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Archaic Sons and Grandsons A Study of a Chinese Complication Complex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

At first sight it must seem strange that words so commonplace and simple, in whatever language, as sons and grandsons, should deserve discussion in the Journal of our Society. But any reader who should endure to the end of the following pages would readily admit that simplicity is the last quality tha emerges from the fog of forms and symbols examined.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1934

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References

page 59 note 1 It should be noted that the single form given by Takada, Ku Chou P'ien, ch. 32, p. 30, is one “reconstructed” by him, as he points out, and not an actual example discovered on any ancient materials; a practice of his, on the whole, to be regretted.

page 60 note 1 Analytic Dictionary, p. 241.

page 61 note 1 Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i K'ao Shih, p. 5, with reference to YHSK, ch. 1, p. 31.

page 61 note 2 The text is most obscure. In modern script it runs: , chia wu pu hsien chêng ssū chung chiu cheng tsai shih yüeh erh. This commences: “On the day Chia-wu inquired through the Tortoise,” and ends: “In the 12th moon.” Between these terminals lies the obscurity. Ssŭ chung might mean, if ssŭ were written for ss,ŭ, the ssŭ shui, a river in Honan Province, “within the Ssŭ (region),” and chiu chêg is found in the Chou Li as the title of the Superintendent of Wines.

page 62 note 1 See Karlgren's, Analytic Dictionary of Chinese, Nos. 179182Google Scholar.

page 62 note 2 And not, as I once surmised, the figure of a bent-handled spoon. See “Pict. Reconn.” in JRAS. for 1919, p. 380.

page 64 note 1 These two forms are never found alone, but only in composition, and it may be suspected that Hsü Shên guessed at their sound. Further, the second form mostly appears in compounds whose sound is liu, notably in liu “to flow”, of which perhaps it may be the earlier scription.

page 65 note 1 Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i, ch. 2, pp. 24 and 25. See also my “The Honan Relics”, in JRAS. for Jan., 1921.

page 77 note 1 In an elaborate essay in vol. i, part 2, pp. 233–249, of Academia Sinica, which I have carefully read and in many ways admired, but I am quite unable to accept his conclusion.

page 78 note 1 However, this must be qualified to the extent that Mr. Tadasuke Takada cites four instances of Type Four, second variant, from Lo Chên-yü's Yin Hsü Shu Ch'i, and gives them, which Lo does not, under his entry sun, but he does not give the explanation I put forward.

page 79 note 1 Chinese, Classics, vol. v, pt. 2, p. 900.