Chapter 12 Chapter Four: The Evolution of Ancient Calligraphy

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, in many areas of China, especially in the area along the Yellow River, people of various ethnic groups lived together, and different languages ​​communicated with each other.The fusion of ethnic minority languages ​​and Chinese, as well as the translation of a large number of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, promoted the development of Chinese, produced a large number of new words, added a large number of new characters, and various calligraphy books came out one after another.Some calligraphy books specialize in commonly used characters and miscellaneous characters, some identify typos and variant characters, and some focus on the pronunciation of characters.During this period, among the dictionaries such as Yashu, there was "Guang Ya" written by Zhang Yi of Wei State in the Three Kingdoms Period. Among the dictionaries such as "Shuowen", the more valuable ones include: "Ancient and Modern Characters" by Zhang Yi of Wei State, "Yaoyong Ziyuan" by Ge Hong from Jin Dynasty, "Zi Lin" by Lu Chen from Jin Dynasty, He Chengtian of Song Dynasty wrote "Zianwen", Yang Chengqing of Northern Wei Dynasty wrote "Zi Tong" and Jiang style "Ancient and Modern Characters".Except for "Guang Ya", all of these calligraphy books have long been lost.Among them, Lu Chen's "Zi Lin" has a greater influence, which uses the radicals of "Shuowen", adding 3471 characters compared with "Shuowen", and the explanation is also slightly different.This book examines and discriminates strange and confusing characters in ancient scriptures, and adopts orthodox fonts. It was valued by the world at that time. In the Tang Dynasty, it was also called "Shuowen" together, and it was a link between "Shuowen" and "Yupian". Book.Around the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Zi Lin" was lost.

Due to the long-term division of the country and mutual isolation, these calligraphy books have different collections of characters, interpretations of words have discrepancies, and many mistakes. In the long-term circulation of "Erya" and "Shuowen", there have also appeared many Corruption, and it is inconvenient to search; in addition, the font has undergone great changes from seal script to official script, from official script to regular script, the seal script is wrong, and the official script is distorted.It is inevitable to compile a new dictionary to standardize fonts, determine meanings, correct errors, and facilitate inspection.In this way, King Gu Ye collected all kinds of commentaries on scriptures since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, exegetical materials on calligraphy and dictionaries, and selected and edited them. As a result, China's first dictionary of regular script that has been handed down to the present was produced in 543 AD.

The author of "Jade Pian" Gu Yewang (519-581 AD), styled Xifeng, was born in Wu County, Liangwu County (now Wu County, Jiangsu Province) in the Southern Dynasty.Smart and eager to learn since he was a child, he read the Five Classics at the age of seven and was able to write at the age of nine.He has a strong knowledge of expo, and he knows everything about astronomy, geography, divination, insect seal and strange characters, and he is good at painting.He wrote many works in his life. In addition to writing "Yu Pian", he also wrote "Yu Di Zhi", "Fu Rui Tu", "Gu Family Genealogy", "Fen Ye Shu Yao", "Xu Dong Ming Ji", "Xuan Xiang Biao". ", "A Brief Introduction to General History", "Biography of National History" (unfinished), and another 20 volumes of anthology.In the fourth year of Datong (538 A.D.), Emperor Wu of Liang paid homage to the doctor of Taixue.Gu Yewang saw the role of words in human society: "Writing is left for a hundred generations, and rituals and music can be known, and post spread for thousands of miles, words can be advanced" ("Yu Pian Preface"), that is, words can overcome language communication. Due to the limitations of time and space; and in view of the confusion in the actual use of language and characters at that time, "the six books and eight styles are different from the ancient to the present, or the words are different but the training is the same, or the text is uniform but the interpretation is different. There are quite a lot of each other. The scrolls of calligraphy and books have many mistakes, which are difficult to find and easily cause doubts."Determined to "gather together all the chapters, sample the [chouqiu] group membership, form a family system, and prepare the text training" ("Yu Pian·Preface").This is the purpose of Gu Yewang compiling "Jade Pian".After hard work, in the ninth year of Datong (543 A.D.) of Emperor Wu of Liang Dynasty, when King Gu Ye was serving as the servant of the Huangmen and a doctor of Taixue, he wrote "Jade Pian".At that time, Gu Yewang was only 24 years old.

After "Jade Pian" was written, Emperor Taizong (that is, Emperor Jianwen) was still the prince at that time, and ordered Xiao Kai and others to delete it.In the first year of Shangyuan (AD 674) of Emperor Gaozong of Tang Dynasty, Sun Qiang increased the number of words and deleted the annotations.In the sixth year of Song Zhenzong's Dazhong Xiangfu (AD 1013), it was rebuilt by Chen Pengnian, Wu Rui, Qiu Yong, etc., and many contents of the original book were deleted, and it was called "Da Guang Yi Hui Yu Pian".This is the current book. Most of the original "Jade Pian" was lost.During the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1875-1908 A.D.), Li Shuchang went to Japan as an envoy, and saw four volumes of "Jade Pian" in Tokyo. After testing by Li Shuchang, Yang Shoujing, Li Ciming, etc., these fragments are the original "Jade Pian". ", known as "Zero Juan of Jade Chapter", together with the subsequent ones obtained successively, there are five volumes in total.Later generations also believe that the zero volume may be the Tang Dynasty manuscript of "Jade Pian".The annotations of these zero volumes are detailed, with many citations, and there is a commentary by King Gu Ye, and the content is more substantial than the present edition.

