Studies of the Chinese neologisms zōngjiào 宗教 and zhéxué 哲學 have been pursued along etymological and historical lines, focusing on works of particular intellectuals that employed these terms. I argue that these methods are limited in their explanatory power to indicate how these words become dominant terms representing new academic disciplines in 20th century China. There is a need to demonstrate how the these terms invoked new interests shaping East Asian intellectuals’ identities in differing 19th and 20th century cultural contexts. A dialectical cultural transformation is involved, as well as institutionalization processes reflecting the values associated with these neologisms. These Chinese words become dominant terms precisely because there was a new set of experiences which older terms could not articulate. Zōngjiào and zhéxué, therefore, not only emerged from external cultural sources, but also represented a new mentality among Chinese intellectuals involved in modern transformations of post-traditional Chinese cultures.

In order to understand Xǔ Shèn’s 許慎 contribution to the analysis of the Chinese writing system, it is important to clarify the terminology he uses in his Shuōwén jiězì 說文解字 (100 AD). In this paper I shall focus on the term shěng 省. Scholars who have studied the problem of shěng 省 in Shuōwén usually tried to reveal the mistakes either made by Xǔ Shèn or added later to the text, from different perspectives including the classification of the graphs in traditional liùshū approach, paleography, as well as phonological reconstructions. i Most of these authors may be right in their critical investigation of shěng 省, there are indeed many mistakes in Xǔ Shèn’s graphic analysis, but none of them considered the problem as a whole or tried to understand what was the real reason for Xǔ Shèn to use this term. Shěng 省is a rather complex term with different significations, such as ommission, abbreviation, fusion, etc. I shall first clarify the meanings and uses of shěng in Shuōwén, before trying to understand why Xǔ Shèn needed this special term. We will see that despite many mistaken graphic analysis, already described by Chēn Shìhuī 陳世輝 (1979), Qiú Xīguī 裘錫圭 (1988), and others, shěng 省was an important tool for Xǔ Shèn’s methodological approach to the Chinese writing system that also shows his deep knowledge of the evolution of the script.

Human sacrifice is a religious practice in which living human individuals are consumed to worship natural and ancestral spirits. Ample evidence of this practice during the Yin-Shang period is furnished by oracle-bone inscriptions, which are extant from ca. 1200 B.C.E. This paper addresses the issue of female human sacrifice in Shang-dynasty oracle-bone inscriptions both from the point of view of religious studies and from a socio-historical perspective. Proceeding from a systematic overview of the various categories of female human sacrifice in the inscriptional record, the paper analyzes the social status and origins of the victims in order to better understand the specific functions and peculiarities of female human sacrifice under the Shang.

Digital research in ancient Chinese characters reflects the adjustment and development of the traditional research model under the new condition of information transmission. Through this new research model, more innovative research areas can be opened up. Moreover, the operating criterion of empirical study will be elevated. Currently there are several problems in this research model: overburdened work in the technical area; weak support of existing research and the absence of necessary Chinese information technology. The further realms we can expect are: digital means and platforms will bring a new vision of paleographic research; the development of the digital platform on the basis of resource sharing and cooperation; the development of the function of supervision on digital platform over criterion of the paleographic research.

For a long time, Chinese characters have been considered merely as a tool for recording the spoken language. However, in certain contexts, Chinese characters can also convey trans-glossematic information, e.g. information incompatible with the character that is used to record its glosseme can be conveyed by some component of the character or simply by the form of the character; information that is not within the semantic category of the corresponding glosseme can be conveyed by an altered character. In fact, Chinese characters, consisting of a set of plane symbols, function as a self-contained whole, which work well with the Chinese language and keep their own features at the same time. Because of this trans-glossematic communication function, Chinese characters are not a mere copy of the Chinese language. On the contrary, they can convey messages on their own when needed. This trans-glossematic function is determined by the origin and structural features of Chinese characters. In the very beginning, the lack of correspondence between characters and glossemes, as well as the principle of representing an object by a character form that resembles it, influenced the way people understood and used the characters. The structural feature of Chinese characters, i.e. the planar composition of the characters, has rendered the alternation of characters and the separation of components possible. Therefore, there are a diversity of ways to express meaning with Chinese characters: by using just the form of a character, piecing or separating components, re-analyzing characters, adding or reducing strokes, moving strokes, or altering character forms. Expression through the use of character forms and structures is a special rhetorical device. Here we call it the rhetoric of Chinese characters.