantages of Qi Peirong's theories about Chinese characters.He put forward some new ideas on Chinese graphology.Moreover he gave his new opinions on the evolution of Chinese characters in Shuowen Jiezi which were questionable.