Two Archaeological Copies of Cang Jie Pian and Discussion on the Different Perspectives in Chinese Studies

Abstract

Cang Jie pian was an elementary-education textbook of the Qin and Han periods. Lost for nearly a thousand years, scholars knew it only through quotations in received texts. In 1977, a fragmented copy of Cang Jie pian dated to the early Western Han period was discovered in a noble tomb at Fuyang Shuanggudui. It provided a basic idea of how this ancient textbook was compiled. Recently, another much longer version was added to Peking University’s (Beida) collection of bamboo strips. The traditional Chinese approach to studying this ancient textbook focuses on orthography, word meanings and rhymes, as well as its values in relation to Western Han history and literary culture, whereas the Hanxue Sinological approach aims at discovering how a word and its concept in the excavated texts took root in Chinese culture.