The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System.pdf

THE ORIGIN AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE

CHINESE WRITING SYSTEM

WILLIAM G. BOLTZ

AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY

NEW H AVEN, CONNECfICUT

BYTHE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY

Al l Rights Reserved

ISBN 0-940490-78-1

CONTENTS

FIGURES.

PREFACE.

vii

PROLEGOMENA

Introduction

Chapter 1. Writing in General.

Definition of Writing . . . .

Forerunners of Writing . .

PART ONE: THE SHANG FORMATION

Chapler 2. Writing in Chinese. .

Pictographic Origins. . . . .

Logographs and Zodiographs .

Graphic Multivalence . . . . .

Determinatives " . . . . . . . ,

Chapter 3. The Multivalence of Graphs.

Egyptian .

Sumerian

~~_

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

FIGURES

Figure I

Insc ribe d turtle plastron

Figure 2

Inscribe d ox scapula . .

Figure 3

Examples of Shang o racle-bone inscription characters with

osten sibly recognizable pictographic origins.

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 .

Figure 9

Neolithic pOllery insignia from Ling yang h o .

Figure 10

Partial insigne from C h ' ie n chai ..... .

Figure 11

flu vase with e mblem from Pao t'ou (S' un ,

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 . , ........ .. ........... .

Figure 16

Sumerian limesto n e tablct with clcar zodiographic

writing . . . ..

. . . . ....... , .... .

Figure 17

Sumerian translucent stone tablet with dear zodiographic

writing ....... . .. . .. .. ........ .

Figure 18

Example s of oracle-bone inscription charac ters with

unide ntifiable p ictographic origins ..... . .

Figure 19

The thre e stages of the developmeOl of the sc ript ..

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

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: