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Chinese Scholar Deciphers Ancient Characters
Decoding ancient scripts seems to be a boring and labor-cost work. But for Liu Huan, a reputed expert on ancient characters, the work is interesting and "amazing".
Liu, 55, who has been cudgeling his mind in deciphering Jiaguwen, scripts on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty (16th--11th century B.C.), has over the past 30 years decoded some 100 difficult characters of the 3,000-year-old scripts.
Archaeologists have found more than 5,000 ancient characters inscribed on some 150,000 pieces of bones and tortoise shells. Generations of experts have deciphered only about 2,000 characters.
Liu worked out new explanations on such difficult characters as "zuo" (sit ) and "bai" (do obeisance), based on extensive study of the Chinese ancient culture, mythologies, decrees and regulations, inscriptions on bronze, and seal characters.
He admitted that it is hard to decipher those inscriptions because thousands of years of evolution has brought about great changes to the vocabulary, pronunciation, meaning, and grammar of the ancient Chinese language.
Jiaguwen is the only ancient scripts still in use today, unlike the cuneiform writing of the ancient Near East, the hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt, and Mayan writing used by Indians, which have all died away.
Liu has never gotten tired of the study. "It's like communicating with the ancient people," he said. "The more characters I decipher, the more I learn about their writers. It's just amazing," he added.
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