Investigation And Analysis Of The Words Used In Epitaphs During The Kaiyuan Period Of The Tang Dynast

During the Kaiyuan era,it has always been known as the prosperous era of Kaiyuan.This period was one of the most prosperous periods of economic and cultural development in the Tang Dynasty.As a kind of unearthed documentary material,tombstones can truly reflect the use of writing in an era.This paper selects 102 tombstones from a large number of unearthed materials,and finally collates 1244 common chinese characters,87 variant characters,24 interchangeable characters,80 incorrect characters,and 234 scribble characters,and compares them with the characters used in other phases of the Tang Dynasty.This paper is of great significance in understanding the real situation of the Tang dynasty orthographic movement and the degree of standardization of Chinese characters at that time.This paper consists of three parts: the introduction,the text,and the conclusion:The first part is the introduction,which explains the research significance,research materials,research status,and research methods of this paper.The second part is the main text,which is divided into four chapters.The first chapter is the principle of selecting the materials for the tombstones during the Kaiyuan period.There are many materials for the tombstones during the Kaiyuan period,so the selection of the tombstones,the principle of extracting the character examples and the way to build the character list should be defined in detail as the premise of this study.The second chapter is a survey and analysis of the use of common chinese characters in the tombstones during the Kaiyuan period,which shows that the number of common chinese characters in the tombstones of the Kaiyuan period accounts for about 15% of the total number of characters in the tombstones,a decreasing trend compared with the early Tang Dynasty,but obviously higher than the late Tang Dynasty.At the same time,the types of common chinese characters are analyzed and classified into five categories: simplification,flourishing,change of parts,change of structure,and categorization.The third chapter is a survey and analysis of the use of variant characters in tombstones during the Kaiyuan period,first defining the variant characters mentioned in this paper,mainly the part of variant characters other than the common chinese characters.The number of heterogeneous characters in the tombstones during the Kaiyuan period accounts for 0.82% of the total number of characters in the tombstones,and the proportion of heterogeneous characters used in the tombstones during the Kaiyuan period is decreasing compared with that of the entire Tang dynasty.Meanwhile,the types of heterogeneous characters in the Kaiyuan tombstones are analyzed and classified into four categories: simplified and provincial,augmented and traditional,alienated and displaced,and the proportion of heterogeneous characters generated by alienation is found to be the highest.The fourth chapter is a survey and analysis of the use of other types of characters.In this chapter,the proportions of interchangeable characters,incorrect characters,scribble characters,and standardized characters in the total number of characters in the Kaiyuan tombstones are counted,and the proportions of interchangeable characters are0.07%,incorrect characters are 0.21%,scribble characters are 1.7%,and standardized characters are 83%.By comparing the use of orthographic characters in the Kaiyuan period with that of the early and late Tang dynasties,it is found that the use of orthographic characters became more and more standardized as time went on,which indicates that the orthographic movement in the Tang dynasty had certain effects.The third part is the conclusion,which summarizes the use of common chinese characters,variant characters,interchangeable characters,incorrect characters,scribble characters,and standardized characters in the tombstones during the Kaiyuan period.The degree of standardization in the use of characters in the Kaiyuan tombstones is higher than that of the early Tang Dynasty and lower than that of the late Tang Dynasty,which indicates that the effect of the orthographic movement in the Tang Dynasty was significant and the measures taken at that time can also provide some reference for the current standardization of Chinese characters.