A Research On The Mis-interpreted Characters In Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Shuo Wen Jie Zi is the work in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It was the "modernachievements" at that time. The book’s purpose is for explanation, not for the Word Table, theWord Code or even Gulin in later times. It reflects the historical context and the writer XuShen’s knowledge level. Today, the social ideology changes greatly than that time and withthe combined efforts of the senior scholars, many ancient writing materials before Qindynasty which Xushen might not have seen have been unearthed. Reading Shuo Wen today,we will find many of the "inappropriate" or even "wrong" characters which this paper refersto as mis-interpreted characters.In the introduction part the study object, current research and research methods areexplained in detail.The first chapter describes the background of Shuo Wen which involves the characters atthat time and the academic debate, which helps us to understand the limitations of Xu Shen’swriting of the book and to gain the overall understanding of Shuo Wen.In the second and third chapter, we explain the Xiao Zhuan character from the ancientcharacter development from the Shang Oracle to Jinwen in Zhou Dynasty to bamboo text inWarring States period. In the process of the explanation, we re-interpret170glyphs in ShuoWen, and analyze the form problem which is divided into11categories The eleven categoriesis not isolated from each other, some of the words are of the mixture of several of thosecategories. There are mainly three causes of Xu Shen’s mis-analysis of the character form, thefirst is erroneous characters; the second is that although there is little change in the characterform from the ancient times to the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xushen did not quite understand themeaning of various components; the third is that Xushen’s subjective understanding madesome of the adjustments unreasonable.The fourth chapter deals with the cause of the interpretation problems in Shuo Wen.During the Eastern Han Dynasty, because the philology theory is not sound, Xu Shen’sinability to clearly define the extended meaning, borrowed meaning and the original meaning,plus the abuse of the popular acoustic exegetics led to the confusion of the meaninginterpretation.Chapter five discusses the impact of Taoism on Xu Shen’s view on character. AlthoughConfucianism is the orthodox in the Han Dynasty, the spread of Taoism was not forbidden.The "one" explanation of Laozi not only agrees with the doctrine of Kingcraft but also has a large impact on the later value of the world, therefore, Xu Shen boldly introduce the view ofTaoism under the Han Dynasty’s Zhong Shi Gui Yuanconsciousness. Taoism is extremelyuseful to the political interpretation of the doctrine of Kingcraft; therefore Taoism isborrowed to explain the word “Da”.The sixth chapter describes the impact of Confucian and the “Five Elements” concept onXu Shen’s view on character. After Dong Zhongshu’s thought, Confucianism became the onlyorthodox ideology of the Han Dynasty. By that time Confucianism had had the eracharacteristics, and they propagandized the doctrine of Kingcraft. Xu Shen established a strictkingcraft doctrine system by way of the three words “三”“王”“帝” which cater to themonarchical ideology of the ruling class. The centralized power is closely related to theimperial supremacy ideology and personal name value. Xu Shen used jade to describegentleman virtues and picked up five virtues which is in line with the concept if namingthings in “Five”. In order to achieve the purpose of centralization, in addition to thehigh-handed policy on the politics, the ruling class would necessarily adopt the superstitiousobscurantism means to fool the ruled class. Xu Shen’s explanation of the words “示、螟、蟘、蟊” is in full compliance with the telepathy between heaven and man. The fundamentalpurpose of explaining these words in Confucianism is for the regime. Even if Xu Shen hadthe idea of being free he did not have enough courage. Huai Nan Zi in the Han Dynastyperfected the “Five Elements” through which Dong Zhongshu interpreted the human ethicalstandard. After that the “Five Elements” in the Han Dynasty had a huge impact which wasproved by the interpretation of numeral characters and Tian’gan Dizhi in Shuo Wen.Chapter seven complements the other factors on the work of Xu Shen and gives us amore comprehensive understanding of Shuo Wen.The appendix is the list of the mis-interpreted words having been discussed in theacademia. From the table we can see the evolution of the font and the type of themis-interpreted words.Through the research, we should have a comprehensive understanding of Shuo Wen, it isnot only the first word book of China, but also a thoughtful book which is specialized onexplaination. It is partial to simply understand it as the word book, and study it only on thephilology perspective.