『說文解字』 540部首의 形相·義相 系聯 考察(2) - 「卷二·上/下」 15小∼44冊의 30개 部首를 대상으로

Abstract

The Shuowen Jiezi(『說文解字』) is a systematic self-exposition of Chinese characters, and can be considered one of the earliest works of its kind. Notably, it developed and applied the concept of radicals(部首) to facilitate the search for specific characters. However, the significant number of 540 radicals, established based on yin-yang and the Five Elements(음양오행), unintentionally caused inconvenience in searching. To address this, Xu-shen(허신) organized the radicals using the order of their visual forms(形相) and their meanings(義相). This paper aims to analyze and validate these correlations of visual forms and meanings. While the previous study focused on 14 radicals from Volume 1 of the Shuowen Jiezi, this paper examines the correlations of 30 radicals from ‘Volume 2, Part 1/2’, spanning from Radical 15(小) to Radical 44(冊). Specifically, this paper is the second one following the previous study. The research has uncovered several distinctive findings, all of which are elaborated in detail in the main body. I intend to examine the correlations of all 540 radicals from the survey participants in the future.