世新大學圖書館

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 61-07, Section: A, page: 2688.

Adviser: Kwan Hin Cheung.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong Polytechnic (People's Republic of China), 2000.

It can be established that “qie” versus “fan” originally referred to two reciprocal activities: “qie” meant “to cut” whereas “fan” (literally “revert”) meant to restore the original shape (by combining the cut up pieces). Both “qieyin” (literally “to cut sound”) and “qieyun” (literally “to cut rime”) originally referred to cutting up a syllable and later acquired the derived meaning of “syllable analysis”, while “fanyin” and “fanyu” originally referred to merging two different syllables (in a certain way) into one distinct syllable.

It can be established that the view expressed by Shen Kuo and Zheng Qiao that the study of “qieyun” had been imported from the West was for a long time a widely held hypothesis and is well attested in the academic history of China. It was only from the Ming dynasty onwards that different views regarding the hypothesis flourished, some doubting or negative, others supporting or positive, and yet others compromising. The thesis also demonstrates that it would be simplistic (if not wrong) to take the Sanskrit writing system as one that is typically phonemic and points out the possible fallacies derived from this imprecise understanding.

The thesis fills a significant scholarship gap by way of a thorough study on the genesis of the “qieyin” activity for Chinese, resting with the following findings: (1) “qieyin” is the fundamental method underlying the analysis of the Chinese syllable. (2) The article Qiezi-Yaofa preserved in the Yuan-dynasty impression of Yupian registers the oldest qieyin method extant. (3) During the formative years of qieyin and fanyin, one had to have gone through qieyin before embarking on fanyin in the practice and application of fanyin, which fact, means that the qieyin concept, with all its methods and practices, is implicit in the fanyin concept.

By way of close examination and analysis of the evidence available in regard to the relationships between the study of Siddham in China and the fanyin method, the following points are clarified: (1) The original meaning of “fanyin” and its etymology, (2) The influence of the fanyu pattern in Sanskrit-Chinese correspondences established in Siddham studies on the fanyu pattern for Chinese, and (3) The uncovering of the old-time fanyin method once lost in both the Siddham and Confucianist traditions. These clarifications constitute new findings that fill certain critical gaps in the scholarship concerned.

There are two camps of views pivoting about Chen Yinke's famous paper Three questions regarding the four tones. The thesis provides a scholarly arbitration between the two camps and also critically examines writings before Chen on the same topic. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

School code: 1170.