Coocurrence Of Textual And Non-Textual Usages Of Lineage Signs In Early Chinese Bronzes: Implications For The Emergence Of Writing In China And Beyond
Creators: name: Behr, Wolfgang
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2016
Subjects: Sinology
Early China
Writing systems
History of Writing Systems
Ancient Chinese Bronzes
Origins of Writing
Chinese Bronze vessel inscription
Bronze Inscriptions

description: <strong>Abstract:</strong>

Unlike China’s earliest readable texts, the late Shāng 商 (13th-11th c. BCE) ‘oracle bone inscrip­tions’, preserved mostly on water turtle plastrons and bovine shoulder blades (jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文), which were largely forgotten until their rediscovery at the turn to the last century, bronze in­scriptions (jīnwén 金文), attested from the 12th century BCE onwards, seem to have been always known and were occasionally mentioned throughout the classical period. They were first system­atically cataloged during the Northern Sòng 宋 dynasty (960-1127). It was already during this ini­tial phase of scholar­ship already that several authors noticed that some of the most archaic bronze texts include graphs with a strongly  “pictograph” character, often clearly distinct in posi­tion, size and ductus from the more linear and abstract graph shapes en­countered in the texts which they accompany. The famous Chinese paleographer and writer Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 (1892-1978) first called these graphs “lineage symbols” (zú huī 族徽) in a study published in 1930, where he argued that they represent quasi-totemic identity markers of ancient Shāng lineages and poli­ties and stressed their status as proto-writing. While Guō’s theory continues to receive wide sup­port in Western and Chinese studies on the subject, there is no lack of controversies about whether they should be classified and analyzed as “glottographic” writ­ing sensu strictu or rather as “emblems”, i.e. non-linguistic symbol systems, functioning somewhat like heraldic signs or “coats of arms” in various Europan traditions. Nor is there any clear consensus, whether they repr­esent names of individuals, kin-, lineage- or ex­ogamy-based groups, or even other social and political entities.<br>
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Proceeding from the most recent catalog and study of these signs (Hé Jǐngchéng 2009), I will first introduce the extant corpus some 900 simplex graphs, summarize the recent Chinese and Japa­nese scholarship on their archaeological contexts, distributional patterns and possible relation­ship towards neolithic pottery marks, and then focus on their combinatory prop­erties, as evi­denced in a corpus of some 530 compound graphs known so far. It is hoped that this glimpse into the early history of  transitions from non-textual to textual functions of such symbols will allow for the formulation of some more theoretical points, useful for a comparative typology of the emer­gence of logographic writing.

 

<strong>Location: </strong>Paris

<strong>More Info: </strong>Conference “Signs of Writing. The Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Contexts of the World’s First Writing Systems III”, Paris, EPHE, 25–27.VII.2016

<strong>Organization: </strong>EPHE Paris, Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago

<strong>Conference End Date: </strong>Jun 27, 2016

<strong>Conference Start Date: </strong>Jun 25, 2016