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Language, Likeness, and the Han Phenomenon of Convergence

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Language, Likeness, and the Han Phenomenon of Convergence Language, Likeness, and the Han Phenomenon of Convergence The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Vihan, Jan. 2012. Language, Likeness, and the Han Phenomenon of Convergence. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9830346 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2012 - Jan Vihan All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Michael Puett Jan Vihan Language, Likeness, and the Han Phenomenon of Convergence Abstract Although in the classical Chinese outlook the world can only be made sense of through the means devised by the ancient sages and handed down by the tradition, the art of exegesis has long been a neglected subject. Scholars have been all too eager to dispute what their chosen text says than to pay attention to the nuanced ways in which it hones its tools. This dissertation aims to somewhat redirect the discipline's attention by focusing on Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi . I approach this compendium of Han philology, typically regarded as a repository of disparate linguistic data, as underlied by a tight theoretical framework reducible to one simple idea. I begin with the discussion of the competing visions of the six principles, for two millenia the basis of instruction in the arts of letters. I identify the relationship between abstraction and representation and the principle of convergence as the main points of contention. I take Xu Shen's convergence to pertain to the Han practice of relating words through sound similarity. This in turn I interpret as one particular manifestation of dispositional categorization (類情 ), a fortunes turning term in the exegetical tradition of the Change . The third chapter illustrates Xu Shen's twin techniques of relating and differentiating along with the worldview of the Change from which they derive. It introduces the concepts of matching and extension, and pits them against their counterparts of mirroring and analogy. The leitmotifs of the fourth chapter are Xu Shen's argument against the arbitrariness of sign and the relationship between linguistic and iii cognitive categorization. The fifth chapter compares the Shuowen to other works of Han lexicography, character primers in particular. The phenomenon of paronomastic glossing is examined here in detail. I argue that Xu Shen's ordering of classical vocabulary on the basis of graphic resemblance and the concomitant explanations are but projections of paronomasia into the realm of semiotics. The final chapter situates this likeness driven interpretative strategy against earlier attitudes to language. I close by intimating the creative potential entailed in Xu Shen's recasting of fragmentary diachronic knowledge as a comprehensive synchronic system. iv Contents Front matter 1 Six principles p. 1 2 Postscript to Shuowen p. 43 3 Categorization p. 51 4 Narrative clues p. 94 5 Convergence p. 121 6 Likeness p. 238 Appendices and references v Acknowledgements During my graduate years I was privileged to receive the guidance of: Feng Shengli Without sound you're blind Michael Puett Excruciating detail Robert Gimello Vyavahāram anāśritya 1 Ji ří Holba Sarvaṃ ca yujyate 2 Eivind Kahrs Yad gṛhītam 3 John Smith It's their language 4 Li Wai-yee taught my most enjoyable class at Harvard and was kind enough to agree to read this dissertation at a late stage of its composition. 1 ... paramārtho na deśyate ... Ultimate truth is not taught except upon the foundation of conventional usag e. (Mūlam ādhyamikak ārika 24:10 quoted in Gimello, 1983, p. 71) 2 ... tasya śūnyatā yasya yujyate/ sarvaṃ na yujyate tasya śūnyaṃ yasya na yujyate Everything is coherent for the person to whom emptiness is coherent; nothing is coherent for the person to whom emptiness is not coherent. ( (Mūlam ādhyamikak ārika 24:14 quoted in Holba, 2001, p. 116, n. 20) 3 .... avijñātaṃ nigadenaiva śabdyate / anangnāv iva śuṣkaidho na taj jvalati karhicit // What has been taken [from the teacher's mouth] but not understood [and] is uttered by mere recitation, that never flares up, like dry firewood on a non-fire. ( Nirukta 1.18 quoted in Kahrs, 1998, p. 46) 4 In response to my objection that the composers of the Mah ābh ārata once again violated the rules of Sanskrit grammar. (Cambridge, Lent term 2002) vi Kubikovi, Davidovi, Markovi vii Сижу за решеткой в темнице сырой . Вскормл енный в неволе орел молодой . Я и садовник , я же и цветок , В темнице мира я не одинок . viii Chapter 1. Six Principles The 'six principles of conceiving writing,' a fiercely contested term that has, in its broader scope of interpretation, evolved into the theoretical framework spanning