Hànjiǎn 汗簡
Sweat-Cured Bamboo (i.e., archaic bamboo strips) by 郭忠恕 (Guō Zhōngshù, 撰)
About the work
A three-juàn compendium of gǔwén 古文 (pre-clerical archaic-script) graphs, gathered by Guō Zhōngshù 郭忠恕 (d. 977) from 71 explicitly listed sources — including ancient Shàngshū, Zhōuyì, Zhōulǐ, Lǐjì, Chūnqiū, Yuèlìng, Lúnyǔ, Máoshī, the Shíjīng stelae, Ěryǎ, Lǎozǐ, Shuōwén, Shǐjì, the Yìyúnzhāng, Zhuāngzǐ, the gǔwén Xiàojīng, various Six-Dynasties calligraphers’ character-collections (Péi Guāngyuǎn, Lín Hǎn, Wáng Cúnyì, Cuī Xīyù, Zhāng Yī, etc.), epigraphic stelae (the Yáng Dàfū stele, the Bìluò stele, Mt. Tiāntái stele, Mt. Huá stele, etc.), and Daoist canonical engravings. Each lemma is given in archaic-script form alongside its modern kǎi equivalent. Internally arranged on the Shuōwén radical scheme to facilitate reference.
Tiyao
[Sìkù tíyào not present in source file; outline reconstructed from preface and modern catalogues.] The Hànjiǎn presents archaic-script (gǔwén) forms of characters drawn from 71 textual and inscriptional sources, with the goal of making the variant character-forms attested in pre-imperial and HànWèi materials accessible for students of the Classics. The author’s preface explains that he undertook the work after being commissioned (in his role as the Northern-Sòng Tàixué / Zōngzhèngchéng official) to collate the stone Classics; he gathered the corpus while consulting hóngshuò 鴻碩 senior scholars on the borrowed-graph tradition. The book imitates Xǔ Shèn’s 許愼 Shuōwén radical scheme so as to keep the radicals from intermixing, “for ease of consultation.” Each entry titles its source; under the head graph the gloss is given in standard zìyàng form rather than lìgǔ (clerical-archaic) form, “because of its ease of recognition and its agreement with current usage.” The Qièyùn and Yùpiān errors of repetition and bloat are silently passed over.
Abstract
The Hànjiǎn is the most influential medieval compendium of gǔwén (pre-Qín archaic-script) graphs and the principal Sòng-period source for the bronze-script and seal-script forms attested in classical and post-classical Chinese sources. Guō Zhōngshù — also a famous painter, calligrapher, and Shuōwén lexicographer (cf. his Pèiguī KR1j0027) — undertook the compilation while serving in Northern-Sòng official posts (Cháosǎn dàfū, Zōngzhèngchéng, and Guózǐ shūxué bóshì). The 71 source-list — particularly its inclusion of pre-Qín stele material now lost — makes the Hànjiǎn an essential transmission-vehicle. The work was used directly by Xià Sǒng 夏竦 for his Gǔwén sìshēng yùn KR1j0028: per Quán Zǔwàng 全祖望’s postface, Xià Sǒng’s 88 sources do not exceed Guō Zhōngshù’s 71 by even one new entry — Xià essentially took the Hànjiǎn and re-sorted it by rhyme. The book is a foundational source for modern paleographic reconstruction, particularly of the gǔwén line from the Hàn through the Six Dynasties; many of its forms, when checked against twentieth-century excavated bronze and bamboo materials, prove to be remarkably accurate. Dating bracket notBefore 960 (founding of Sòng) to notAfter 977 (Guō Zhōngshù’s death).
Translations and research
- Lǐ Líng 李零. 1985. “Hàn-jiǎn yǔ Sòng-dài de gǔwén-xué” 汗簡與宋代的古文學. In his Hànzì zì-xíng yán-jiū. Beijing: Zhonghua.
- Huáng Xī-quán 黃錫全. 1990. Hàn-jiǎn zhù-shì 汗簡注釋. Wuhan: Wuhan daxue. — Standard modern variorum.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, §2.2.
Other points of interest
The title Hànjiǎn refers to the ancient practice of passing fresh bamboo strips through fire so that the moisture (“sweat”) would be drawn out before they could be used for writing — a metonym for archaic bamboo-script materials.