The Collation And Research Of The Epitaph Compilation Collected By Fenyang City Museum

The tablets have a prosperous development in Tang Dynasty when there are so many grand monuments and different types which have already developed completely. Since the Tang Dynasty initially rose in Taiyuan, Shanxi played an extremely important role in Tang Dynasty. Especially, massive materials on tablet inscription, which have already been recorded repeatedly, were left over in this area. Furthermore, these materials also were compiled in different local chronicles. In recent years, the work of collecting and cataloging tablet inscription has made great accomplishments. With a series of compilation of tablet inscription published, regional and special subject researches have been promoted step by step. The Epitaph Compilation Collected by Fenyang City Museum selects 50 epigraphs of Tang Dynasty and all of them were excavated in Fenyang area. Because of their regional and quantitative characteristics, it is convenient to analyze the development of the linguistics, history and culture, folk custom and other aspects of Fenyang in Tang Dynasty in an all-around way. Besides this book which offers interpretations and notes on 50 epitaphs, there are also a few single papers or chapters involved. Up to now, epitaphs in Fenyang area are not yet collated and researched integratedly. This paper tends to collate and research the epitaphs of Fenyang area in Tang Dynasty systematically and comprehensively by combining and contrasting from both the diachronic and synchronic perspectives.This dissertation includes three parts which refer to exordium, collation and research.Ⅰ.Chapter One exordium includes the overview of the research materials, the significance, status, reasons, methods and difficulties of this research.Ⅱ.Chapter Two collation mainly includes emendation, annotation and revision according to the published rubbings. The basic structure of this chapter is chronicle and title of stele inscriptions, revising interpretation mistakes on both text and annotation. It also analyzes the errors, classifies the causes, summarizes the methodology of collation,and then anglicize and research the calendar information.Ⅲ.Chapter Three research on writing consists of three topics:variant characters, cursive scripts and knotty Chinese characters. Variant characters will take statistics and classification into consideration. Analysis of font and erroneous transformation is the basic measure. With the cursive scripts extracted from the epitaph rubbings, their structures and features will be spotlighted. In the mean time, Small Seal(小篆) and Li Gu Ding(隶古定) characters are also in existence in the epitaphs. In addition knotty Chinese characters need to be interpreted according to their sources the relationship among characters in word family related.IV.Chapter Four studys the vocabulary about funeral, allusions, evaluation involved in the epitaphs. Through tracing and studying the relevant words to analyze word usage of Fenyang region in Tang Dynasty, these words could provide the references for the study of the history of Chinese vocabulary,and reflect the situation of local culture and funeral custom partly.