Chinese Characters On The Stone Tablets In The Mausoleums During The Han And Wei Periods

The stone tablets unearthed in the royal mausoleums during the Han and Wei periods are a crucial knot in the evolvement of the burial system from the Han to the Jin periods.Found only in Cao Cao’s mausoleum situated in Anyang and a royal tomb from the Wei period situated to the south of Xizhu village in Luoyang,the tablets have rich historical implications and have become new archaeological materials for researches in literature,cultural relics,technology,craftsmanship and art.With more and more official reports and academic findings published,the tablets have drawn wide attention.In this dissertation,more than 150 tablets from the two tombs are studied in terms of their forms,categories,functions,origins,fonts,engravings,calligraphy styles,status in calligraphy history,values as cultural relics and identification methods on the basis of the historical documents and previous researches.Textual Researches and Categorizations of the Tablets.Textual researches of all the tablets serve to categorize them from different standards.With regards to the contents,the tablets mainly include categories of utensils,clothing,food and funeral rites.Among them,utensils account for the most and burial objects recorded on the tablets of the two tombs are almost similar to each other.Moreover,contents on 14 hexagonal tablets in Cao Cao’s mausoleum in Anyang are found re-carved and supplemented,which is a proof of twice burial and the fact that the tablets were engraved on two different occasions in the tomb.Fonts and Calligraphy Styles of the Tablets.What’s first discussed is the universal characters,variant characters,homographs,and ancient and modern characters on the tablets in the two tombs from the perspective of philology.Then,a scrutiny is made of the fonts and calligraphy styles of the characters on the tablets.It shows that the scripts on the tablets of Cao Cao’s mausoleum in Anyang can be divided into 5 fonts including clerical script(Lishu)in the Han period,new style of clerical script,early running script(Xingshu),early regular script(Kaishu),and a hybridity of the new style of clerical script,early running script,and early regular script.All these represent the riches of the variations of clerical script and regular script during the Han and Wei periods.In comparison,fonts of the scripts on the tablets in the royal tomb situated to the south of Xizhu village are featured only with clerical script in the Han period and the new style of clerical script.Due to its elegance recognized at that time,clerical script in the Han period is the font mostly found on the tablets in both the tombs.Furthermore,some valuable casesare brought forth after a subtle analysis of the scripts and engravings.Cases like the contrast between the amount of the tablets engraved with "Zi Fu" and the calligraphy style of ’Fu",the engraving style of "Fu" and the reverse inscription of "Lai" on the tablets in Cao Cao’s mausoleum in Anyang can reveal the regularity as to the setup,arrangement,calligraphy style and time sequence of the burial objects in the two tombs.In the end,fonts and styles of the characters on the tablets can be pinpointed on the basis of their comparison with the steles like Classics Engraved on the Stone Tablets in the Xiping Period,Stone Classics of Zhengshi Reign passed on from periods between the Han and Jin,and newly-found stone inscriptions like Cliff Engravings in Jincheng City and Brick Records of the Southern Monarch in Wei period.Artistically speaking,clerical script in the Han period,despite its elegance recognized officially,is rigid and stiff.On the contrary,the hybrid style foretells the future development ofclerical script and regular script with its vigor and energy.Case analyses will indicate the status of the tablets as a transition from the decline of the clerical script in the Han period to the emergence of the new font mixed with styles ofclerical script,regular script and running script in the calligraphy history.Origins of the Tablets as Cultural Relics.These tablets remain unknown until their discoveries in Cao Cao’s mausoleum in Anyang and then found in the royal tomb in Xizhu village.They were mainly dedicated to the royal tombs since Cao Cao’s mausoleum built in Anyang between the later years of the Eastern Han period and the early years of Wei period after their short use in the world.Adiachronic analysis of relevant objects from the Warring States period to the Tang period shows that these tablets are new archeological materials as property lists,burial marks,underworld vouchers and status credentials.As to the forms,besides the stone texture instead of the bamboo or wood one,the inscriptions have assimilated the ink style in the East Han period,which results in the uniqueness of the tablets in the royal tombs in the later Han period and the Wei period.Values and Identifications of the Tablets as Cultural relics.On one hand,as a highlight in the burial system in the Wei period,stone tablets with inscriptions bear an irreplaceable witness to the royal burial system,the craftsmanship in decorations,the evolvement of fonts and calligraphy styles during the Han and Wei periods.On the other,as to the identification methods,the traditional and modernones are mutually beneficial to each other.The traditional method gives priority to experience and categorization while the modern one relies on technologies like carbon-14 dating.Evidenced to be authentic by a thorough examination of the historical evolvement of the tablets and investigation of the expressing habits,descriptions of property items,fonts and calligraphy styles of the inscriptions,these tablets in turn become one of the reliable sources to provide evidence for other cultural relics.