the three basic disciplines of Chinese philology -- namely, paleography, phonology, and exegesis-- first appears as part of the job description of the [Royal] Guardian, one of the high ranking offices in the purported hierarchy of the idealized Zhou State: 保氏掌諫王惡而養國子以道乃教之六藝一曰五禮二曰六樂三曰五射四曰五馭五曰六書 六曰九數乃教之六儀 (周禮 地官 保氏 ) The Guardian is in charge of censuring the ruler's excesses. In this capacity he nurtures 1 the scions of noble families with the Way by teaching them the Six Arts of Conduct and the Six Manners of Appearance. The Six Arts consist of five suites of rites and six tunes of music, five tricks of archery and five gambits of chariot combat, six principles of writing and nine parts of mathematics. ... (Rituals of Zhou , "Offices of the Earth Chapter," Royal Guardian Section) The precise connotation of "first appears," however, depends on how one chooses to read the complex transmission history of the matrix text. According to the account preserved by the Eastern Han 東漢 scholar Ban Gu 班固 (32- 92 A.D.), a copy of the Rituals of Zhou was obtained by Liu De 劉德 , King Xian of Hejian 河間獻王 (ruled 155- 129 B.C.), a collector of texts written in the scripts predating the Qin 秦 unification of writing (221 B.C.) and book burning (213 B.C.). From Liu De's possession the text passed into the archive established by his elder brother Emperor Wu 武帝 (ruled 146-86 B.C.) for the purpose of gathering documents that could patch the badly damaged textual traditions. Here, it appears, the Rituals of Zhou lied virtually untouched until the time of Emperor Cheng 成帝 (ruled 32 -6 A.D.), who commissioned the scholar Liu Xiang 劉向 1 The Guardian's task of "nurturing" contrasts with the Teacher's job of "instructing" the young elite ( 師氏 教之保氏養之 說文解字注 十五卷 四頁 755). Hereafter quotations from Duan Yucai's commentary (1988), the fountainhead of this essay, are abbreviated as (755). 1 to arrange and summarize the contents of the imperial library, a task completed by his son Liu Xin 劉歆 in the work Seven Divisions 七略 .2 Liu Xin and his erudition came to play a pivotal role under the short-lived Xin 新 dynasty (9-25 A.D.). For Wang Mang 王莽 , the founder of the new dynasty, strove to invest his rule with legitimacy by deliberately establishing a government modeled after the venerated Duke of Zhou. During this time, the Rituals of Zhou , a text that invests absolute powers in the king, 3 came to be regarded as representing the traditional system of the Zhou rulers most fully and was adopted as the principal authority on state organization. Moreover, during his service to Wang Mang, Liu Xin succeeded in having a government post established for a scholar of the work. After the Han restoration, Liu Xin's scholarship and the Rituals of Zhou continued to be esteemed by adherents of old texts whose predilections eventually contributed to the shaping of the official canon. At the same time, another group of scholars came to suspect the texts written in obsolete scripts that had mostly surfaced during Emperor Wu's reign as having been fabricated by curiosity lovers in order to undermine conventional usage. This skeptical line has been taken up by later figures, such as the Song 宋 historian Sima Guang 司馬光 or the Qing 清 reformer Kang Youwei 康有為 . According to the latter, Liu Xin himself forged the Rituals of Zhou and other texts written in the old scripts, such as the Zuo Commentary on the Annals 春秋左傳 , to further the cause of Wang Mang.4 Kang Youwei's influential but scantily supported contention has 2 漢書藝文志 景十三王傳 History of the Han . "Essay on Arts and Letters (30)," "Biographies of the Thirteen Sons of Emperor Jing (53)." 3 Puett (2010) pp. 129-154. 2 been countered, among others, by the meticulous textual studies of Bernhard Karlgren and Sven Broman that corroborate the pre-Qin origins of the Rituals of Zhou .5 Whether one considers Liu Xin a conscientious librarian or an exceptionally gifted forger, he will always occupy a seminal position in the history of Chinese letters. While his principal composition, the Seven Divisions , has not survived to the modern day, the classification scheme introduced in the work has been explicitly followed by Ban Gu in his "Essay on Arts and Letters," a narrative catalogue of the imperial archives as they stood in Ban Gu's time. The account accompanying the ninth section (Philology) of the first division (Six Classical Arts) elaborates the six principles of writing in some detail. Given the degree to which the essay follows Liu Xin's template as well as Ban Gu's generally conservative approach to citing sources, it is reasonable to expect, as most scholars have done, that Ban Gu reproduces Liu Xin's vision of the six principles here: 易曰上古結繩以治後世聖人易之以書契百官以治萬民以察蓋取諸夬夬揚於王庭言其宣 揚於王者朝廷其用最大也古者八歲入小學故周官保氏掌養國子教之六書謂象形象事象 意象聲轉注假借造字之本也漢興蕭何草律亦著其法曰太史試學童能諷書九千字以上乃 得為史 ..
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