官印与地名——“慎阳”及相关地名变迁的传说与史实

The Official Seals and Place Names: The Legendary and Historical Truths of the Change in “Shen-yang” and Related Place Names

汉代汝南郡有"慎阳"县,因慎水而得名。"慎"字作为一水专名而偏旁不从水,令人难以索解。阚骃曾记录一民间传说,谓"永平五年失印更刻,遂误以水为心"。此说经唐人转引,宋代以后广为流传,以至于不少人将该水改称"滇水",甚至将历史地名"慎阳"改称"滇阳"。本文从文献、出土史料以及制度环境加以分析,认为旧说东汉"永平五年失印更刻"并无其事。本文考定:"慎阳"更名"真阳"发生于西晋,此事应即"失印更刻"传说的缘起。从中可以看到,官印作为地名的法律依据,它对地名的稳定性起到强烈的支撑作用,但这一支撑作用主要表现为字形;事实上,地名有文字和语音两种存在形式,相比于字形,语音形式具有更强的稳定性。

In the Han Dynasty,there was a town of Shen-yang in Runan Prefecture,its name begotten from the Shen River.But it is perplexing that the character'Shen,'as the name of a body of water,doesn’t have a water radical.Kan Yin once recorded an anecdote that'the prefecture seal was lost and remade in year Yongping 5,and therefore people mistook the water radical as the heart one.'This theory,through references by Tang scholars,had become so prevalent after the Song Dynasty that many referred to the river as Dian River and even renamed the place Dian-yang.The author here examines through archives,excavated historical evidences as well as rules and environments,and determines that there was no such thing as a seal lost and remade in Yongping 5 as described in the Eastern Han anecdote.This article resolves that the change of the name of Shen-yang to Zhen-yang happened in the Western Jin Dynasty and from this episode originated the legend of losing and replacing a seal.This event demonstrates that the official seal,as a legal proof of the name of a place,acts as a strong support to the stability of a place name;however,this stability is more revealed through the shape of the character.In fact,the place name has two forms in written and spoken languages,and compared to the written shape,the spoken form is more stable.