| Dunhuang manuscripts is one of the four academic discoveries in the twentieth century. During the recent one hundred years, the research of Dunhuang manuscripts has got plentiful and substantial achievements, and its intrinsic value has become more and more conspicuous. However, the research of the transcription time of the manuscripts relatively lags for behind. This situation limits the further exploitation of the manuscripts' value and the full use of the manuscripts' content in a certain sense. Because the ancient taboo had obvious time traits, and accumulated abundant experience in the division of dynasty by the block-printed edition, scholars used it as an important way of division of dynasty at the beginning of the Dunhuang studies. According to taboo, a part of Dunhuang manuscripts' transcription time has been concluded, and it has also promoted the literature's further research contrarily. However, because of the effect of different kinds of factors, these achievements all belong to "individual case study" and lack systematic research of Dunhuang manuscripts taboo.Based on the whole Dunhuang manuscripts for the first time, this paper summarizes the intrinsic characteristics of the manuscripts, and tries to sum up universal principles of the division of dynasty by taboo.In the former half dissertation part, firstly, it discusses the connotation and extension of "taboo", and confirms the research objects and methods. Meanwhile, it also looks back the general research situation in recent one hundred years according to the time order. Secondly, from the basic value of Dunhuang manuscripts itself, it takes examples to narrate the value of taboo research based on Dunhuang manuscripts. Thirdly, it chooses more than six hundred of Dunhuang manuscripts, which have exact and reliable ways of counting years, from sixty thousand pieces Dunhuang manuscripts as antecedent research object, and narrates their time topic notes and taboo research, then establishes standards of selection. In the latter research part, firstly, according to the taboo study on the more than six hundred pieces of Dunhuang manuscripts, and considering some other manuscripts which were handed down or unearthed, it makes a comparison among the taboo characteristics of Dunhuang manuscripts and sums up them, then gets important influencing factors. Secondly, it reviews the methods of taboo and its practical usage in Dunhuang manuscripts, and discusses different kinds of taboo methods presenting different characteristics in manuscripts' contents and social estates. Taboo needs to resort to Chinese characters to influence literatures directly, so this paper also does some researches on graphemes which are relevant to taboo of Dunhuang manuscripts. At the same time it attaches great importance to the relations between folk characters and taboo characters which have great influence on the division of dynasty by taboo, and enumerates common taboo graphemes. On the base of above research, this paper discusses the problem between taboo of Dunhuang manuscripts and the division of dynasty by manuscripts, and sums up common methods of division of dynasty, then prove the possibility of the division of dynasty according to taboo in the last chapter. Moreover, this paper concludes general principles of the division of dynasty. Following this, it also practices these principles in the left manuscript of Shi Shuo Xin Shu showing its practical referenced meaning.By the research, the characteristics of taboo of Dunhuang manuscripts could be presented basically and clearly. The paper also corrects relevant graphemes and gets a point that general principles of the division of dynasty could be used in practical research. |
