| The ’Erya’ is one of the classics of Confucian literature,completed at the end of the Warring States period.It is the first dictionary to appear in our country more than two thousand years ago,and it collected a rich variety of ancient Chinese words,making it an important part of traditional Chinese culture.It bears the title ’ancestor of dictionaries’.Chinese characters are the genetic markers of Chinese culture,serving as the carrier and validation of Chinese civilization.They aid us in understanding,explaining,and sketching history,and are essential resources for studying ancient Chinese sports.Sports-related Chinese characters play a significant role in Chinese sports culture;their presence and evolution powerfully attest to the development of traditional Chinese sports culture.Sorting through sports-related Chinese characters can clearly and systematically outline the forms,thought consciousness,and spiritual culture of physical activities practiced by the Chinese nation throughout different historical periods.Based on a thorough reading of ’Erya’ and its related materials,this study extracted sports-related Chinese characters distributed in dictionary literature according to the principles of document compilation.By adopting a statistical classification method,the extracted characters and their radicals were sorted and integrated,and a philological analysis was conducted according to the original explanations in the book.The sports-related terms were then categorized and studied based on their meanings,leading to the following conclusions:(1)Utilizing methods of close reading,ancient Chinese language interpretation,and fundamental theories of philology,a total of 24 sports-related terms were extracted from various chapters of ’Erya’.These terms were found across five chapters:’Explaining Explanations’,’Explaining Words’,’Explaining Instructions’,’Explaining Palaces’,and ’Explaining Heaven’.By using the research methods of ancient Chinese character studies to interpret these sports-related terms appearing in ’Erya’,we gained insights into the forms,spiritual culture,thoughts and emotions,as well as the formation and development patterns of value consciousness of the Chinese nation’s sports activities through these Chinese characters.This process unearthed the ancient cultural information they embody.(2)Sports-related terms included in ’Erya’ can be divided into verbs,nouns,and adverbs based on their part of speech.Drawing on the classification of traditional Chinese sports proposed by scholars such as Cui Lequan,the sports terms in ’Erya’primarily involve physical activities centered on production practices,military training and combat skills,health-oriented physical activities,and folk sports activities with distinctive folklore characteristics.(3)The study of sports-related terms included in ’Erya’ vividly displays the characteristics of sports activities during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.These sports activities carry the essence of productive life,reflect a military sports atmosphere,gradually form a health-preserving sports culture,and venerate ritual activities.This fully embodies the diversity of ancient traditional sports activities in our country.(4)The sports-related terms included in ’Erya’ serve as products of the era and history.These included characters mainly originated from the environment of survival and production at the time,the historical stage characterized by frequent wars,the improvement of life quality,and the continuous reverence for rituals.(5)From the perspective of sports history,the study on the value and impact of sports-related terms included in ’Erya’ concludes that: it includes summarizing and standardizing the meanings of sports terms;it provides a model for future sports terms;it reflects the sports thoughts and spirit of the time,possessing extremely significant value for the study of sports history. |
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