This study aims to interpret the significance as a cultural symbolism of ‘rentouhu (人頭 壺),’ which is gourd-shaped earthenware with a human face sculpted on the spout and has been excavated in large quantities at the Neolithic sites in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River in China. Although there have been brief descriptions on these artefacts due to their unusual shape, there has been little discussion of their significance as a cultural symbol. This study would like to argue that this object is a visual depiction of the origin myth that ‘humankind was born from a gourd,’ a myth that is widespread in China. The narrative of the origin of humankind from bottle gourd is universal and takes various forms in the origin myths of many ethnic groups in China, including the Han Chinese. It is also closely associated with the gourd, a device that enabled humankind to survive the disaster of the Great Flood. This paper draws on graphonomic, philological, archaeological, and anthropological data to discuss the cultural implications of ‘rentouhu (人頭壺).’ In particular, by clarifying the etymology of several Chinese characters including the character ‘yi’ (壹: one), this paper analyzes the traces of the myth of the origin of humankind from the calabash implicit in the etymology. Artefacts from Yinxu (殷墟), Anyang, Henan Province showing ‘a bird’s body with a human face’ discovered in the lower Yellow River region and the petroglyphs depicting the ‘flowers in the shape of human faces’ in Lianyungang (連雲港), Jiangsu Province in the downstream area of the Huai River are also expressions of the myth of the origin of humankind and cultural symbols of ‘rentouhu.’ This study will contribute to in-depth studies of the rentouhu as well as the origins of Chinese civilization. Beyond this, it will contribute to proposing a methodology of ‘Chinese character archeology,’ a convergence study involving graphonomy, philology, anthropology, and archeology.

This study was designed to show how ancient Chinese understood the concept of truth through characters listed in Shuowen Jiezi, the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters (A.D.100). In my previous research, I examined the interconnectedness of „zhen‟ (貞) and „zhen‟ (眞) as cognate words, to show how ancient Chinese developed a concept of „truth‟ early on. In this paper, I would like to clarify how ancient Chinese thought about truth/falsehood, right/wrong, and assent/dissent through interpreting the meaning of characters with shi 是 („true‟) or fei 非 („false‟) as a components in Shuowen. I analyze shi 是 („true‟), 25 characters having 是 as a component (2 characters having 是 as a semantic part, 23 characters having 是 as a sound part), fei 非 (false), and 35 characters having 非 as a component (5 characters having 非 as a semantic part, 30 characters having 非 as a sound part). I further analyze fú 弗, signifying „not‟, and 17 characters having 弗 as a component (17 characters having 弗 as a sound part and 0 character having 弗 as a semantic part), because 非 and 弗 are similar in meaning and usages. Taking into consideration all the different meanings represented by these characters, I divide them into three categories: (1) characters for depiction of the object in question with distinctive features, (2) characters for regulation, and (3) characters representing value. The first category include 14 characters having 是 as a component (56%), 3 characters having 非 as a component (16%), 1 character having 非 as a component (6%). As the second, 4 characters having 是 as a component (16%), 23 characters having 非 as a component (66%), 4 character having 非 as a component (24%) are included. 5 characters having 是 as a component (20%), 3 characters having 非 as a component (9%), 12 character having 非 as a component (71%) are classified as the third. I hope this paper is to stimulate related research by providing the origins, historical development and detailed interpretation of truth-related characters, and so be able to advance toward more insightful writings on truth.

