論武后新字的創制與興廢兼論文字的正俗問題

On Establishment and Abolishment of New Words made by Wu Tse-t’ien, as well as Multiple Version of Written Languages

中國的歷史上，武后以一代女主的身份君臨天下，展現了她無比的政治才華，並與前後君王共同開創盛唐的雄風紀元。在其登基以後，為了迎接一個新世代的來臨，於是改元和創造了一批新體文字，取代原來行之已久，約定俗成的用字，所謂「武后新字」十七文是也。這十七個字的創造過程，前後凡經五個不同的階段，並且各有其政治目的及文化系統的內在意涵。隨著人亡而政息後，這批文字也跟著失去時代意義的支撐而逐漸廢除，回用本字。對於這批文字的創制與使用的過程，千載以來，學者每多語焉不詳，至於有關文字符碼的真實意義也多未曾深入考究或加以解說。為此，筆者擬在前文〈敦煌寫卷中武后新字之調查研究〉（《漢學研究》第4卷2期，第437-464頁。中央圖書館漢學研究中心主辦國際敦煌學研討會論文專號）的研究基礎上，對該批新字再作深入的討論，並藉著新字的興廢問題，論述文字的興亡與書寫習慣的互動，以及和政治之間的交涉問題，並擴及中國歷代字辭書上複體與正俗字問題的相關討論。

In Chinese history, the sovereign of Wu Tse-t’ien descended the world, which exhibited her unequaled political talents and developed a thriving period of Tang Dynasty, together with the former and the succeeding emperors. After her ascending the throne, for coming of a new epoch, a bundle of new words were made to replace those having been accepted through common practice, as called ‘the seventeen new words made by Wu Tse-t’ien’ (「武后新字」十七字). The process to create these seventeen words underwent five different stages, each containing its political purpose and cultural meaning. Following her past, her sovereignty declining, these words were obsolete gradually from degrading of their epochal meanings and returned to the original ones. Regarding the course of creating and using these words, for hundreds of years, little were mentioned by scholars, and scarcely were studied or explained on real meanings of their alphabets. For this reason, author is planning to do deeper discussions about these words on basis of the previous paper (see Research and Studies of Queen Wu's New Words in Tun-huang Manuscripts, Chinese Studies Vol. 4 No. 2, pp.437-464, Proceedings of the International Conference on Tun-huang Studies held by Center for Chinese Studies in National Taiwan Library). Starting from establishment and abolishment of new words, such issues as interaction between writing habits, rise and fall of written languages, and negotiations of politics were discoursed and expanded into discussions related to multiple versions (複體) of words, including the official and the folk, in dictionaries of each Chinese generation.