The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System by William G Boltz (1994).pdf

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THE ORIGIN AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE
CHINESE WRITING SYSTEM
By
WILLIAM G. BOLTZ
AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY
NEW H AVEN, CONNECfICUT
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COPYRIGHT 1994
BYTHE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY
Al l Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-940490-78-1
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CONTENTS
vi
FIGURES.
PREFACE.
vii
PROLEGOMENA
1
Introduction
3
Chapter 1. Writing in General.
16
Definition of Writing . . . .
16
Forerunners of Writing . .
22
PART ONE: THE SHANG FORMATION
29
Chapler 2. Writing in Chinese. .
31
Pictographic Origins. . . . .
31
Logographs and Zodiographs .
52
Graphic Multivalence . . . . .
59
Determinatives " . . . . . . . ,
67
Chapter 3. The Multivalence of Graphs.
73
Egyptian .
75
Sumerian
83
00
~~_
PART TWO: THE CH"N-HAN REFORMATION
127
Chapter 4. Early Legend and Classical Tradition .
129
Early Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
129
Wen X and Tzu ~. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
138
The Liu shu 1\11 and the ShuQ wen chich t:r;u iflJtm~ .
143
Chapter 5. The Impac( of the Chinese World·View,
156
Or-thographic Standardization. ..
... .....
156
Graphic Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
158
Why the Chinese Script Did Not Evolve into an Alphabet.
168
GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS
179
ABBREVIATIONS.
184
BIBLIOGRAPHY. .
185
INDEX OF CHINESE CHARACTERS
193
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
199
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FIGURES
Figure I
Insc ribe d turtle plastron
32
33
Figure 2
Inscribe d ox scapula . .
Figure 3
Examples of Shang o racle-bone inscription characters with
osten sibly recognizable pictographic origins.
34
36
36
36
36
Figure 4
Neolithic p ottery marks fro m Pan p'o (S ' un ... . .. .
Figure 5
Neolithic pottery marks from Pan shan and Ma ch'ang.
Figure 6
Neolithic po ttery marks from tiu wan ..
Figure 7
Figure 8
Neolithic p o ttery marks from Li ang c hu .
Examples ofShang o racle -bone inscription ch araClers with
which po ttery marks are sometimes compared .
37
Figure 9
Neolithic pOllery insignia from Ling yang h o .
45
Figure 10
45
Partial insigne from C h ' ie n chai ..... .
Figure 11
flu vase with e mblem from Pao t'ou (S' un ,
45
45
47
49
Neolithic jades with emblems from Liang c hu
Figure 12
Figure 13
Examples of early bronze clan name e mble ms
Figure 14
Examples of clan na me e mblems with the ya-cartouche
Figure 15
Examples of clan n a me emblems with a "dagger-axe"
In o tif . , ........ .. ........... .
50
Figure 16
Sumerian limesto n e tablct with clcar zodiographic
writing . . . ..
56
. . . . ....... , .... .
Figure 17
Sumerian translucent stone tablet with dear zodiographic
writing ....... . .. . .. .. ........ .
57
Figure 18
Example s of oracle-bone inscription charac ters with
unide ntifiable p ictographic origins ..... . .
58
Figure 19
The thre e stages of the developmeOl of the sc ript ..
69
VI
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PREFACE
My intention in writing this book has been to Jay out in a straightfor-
ward and comprehensible way the facts as I see them surrounding the origin
and formation of the Chinese script in .the second half of the second mil-
lennium B.C., and of its reformation and standardization in the eh'in-Han
era a thousand years later. In doing this I hope to dispel some of the wide-
spread myths and misconceptions about the nature of Chinese characters
and to restore a degree of common sense and clear-headed sobriety to our
understanding of the form and function of Chinese writing.
I am able to say "restore" rather than the more presumptuous "intro-
duce" thanks to the past work of two eminent scholars. Peter S. Du Ponceau
(1760-1844) and Peter A. Boodberg (1903-1972). More than a century and
a half ago Du Ponceau, then President of the American Philosophical Sociw
ety in Philadelphia, set fonh an eloquently expressed and clearly reasoned
"dissertation" on the Chinese system of writing wherein he showed that
claims about the exotic, even bizarre, nature of the Chinese script, and its
ostensible "ideographic" basis, are naive and untenable, and that Chinese
writing, like writing everywhere, is simply a graphic device for representing
speech (Du Ponceau 1838). Almost exactly a hundred years later Peter A.
Boodberg reiterated the same fundamental thesis, taking as his point of
departure the proposition that the Chinese in devising their writing system
followed the same general principles that governed the origin and early evow
lution of all other known forms of writing in the ancient world (Soodberg
1937).
Much of the theoretical underpinning of what I present in this monow
graph, especially in pan I, is directly traceable to the work of these two
scholars. I was privileged to have spent virtually the whole of my "Berkeley
in the 'sixties" decade as a student. both undergraduate and graduate, with
Professor Boodberg, and I freely and gladly acknowledge the extent to
which my work here is an outgrowth of that association.
The actual drafting and writing of this study was largely a "Seattle in the
' eighties" undertaking. and like the Chinese writing system itself, had a first
formation and, some years later, a subsequent reformation. When these
ideas were finding their first written expression. I was very fortunate to have
had Ms. (now Dr.) Yumiko F. Blanford (Fukushima Yumiko mBbElJ""',],') as
my graduate student. Ms. Blanford took great interest in the work, and
spent many hours of many days discussing, scrutinizing, and criticizing each
section as it came roughly written from my desk. Many of the ideas here
VII
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