Saturday, October 4, 2008

Guwen

Gǔwén literally means ''ancient ''. Historically the term has been used in several different ways.

The first usage, which is common, is as a reference to the ''most'' ancient forms of Chinese writing, namely the writing of the and early dynasties, such as found on oracle bones, bronzes, or pottery. This usage can be found at least as early as Xu Shen's Han dynasty etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi .

The second usage, also well known, refers to variant forms in Shuowen which Xu Shen mistook as being ancient, but which were actually used in the eastern areas during the Warring States period, as exemplified by copies of the Zuo Zhuan and 'books from within the walls' which were available to Xu Shen at the time of Shuowen's compilation. Xu mistook these as being significantly earlier than seal script, and thus also called them guwen. That is, Xu used the term guwen to refer to two different groups of scripts, both those which were truly ancient , and those which he mistook as being ancient . It took the work of later scholars like Wang Guowei to separate and clarify Xu's ambiguous usage of the term.

The third usage is for scripts which are no longer legible to the average modern reader, including the those referred to in meaning one above as well as the Stone Drums of Qin of the late Spring and Autumn period, other writing of the later Zhōu period preserved on stone, mid to late Zhou bronzes, the Eastern Warring States writing in meaning two above, and the late Zhōu to seal script. uses the term "ancient stage" of Chinese script in this manner, such that the Qín seal script and all its aforementioned predecessors are 'ancient', in contrast to the clerical script of the late Warring States through Qín and , and the , as both of these are legible to the modern reader of Chinese.

Additional Reading



*Chén Zhāoróng ''Research on the Qín Lineage of Writing: An Examination from the Perspective of the History of Chinese Writing'' . Academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology Monograph . ISBN 957-671-995-X.
*Qiú Xīguī ''Chinese Writing'' . Translation of 文字學概要 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 1-55729-071-7.

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