《说文解字》“轚”篆考疑

An Enquiry into “轚” in Shuowen Jiezi

传本《说文解字》包含相当数量的后人增附字。从顾野王《玉篇》与王仁昫《刊谬补缺切韵》来看,二氏所见《说文解字》并未收录"轚"篆。而仅见于《毛诗》《周礼》及《谷梁传》三部经典的"轚"字原本皆当作"击(擊)",传世版本或作"轚",乃后起换旁字,也表明因训解"六艺群书之诂"而撰作的《说文解字》不收"轚"篆不足为奇。有些学者将"击"视为"轚"之假借字,其实是被传本《说文解字》所误导,不可遵从。

Shuowen Jiezi （Shuowen in short） by Xu Shen, a Confucian philologist of the Eastern Han Dynasty, is the first seal character dictionary in China, which systematically analyzed character patterns and examined the origin of characters. The original edition had 9,353 character entries, plus 1,163 graphic variants. As the dictionary was copied many times in hundreds of years, blend and omission were inevitable. Nearly 200 characters were blended in the edition revised by Xu Xuan in the early Song Dynasty. The character ＂轚＂ discussed in this paper is one of those blended characters. The identification and discrimination of the blended part -- in this case in light of an enquiry into ＂轚＂ -- cannot only restore Xu Shen＇s original text and promote the research into Shuowen Jiezi, but benefit philology, Confucianism and other relevant studies. Gu Yewang of the Liang Dynasty compiled a Chinese character dictionary Yu Plan based on Shuowen Jiezi. The original edition had long been lost, and the extant edition ＂was adapted during the Tang and Song Dynasties. According to the original edition of Stray Fragments of Yu Pian discovered in Japan in the late Qing Dynasty, each character entry was evidenced by quotations from Shuowen Jiezi, but quotations for ＂轚＂ were from two Confucian classics, The Rites of Zhou and The Commentary of Guliang （Guliang Zhuan）. This indicates that Gu＇s edition did not include ＂轚＂. Zhuanli Wanxiang Mingyi compiled by the Japanese Buddhist scholar Kokai （774- 835）, based on the original edition of Yu Pian, can provide further evidences. Based on the manuscripts of the rime dictionaries of the Tang and Five Dynasties unearthed in the sutra caves in Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Qieyun by Lu Fayan in the Sui Dynasty did not include ＂轚＂, while the character was supplemented in Wang Renxu＇s Kanmiu Buque Qieyun （Corrected and Supplemented Qieyun） merely hased on The Commentary of Guliang annotated by Liu Zhao, but not on Shuowen Jiezi. This can corroborate Gu Yewang＇s Yu Plan, and also prove that Xu Shen＇s edition of Shuowen Jiezi did not include ＂轚＂. The character ＂轚＂ must have been later blended in the edition that survived. Besides the The Rites of Zhou and The Commentary of Guliang , another Confucian classic Mao Poetry also has a variant version that used ＂轚＂, while its current version used ＂击＂. However, The Commentary of Guliang used ＂轚＂ while its variant version used ＂击＂. ＂击＂ was used in other literature before the Eastern Han Dynasty for the meaning of ＂轚＂ in the extant edition of Shuowen Jiezi. This means that ＂击＂ （or ＂轚＂ in the traditional form） was used in the early version of Mao Poetry and The Commentary of Guliang, but the character ＂轚＂ was used later in the extant version in the place of ＂擊＂ with a radical change. In fact, ＂轚＂ in The Commentary of Guliang and The Rites of Zhou has been interpreted by scholars as ＂击＂, the same as the ＂击＂ in the current version of Mao Poetry. It can be concluded that ＂轚＂ that appeared only in the three Confucian classics was supplemented by later generations, but not the character which Xu Shen would have witnessed. Therefore, it＇s not at all surprising that ＂轚＂ is not found in Shuowen Jiezi. Scholars have been misled by the extant edition of Shuowen Jiezi totake ＂击＂ Key words in some literature as the borrowed character of ＂轚＂.