"Jade Pian" originally had 30 volumes, containing 16,917 characters, 7,564 characters more than "Shuowen", and 407,530 characters in annotations.The present "Jade Pian" has 30 volumes. At the beginning of the volume, there is a preface by Gu Yewang, which tells the purpose of compiling the book.This edition contains 22,561 characters, together with annotations, a total of more than 200,000 characters. It is no longer the appearance of Gu Yewang's original "Jade Pian". Features of "Jade Pian" The entire book of "Jade Pian" is written in regular Chinese characters, which is different from "Shuowen", which is mainly written in small seal script.The fundamental difference between regular script Chinese characters and Xiaozhuan is that they do not follow the principle of "six books", which leads to the radicals and interpretations of "Yupian" showing different characteristics from "Shuowen".

In terms of radicals, "Yupian" has 542 volumes, although there are two more volumes than "Shuowen", but the radicals of "Shuowen" have been added or deleted.Among them, 529 are the same as "Shuowen", and 13 are different. The arrangement of radicals in "Yupian" starts from "Yi" and ends with "Hai", but the arrangement order of each department is the same as that of "Shuowen", except for the first few radicals at the beginning of the book and the last stem and branch radicals. reorganize.It strives to arrange radicals with similar meanings together, follow each other according to righteousness, and separate subordinates.For example, the arrangement of radicals in Volume 3: "person, son, father, minister, male, min, husband, yu, me, body, brother, younger brother, female" is to arrange the names related to people together.This method is not as ideal as the radicals arranged by strokes.But compared with "Shuowen", which is based on the "Six Books" and uses the method of "connecting and extending according to form", it is more convenient for readers to search.

The interpretation of characters in "Yupian" only explains the sound and meaning, and no longer uses the principle of "six books" to analyze the shape of characters like "Shuowen".Under each word, Fanqie Zhuyin is used first, and then the meaning of the word is explained.For the explanation of each word, some quote the explanation from "Shuowen", and some quote "Shuowen" to prove the explanation, and cite examples as much as possible.Sometimes necessary explanations are given to the cited examples.The interpretation of the meaning of words must be complete, not only explaining the original meaning of the word, but also listing multiple meanings together if a word has multiple meanings.This is very different from "Shuowen" which focuses on the shape of characters, uses the original meaning of characters to prove the shape of characters, and does not talk about the extended meaning of characters.In addition to italics, if the character also has 籀文, Xiaozhuan, Guwen, or has variant and vulgar characters, it will also be listed later.For example:

Choke, cut in knot.Said Wenyun: "Food is suffocating." "Poetry" said: "The center is like choking." It is said that choking and worry cannot stop. Sue, Su Guqie.Litigation also, tell wronged also.Said: "Gong Boliao v. Zilu." Also known as "愬". Extremely, he recalled.Dong also.Said: "Build and use Huangji." Extreme, middle also.And to, to, to, far to, high to. The phonetic notation of "Yupian" is mainly Fanqie, and sometimes straight phonetic is used, which is more accurate than the phonetic notation of "Shuowen" which is expressed as "a certain sound" or "pronounced Ruo X".In addition, "Yupian" does not separate the phonetic notation for a word that has the same interpretation when it is read twice; if it is read twice but has different interpretations, the phonetic notation must be separated.This treatment not only reflects the differentiation of Chinese word meanings at that time, but also reflects the progress in the compilation methods of ancient Chinese calligraphy.

There is another feature of this "Jade Pian": at the end of the book, there is "Fenmo Zizi", which arranges 248 characters that are similar in shape and easy to be confused, and every two characters are arranged together, with phonetic and explanation respectively.Such as: sleeve, pomelo; Jian, Guan;This can help readers identify font shapes, distinguish pronunciation, and prevent typos. Some of the words in "Finally Words" are still easy to write and mispronounce even today. The capital of each volume of this "Jade Pian" lists the radicals of this volume, and the beginning of every 10 volumes lists the general catalog of the radicals of these 10 volumes, but the general catalog of the radicals is not listed at the beginning of the whole book, which is still not convenient for readers to check .

Generally speaking, although this "Jade Pian" is not the original book of Gu Yewang, and there are some shortcomings and mistakes in divisions and content, it is still a valuable ancient calligraphy book. The popularity is better than "Shuowen", which has had a good influence on the compilation of later dictionaries."Lei Bian" in the Song Dynasty, "Zi Hui" and "Zheng Zi Tong" in the Ming Dynasty, and "Kangxi Dictionary" in the Qing Dynasty were developed and compiled on the basis of "Yupian".