Reaserch On Variant Chinese Characters In Sisheng Pianhai

Sisheng Pianhai(《四声篇海》)is a wordbook complied by Han Xiaoyan and his son Han Daozhao of Jin dynasty on the basis of the previous generation of wordbooks.It not merely inherited and developed the previous generation of wordbooks such as Yu Pian(《玉篇》),Lei Pian(《类篇》)and Long Kan Shou Jing(《龙龛手镜》),but also provided a very important basis for the future generation of wordbooks such as Pian Hai Lei Bian(《篇海类编》),Zi Hui(《字汇》)and Kang Xi Zi Dian(《康熙字典》).It is an indispensable part of the history of Chinese wordbooks.Also its influence and value can not be ignored.As a wordbook of the largest number of Chinese characters in ancient China(about more than55,000),Sisheng Pianhai not only collects the ordinary characters at that time,but also collects many popular form of characters.The most important thing is that it collects a lot of unfamiliar characters.It provides important materials for the study of variant Chinese characters.In view of the characteristics and the present research situation of Sisheng Pianhai,I will refer to Wang Li’s definition of variant Chinese characters and Wang Ning’s theory of the Chinese characters to study the variant Chinese characters in SiSheng PianHai.The article is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is introduction. In this chapter, we will introduce the basic information of the authors and Sisheng Pianhai, as well as the subjects, purpose, significance and methods of my study. The second chapter will focus on the materials about variant Chinese characters in Sisheng Pianhai. We will talk about the definition of variant Chinese characters as well as the forms of the materials about variant Chinese characters in Sisheng Pianhai. And these materials are very important in the following study. The third chapter is going to classify and study different scripts of the same word in Sisheng Pianhai. This chapter will be divided into five sections, such as component variations, component mix, component location changes, component location changes and font changes. The fourth chapter will classify and study characters made for the same word in Sisheng Pianhai.This chapter will be divided into two sections, such as the same creating methods of Chinese characters and the different creating methods of Chinese characters. The last chapter will make textual criticisms and explanations for some plentiful difficult variant Chinese characters in Sisheng Pianhai.Through the research on the variant Chinese characters in SiSheng PianHai, we found that there are so many different scripts of the same word and characters made for the same word. Different scripts of the same word are manifested as changes of strokes, changes in location of the idle strokes caused by component variations, component mix, component changes and font changes. And it also is manifested as changes of components’ location caused by component location changes. Characters made for the same word are manifested as the different creating methods of Chinese characters, the different components of pictographic characters and associative compounds. Among them, the number of characters made for the same word which is caused by the different components of pictographic characters is very large. But there are many characters made for the same word which comes from ancient writing and many associative compounds which are created later.In summary, this paper is to study the variant Chinese characters in Sisheng Pianhai. It contains two goals, one is to analyze the rules and characteristics of these variant Chinese characters, the other is to make textual criticisms and explanations for some plentiful difficult variant Chinese characters. At the same time, I will try to find and correct some errors in Sisheng Pianhai as well as some other wordbooks referring to this wordbook.