《說文解字》“从夲”諸字考及西周金文中“从𠦪”字考

Abstract

Some people identify the character "夲" in clerical form as "𠦍"。 In Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters)，all characters belonging to "夲" are derived from the character "夲",like “𠦪”、“曓”、“𡴞”、“奏”and“皋”。They are all components separated from the seal script forms of characters。But we believe that the character "夲" has nothing to do with the above。In Shuowen Jiezi，the pronunciation of the character "夲" is given as "滔"，which seems to inherit the ""，""  belonging to the character "𠦪"，borrowing the pronunciation of "禱"。We believe that the character "夲" may be related to the character "奔", and its rhyme is also related to the characters "跑"，"挑"，or "走", thus the pronunciation of the character "夲" is "滔"。 The initials of the characters "𠦪","曓","𡴞" and "奏”" in Shuowen Jiezi are not very similar，the pronunciation of the character "夲" is "滔"，which also has a rhyming relationship with the characters "曓"，"奏" and "皋", but their origins are different。The characters "𠦪","曓","𡴞" and "奏" can be classified under the "𠦪"radical, and the ancient form of the character "㚖" can be classified under the "㚔" radical。In Shuowen Jiezi，some characters in the "夲" section can be classified under the "𠦪" radical。This paper uses oracle bone inscriptions to explore the origin of the character "𠦪" , in the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty，characters pronounced as "𠦪" include "𠦪","",""and""，while the character "曓" has not yet been found。In the Yin and Zhou Bronze Inscriptions Collected，there are more than 50 examples of characters with the pronunciation of "𠦪", such as "𩞑(饙)"，"賁"，"幩"，"帗"，"紱"，"韍"，"黻"，etc。In the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty，the character "𠦪"is borrowed for characters such as "賁"，"幩"，"巿"，"祓"，"韍"，"饙" and "弼", these borrowed characters have labial initials and a entering tone (-k) or a nasal ending (-en) in their rhyme。Their meanings，besides being used as personal names，also include "祓","賁","𩞑(饙)","弼","韍",and"百"。 Among them，the character "" in "趩觶(chi zhi)" (06516) is interpreted as "百世", which can be seen as a ligature，and it should be identify in clerical form as ""，but some people interpreted it as "𠦪", we believe that should be interpreted as the variant character of  "𠦪"。