The Shanghai Museum Zhouyi manuscript and the Warring States writing system

In this study I provide a general perspective on excavated early Chinese texts with particular attention to the nature of textual variation. In dealing with different versions of a single text we need to consider both the historical evolution and regional variation of the Chinese script. This study shows that many of the differences we see among early manuscripts and their received counterparts have to do with the rules governing orthographic variability in the early script.;A Chinese word in the Warring States period script (481-221 B.C.) often occurs in multiple graphic forms. This variability, which is in fact common to all periods of the early script, is delimited by regulated patterns and conventions. The Chu Zhouyi manuscript (ca. 350 B.C.) is a good source of data for an examination of the patterns of graphic variation because of its distinctive formulaic text. The patterns that generate and regulate graphic variants can be explained as alternations of functionally equivalent graphic elements. The binary components (significs and phonophorics) of a Chinese character often show a number of interchangeable variants, called Synonymous Significs and Equivalent Phonophorics respectively. Variant forms within a single region or across regions in the W.S. script are regarded as alternative structural compositions based on sets of SS and of EP components. The graphic inventory of the W.S. script is inherited from the script of the Western Zhou period (1045-771 B.C); it is not the case that each W.S. regional script possessed its own distinct orthographic system.;Two further suggestions follow: (1) If and only if the difference between two corresponding characters in matching positions of a text conforms to the observed patterns of variability in the early script, should we identify the two distinct characters as variants for a single word. This provides a principled alternative to reading a manuscript character as it would be read in the received script. This is also different from interpreting a manuscript character automatically as standing for the same word as the one in the received counterpart. (2) Chu manuscripts can be used to refine reconstructions of Old Chinese. The continuity between the Western Zhou and Warring States scripts reaffirms that a writing system, once fully formed, remains a coherent orthographic system despite phonological changes. While the Chu script likely reveals some W.S. Chu dialect phenomena, this remains so only at the level of a comparatively few region-specific characters.