Chinese Character studies have mainly been focused on four areas: orthography, phonology, meaning, and character frequency. To add a new dimension to the existing approaches, this paper will provide and examine a quantitative data about the range of the vocabulary in Chinese character dictionaries. As a promising new method, the new approach, both diachronic and dynamic, will be very useful in exploring changing aspects of Chinese Characters usage, compared with the existing synchronic and static approaches. This paper aims to provide analysis of all Chinese Characters included in Chŏnun-okp'yŏn, the most authoritative dictionary of Joseon dynasty published in 1805 meaning ‘Chinese Rhyme Dictionary’, and in Sinjajeon, meaning ‘New Dictionary of Chinese Characters’ published in 1915, to explain their changing aspects in the entries of two dictionaries, and then to show how social change affected the use of Chinese Characters in early twentieth-century Korea. To that end, I construct the database of the two dictionaries on the basis of a detailed analysis of all the characters with respect to the radicals, strokes, components, and structures of these characters, which shows that Chŏnun-okp'yŏn includes 10,997 Chinese characters and Sinjajeon contains 13,348 characters with 13,084 in the body text and 264 in three appendices. 2,114 characters were newly inserted and 7 characters were removed in the body text of Sinjaeon. In particular, the number of the radical headings containing more than 20 newly inserted characters are 35, with 1,624 new characters in total, accounting for 77.1% of the total. The total number of radical headings including more than 30% newly inserted characters are 26. In addition, the number of radical headings containing more than 10 newly inserted characters with a growth rate of more than 20% is 903, accounting for 43% of the total number of characters. Based on these data, modern Koreans appears to have a wider vocabulary consisted of Chinese characters. The number of characters under the radicals meaning animal and plant ( 犬 (dog), 牛 (cow), 肉 (meat), 木 (tree), 米 (rice), 禾 (pine), 田 (farmland), 虫 (insect) etc.), those meaning mineral (石 (stone), 玉 (jade), etc), those meaning industrial products (皮 (leather), 巾 (towel) ect.), those meaning pathology (疒 (illness), 歹 (broken bones), etc.), increased quite a bit, the words reflecting newly emerged phenomena of industrialization or modernization in the early 20th century. In addition, it can be pointed out that the words used for spoken Chinese newly appears in Sinjaeon.

This paper aims to explore the understanding and evolution of the concept of ‘truth’ (眞 理) in the earliest stages of Chinese history on the basis of oracle bone script zhen (貞) and the inscriptions zhen (眞). It further aims to prove that zhen (貞) and zhen (眞) are cognate words. ‘Truth’ in English is commonly translated as zhen (眞) in Chinese. However, it is not easy to find an intersection between two notions of ‘truth’ in the early stage of Eastern and Western culture in spite of a great deal of controversies over the notions in sinological studies, since there was almost no cultural exchange between the East and the West before the modern era. After the nineteenth century, with the expansion of the Western power, Westerners attempted to understand the manifold ways of Eastern thought. Thus, many concepts that were dominant in Western thinking were transplanted in many areas of Eastern thinking; the concept of ‘truth’ (眞理) is such a case. The Western concept of ‘truth’ (眞理) pursues correspondence theory, based on the dichotomy of true and false. Based on this idea, many Western scholars still claim that the notion of ‘zhen’ used in Chinese classical texts can not be equated with “truth” used in Europe and Anglo-American dominant philosophy. Therefore, I would like to return to the primitive sense of truth in the oracle bone script, explore the pre-theoretic understanding of truth before concrete forms of knowledge such as Confucianism and Buddhism were introduced, to show the interconnectedness of zhen (眞) and zhen (貞). Traditional interpretations of zhen (眞) can be roughly classified into three types: ‘a Daoist ascetic with miraculous powers’ (神仙)(see Xu Shen, Duan Yucai, et al.); ‘treasure’ (see Tang Lan, Ma Xulun, Zhou Fangfu, He Linyi, etc), and ‘death as unchanging status’ (see Shirakawa). Among these, the first version of zhen has been considered most authentic, because Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, the first authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters, defines zhen (眞) as “a Daoist hermit transforming shape and ascending into Heaven ( 僊人變形而登天也)” with Daoist connotations. Such interpretations, though dominent, were based on Xiaoshuan and did not seem to include closer investigations of zhen (貞), the older form of zhen (眞), based on recently unearthed literatures. Though contemporary archaeological studies provide evidence of more ancient origins, it is difficult to extract the original sense from the primitive script of zhen (貞), because it was only used as the name of a place or a person. This paper thus follows several hypotheses: 1. zhen (眞) is cognate with zhen (貞); 2. zhen (貞) in oracle bone script means ‘to ask Heaven questions from signs or omens obtained by burning tortoise shells or animal bones’ and a person in charge of performing a divination rituals’ is known as a diviner(zhenren ‘貞人’); 3. zhen (貞) was specified into zhen (眞); 4. Under the influence of Daoism during the early Han Dynasty, zhen (眞) was defined as ‘a Daoist hermit’ (神仙), and then acquired the meaning of truth after the introduction of Buddhism. The strategies of the paper are as follows: firstly I will analyze zhen (眞) by breaking it into its component characters and trace back its original forms and senses of zhen in oracle bone scripts; secondly, I will examine its usage in the ancient literatures based on phonetic and semantic patterns; finally I will try to place possible coordinates of ‘truth’ among constellations of various meanings of zhen (貞) and zhen (眞).