The Agricultural Ideology Reflected Upon Explanatory Of Chinese Characters In Shuo Wen Jie Zi.

Shuo Wen Jie Zi written by Xu Shen of East Han dynasty is one of the earliest dictionaries in the history of China. It plays a very magnificent role in philology and in decoding Chinese civilization. Its cultural significance had been realized and concerned widely by many scholars from ancient time up until nowadays. A series of research and studies carried out toward the book demonstrate that many different aspects as the political, economic, cultural life of ancient Chinese can be found reflected upon Shuo Wen Jie Zi. The value of Xu Shen's work first lies in its general introduction toward ancient people's life in the unit of its classification. And it also kept the record of people's thoughts at that time through its explanatory notes as well. This paper mainly analyses how the ideology that is closely associated with agriculture and economy are presented through this work on the basis of systematic verification and testification, careful selection of typical Chinese characters, and attentive looking up of the references.The 9353 Chinese characters have been systematically studied in this paper with the achievements of predecessors in this area as foundation and Duan's explanatory notes and other relative works as references. This paper from the point of view of Xun Shen's style, language, and the unique way of thinking in his annotation to Shuo Wen Jie Zi, analyses the cultural and economic causes of its idiosyncrasies. The cognitive foundation of the agricultural nation has been explored out from the book and Xun Shen's annotation has been examined against the back ground of agricultural economy.This paper mainly contains five parts: The wholesomeness and harmony reflected upon the characters as"天","和"; the cycling cognition embodied in twelve Chinese zodiacs; the high value of house and land represented through the characters with""as their top, and other characters as"姜"and"坦";the world philosophy agricultural people demonstrated through the characters as"珩","正"; the high status of agriculture and other relative objects attached by people that is illustrated in the explanatory of characters as"濃""牛".