[On Ancient Chinese Characters and the Inheritance and Development of Chinese Civilization]
Author: Huang Dekuan (Director of Tsinghua University Unearthed Literature Protection and Research Center, Chief Expert of "Ancient Chinese Characters and Chinese Civilization Inheritance and Development Project")
The rapid development of information science and technology in the digital age has a profound impact on the production and lifestyle of human society, and human civilization is experiencing unprecedented historical changes. As we all know, the appearance of words and documents is a great creation in the history of human civilization. The demand of human social production, economic activities and social governance is the driving force leading to the emergence of words and documents. The creation, accumulation, inheritance and dissemination of knowledge in human society, as well as the exchange and mutual learning between different civilizations, have made it possible to break through the limitations of time and space and effectively carry out it because of the appearance of words and documents. Judging from the whole history of human civilization, the great historical role played by words and documents is almost unparalleled.
Ancient Chinese characters and unearthed documents, as precious heritages in the stage of human classical civilization, are the most important basic materials for people to understand and explore the historical process of human civilization. Among the ancient Chinese characters existing in the world, only China’s ancient Chinese characters are the most abundant and systematic, and only China’s classical writing system is still in use today. China characters and ancient documents are important carriers of inheriting and spreading Chinese classical civilization, and are also information resources of ancient history and culture in China.
Report to the 20th CPC National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized that the influence of Chinese civilization should be enhanced. As an early historical form of China characters, the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters must actively face the challenges and influences brought by the digital age, think deeply about the new requirements of the digital age, and actively promote the digitalization of ancient Chinese characters. The positive impact of the digital age on the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters is obvious.
Intelligent program automatically locates the characters on Oracle bones
Digitization of collection
Relying on digital technology can change the storage mode of ancient Chinese characters and open up a convenient channel for the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters.
The carriers of ancient Chinese characters in China are mainly Oracle bones, epigraphy and bamboo slips and silks. These historical relics and their written materials are rare treasures of collection units. The cultural relics of ancient Chinese characters make its protection and utilization a major problem that has long puzzled collectors and ancient Chinese characters researchers. Except for a few materials displayed in museums, ordinary researchers simply can’t get in touch with ancient Chinese characters. Digital technology can make these ancient Chinese cultural relics appear in a multi-dimensional way, and share the precious Chinese cultural relics hidden in museums with researchers and the public through network systems and other electronic media, which provides extremely convenient conditions for the research, inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters, and can also properly solve the contradiction between the protection and utilization of Chinese cultural relics.
At present, some famous collection units in the world have begun to try to digitize the ancient Chinese cultural relics collected and publish them to the public through the information portal. If each collection unit can digitize all the collected ancient Chinese cultural relics and make them public in a planned way, it will greatly promote the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters. This is an expected grand project for ancient Chinese characters to adapt to the new needs of the digital civilization era.
Children experience the flip board of surname Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shandong Provincial Museum. Hao Xincheng/Guangming Pictures
Establish a database
The digitization of ancient Chinese characters can promote the establishment of various ancient Chinese character resource databases and provide great convenience for the study of ancient Chinese characters to obtain information.
The printed materials of ancient Chinese characters are expensive and inconvenient to circulate, which makes it extremely difficult for professional researchers and general readers to obtain ancient Chinese characters, and hinders the research, inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters. Ancient philology has become a veritable "unpopular school". Digitalization of ancient Chinese characters has laid a foundation for the establishment of various ancient Chinese character databases, which can fundamentally break through the data bottleneck that has long restricted the development of ancient Chinese characters. The convenience of obtaining ancient writing materials will greatly improve the efficiency of ancient writing research and learning.
In recent years, some research institutes have developed databases of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and bamboo and silk documents respectively, and some have begun to provide services for professional scholars. For example, the Research and Protection Center for Unearthed Documents in Tsinghua University cooperated with the publishing unit to digitize the research report of Bamboo Slips of Warring States in Tsinghua University and set up the e-book website of Bamboo Slips of Warring States in Tsinghua University. Readers can easily use the research results of Tsinghua bamboo slips through the website. At the same time, the center has also developed and established a "platform for comprehensive arrangement of Chu characters" and started the development of Chu characters database represented by Tsinghua bamboo slips.
Change the research mode
Digitalization of ancient Chinese characters can change the production mode of ancient Chinese characters knowledge to a considerable extent, and inject strong impetus into comprehensively improving the level of ancient Chinese characters sorting, interpretation and interpretation.
As a new interdisciplinary subject, ancient philology needs the accumulation of multidisciplinary knowledge such as linguistics, philology, history, archaeology and philology. It takes hard work to enter this research field and achieve innovative results. Ancient Chinese scholars often have to devote their whole lives to a certain research field in order to achieve certain achievements. Therefore, the production, creation, renewal and replacement of ancient Chinese knowledge do not come as quickly as other social sciences and humanities, and long-term knowledge accumulation and academic inheritance are more prominent and important in this discipline. The application of digitalization of ancient Chinese characters and information technology in the field of ancient Chinese characters research is expected to change the production mode of ancient Chinese characters knowledge.
For example, through the database, researchers can be provided with services to retrieve all kinds of special text materials and existing research results, saving a lot of manpower for researchers to collect and sort out data; Using artificial intelligence technology to explore the new path of Oracle bones and bamboo slips, and even try to interpret difficult characters, which can provide information technology support for the interpretation of ancient Chinese characters; Using image information processing technology to solve the problem of information extraction and identification of cultural relics can lay a text foundation for correctly interpreting difficult words in ancient Chinese characters. And so on. It can be predicted that the application of digitalization and information technology will change the traditional mode of ancient Chinese characters research and form a new method and paradigm of ancient Chinese characters research that is suitable for the digital age.
Book Shadow of Bamboo Slips of Warring States Collected in Tsinghua University
Dissemination popularization
All kinds of communication paths and platforms provided by the digital age can open up extremely broad prospects for the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters.
Traditional ways and paths of communication have greatly limited the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese knowledge. For the public, ancient Chinese characters are so unfathomable and daunting. In the digital age, the network, new media and various communication platforms can vividly spread the knowledge products of ancient Chinese characters, and let ancient Chinese characters enter the society and the public. People can gain knowledge of ancient Chinese characters in a relaxed atmosphere. It is of far-reaching significance to carry forward and inherit the excellent Chinese traditional culture and the long-term development of the discipline of ancient philology by cultivating the deep mass foundation for the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters, especially strengthening the digital dissemination of ancient Chinese characters with young people as the main target.
The digital age brings great historical opportunities for the inheritance and dissemination of ancient Chinese characters. Scholars of ancient philology should be good at grasping opportunities, strive to broaden their horizons, actively renew their concepts, explore new ideas and explore new paths, and give full play to the positive influence of information technology on the inheritance and dissemination of ancient characters and unearthed documents. The "Ancient Chinese Characters and the Inheritance and Development of Chinese Civilization Project" organized and implemented by Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, Ministry of Education, State Language Committee and other eight departments takes digitalization as an important part of the project construction, and arranges a number of digitization projects for ancient Chinese characters and unearthed documents as a whole. With the advancement of engineering construction, all construction units will try their best to explore the methods and paths of integrating ancient Chinese characters into the digital age, introduce new achievements in the digital research of ancient Chinese characters, actively promote the cross-development of ancient Chinese characters, and make ancient Chinese characters glow with new vitality in the digital civilization era.
Guangming Daily (October 30, 2022, 05 edition)
Source: Guangming Net-Guangming Daily