".. . Und Cang Jie erfand die Schrift"—Ein Handbuch für den Gebrauch des Shuo Wen Jie Zi ("... And Cang Jie invented writing": A handbook for the use of the Shuowen jiezi ) (review)

Abstract

Reviews 283 new stage ofcolonialism seems to "rediscover" die point made about thirty years ago in sociological dependency dieory. It was incumbent on me as a reviewer to reread essays until I could grasp their contribution to the volume, but I wonder if others would have the wherewithal to do so. In short, anyone can dip into tiiis collection and find several intriguing essays. David L. Wank David Wank is an associateprofessor ofsociology at Sophia University, Tokyo; he studies institutional culture in Chinese economy andpolitics. NOTES1. Homi Bhabha, "The Post-Colonial and the Post-Modern," in The Location ofCulture (London and New York: Verso, 1994). 2.Arif Dirlik, What Is a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, 2d ed. (1993; Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998). 3.Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini, Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics ofModern Chinese Transnationalism (New York: Routledge, 1997). Marc Winter. ". . . Und Cangjie erfand die Schrift"—Ein Handbuchfür den Gebrauch des Shuo Wen Jie Zi (". . . And Cang Jie invented writing": A handbook for the use ofthe Shuowenjiezi). Schweizer Asiatische Studien, vol. 28 (Swiss Asiatic Studies, no. 28). Bern: Peter Lang Verlag GmbH, 1998. 629 pp. Hardcover DM 103.00, isbn 0172-3375. Even after the almost nineteen hundred years that separate us from the time when Xu Shen (ca. a.d. 55-150) lived, his main work, the Shuowenjiezi, is still considered a fascinating and important key to the understanding of Chinese language and script. Taking this as his point of departure, Marc Winter announces that it is his intention to help other students to go beyond the "aura" of the myth of the Shuowen and to understand "what this book really achieves" and "where its limits are" (p. 11). In his introduction (pp. 15-29), Winter describes his subject, explains the structure ofhis thesis, talks about his methods, and deals witii earlier scholarship on the Shuowen. Especially praiseworthy is the fact that Winter has both© 1999 by University made extensive use oflinguistic theory and terminology and used it in such a way ofHawai ? Pressfjiat it willbe comprehensible to sinologists who are not trained in linguistics. The book consists oftwo parts: the first contains a "lexicological-historical analysis" of the Shuowen, and die second consists of a German translation of the 284 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 text that is especially concerned with its 540 radicals (bushou) and its postfaces. This translation distinguishes itself from the English one by Paul Serruys in 1984 because of the great variety ofrich commentaries that Winter has compiled for this volume, drawing extensively from previous Chinese scholarship—mosdy on the commentaries assembled in die Shuowenjiezi gulin. This feature and a lucid presentation ofthe material itself (including in each case references to the place where the relevant character is to be located in Duan Yucai's Shuowenjiezi zhu, in the two modern dictionaries Hanyu da cidian and Hanyu da zidian, and in Karlgren 's Grommata Serica Recensa—and, ifnecessary for the understanding ofXu Shen's glosses, additional reconstructions by Baxter as well) make ". . . Und Cang Jie erfand die Schrift" fulfill the promise ofits title: it is indeed a good "handbook" for the use ofthe Shuowenjiezi. The first part ofWinter's book has five subdivisions: the introduction, a bibliographical analysis, a part dealing with "lexicological analysis," a chapter on the historical background ofthe formation of the Shuowen, and a few highly interesting pages on numerological aspects, which, according to Winter, are the reason why Xu Shen chose to establish 540 as the number ofradicals under which all Chinese characters can be subsumed. Paragraph two ofthese subdivisions, die bibliographical discussion, provides the reader with a short introduction to die life of the author of the Shuowen, the date of the formation of the book, facts about its transmission, and an overview of its structure. It concludes with a brief section in which the author states his conviction, in contrast to previously advanced opinions, that the Shuowen may indeed be termed a "dictionary" because its entries contain, as modern linguistic definitions require for the use of this term, information on the phonological, morphological, and semantic aspects of the words. A small quibble here concerns Winter's...