Cereals and Harvests: Polyphony in the Old Chinese Writing (part 1)

Abstract

Chinese characters usually consist of two or more elements, of which one bears phonetic and other – semantic values. Some complex characters (usually referred to as ‘ideograms’) consist of semantic elements only. However, there is a ‘crypto-phonogram theory’ suggested by Russian-American sinologist Peter A. Boodberg (1903–1972). According to this theory, all or almost all Chinese complex characters comprise a phonetic element. Still, some of these phonetic elements are hard to discover, since the Ancient Chinese characters could be “polyphonic” and be read in several ways. For example, two characters from the Shang period (13–11 cent. BC) – he 禾 ‘cereals’ and nian 年 ‘harvest’ is very close with regard to their shape, meaning, and usage. Some scholars even believe that the character 禾 may mean ‘harvest’ as well as ‘cereals’. The present article aims to examine Boodberg’s theory by using quantitative analysis. If the idea of the ‘harvest’ could be transcribed by two different characters, this phenomenon should not be dependent on the context. However, if two characters stand for two different words, albeit close in meaning, the usage ratio should depend on their context. It turned out that the divinators of the Shang dynasty could ‘beg’ for both harvest and cereals, which in its turn is reflected by similar or equal ratios. Nevertheless, when the requested harvest was received the ratio between these characters changes significantly. Moreover, when a harvest of a specific crop was mentioned, the Shang scribes used the character 禾 only once. The data received may hint at the fact that the phenomenon must be purely lexical. However, one cannot consider these data as definitive. The article shows that the ratio does not depend on the context alone. It also depends on the nature and education of the scribe who carved the inscription on the bone. The results suggest an additional study to evaluate the full significance of this factor.