《說文》所說字義或非本義考辨並論所謂「微辭」問題

On the Meaning of the Characters Recorded in the Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字 and Further Discussions on the Weici微辭of the Text

陳勝長(Chan Shing Cheong)

《中國文化研究所學報》 43期 (2003/01) Pp. 429-440

https://doi.org/10.29708/JCS.CUHK.200301_(43).0016

並列摘要

It is the view of the author of this paper that the meaning of the characters recorded in the Shuowen jiezi (abbreviated as Shuowen, prefaced A.D. 100) is not, as most of the Qing scholars who studied the work believed, always their benyi本義 (original meaning) Shuowen is not a mere dictionary with emphasis on the building up of a classification according to radicals. Xu Shen許慎, the author, followed the Confucian tradition in tacit criticism of the Emperor as supreme ruler. The method used is sophisticated and subtle; it uses weici hidden in the text somewhat reminiscent of Confucius' use in his own work, the Chungiu春秋. Xu Shen stated clearly in the Preface to the Shuowen that there were weici in the text and these were deliberately ignored by scholars in the past. The first part of this paper lists concrete examples to illustrate that the Shuowen does not always explain the characters by their benyi. The second part demonstrates how Xu Shen uses weici to be found in these texts to hide his criticism of Emperor Cheng成帝 of the Former Han dynasty as well as Wang Mang王莽.The text once read in this way will reveal the message hidden in the whole of the Shuowen.