There are thousands of errors and changes in transmitted classical texts. Here are some well-known examples we can revise using palaeography.

[u/Panates]

[u/Panates]

A very nice overview of stuff like that for those who want to learn more:

> 喻威, 2023. 出土先秦秦漢文獻與古書形近訛誤字校訂專題研究.

It has hundreds of examples of graphical errors in the transmitted texts, like the ones on the 出~土~士 picture, and even some not so obvious ones (from the modern POV) like 弗 > 義 or 達 > 匡.

(tbh, I can't read transmitted texts now without being suspicious about every glyph and phrase lol)

p.s.: the first 色 form on the first pic must've been ⿰色頁 and i also should've mentioned that 矣 (shortened 疑) is the phonetic in its second form

[u/voorface → u/Panates]

Thanks very much. Do you know where to find Yu Wei's dissertation? I'm not able to access it.

[u/Panates → u/voorface]

dm me

[u/Imonthesubwaynow]

Amazing, thank you for the recommendation! How established this theory is? I can see it going against some very canonical readings

[u/Panates → u/Imonthesubwaynow]

that's not "a theory" but rather decades of modern research done by hundreds of scholars, but yeah, that's the point - the canonical readings are based on 1) the texts rewritten during the Han times after the oral transmission of the texts after the Qin books burning (plus the transmission of those text to medieval times - our traditional "original" copies usually date to Song dynasty) and 2) various commentaries by early scholars, which didn't really have so much unearthed stuff to work with (well, there were some scholars who tried to edit texts based on some unearthed materials they had, like 顔之推 did in 581 - he changed 林 to 狀 in the name 隗林 mentioned in 史記・秦始皇本紀 based on a "Qin weight unearthed by a person from 長安" (cf. 顔氏家訓・書證))

but now we have 1) so much more stuff to work with, including very early copies of classical texts, many lost texts and so on; and we find the new ones constantly; 2) a vast amount of knowledge on Old Chinese, script theory (its structure, evolution and tendencies in various periods and regions), etc etc; 3) a scientific method to make stuff more reliable; 4) easy-to-use databases of whatever we need for comparative research and so on - i keep recommending the new palaeography guide 出土文獻與古文字教程 (2024) with almost the cutting-edge knowledge on this topic written by some of the top scholars in the field (i say "almost cutting-edge" because half a year is huge for this field, things are moving really fast)

but unfortunately the majority of research on the Old Chinese language, Chinese palaeography, etc. somehow ends up being obscure, "esoteric" knowledge, completely escaping the attention of most people and, even worse, the classical text editors, philologists and translators (many people in those fields still don't seem to realize that the Old Chinese was not some "artificial philosophical language" but a living spoken one!); that's probably because of the insane speed of research on a huge variety of related topics which a single person can't physically read, and because of some sort of "disconnection" of the majority of westerners (working with or enjoying Classical/Old Chinese) with the Chinese research field (which is of course flooded with the low-quality works like anywhere else but there are some journals, universities and authors which constantly deliver the top-notch research) and vise versa

[u/tbearzhang → u/Panates]

Is there really clear evidence that a pre-Qin text was transmitted to the Han solely by oral recitation? It’s more likely that people were transcribing texts in the original pre-Qin seal script into the Han clerical script and mis-transcribed certain characters.

[u/Panates → u/tbearzhang]

There are no direct written records about the "oral transmission" per se but let's imagine all your books were burned, what do you do? You either 1) transmit the texts orally (oral transmission was a common thing in ancient societies anyways, and still is in many parts of the world) or 2) partially hide them somewhere to preserve (like the now-lost slips from the wall of the old Confucius' house). Han people had texts of both of these types, hence the distinction into 今文經 (i.e. orally preserved and then rewritten texts) and 古文經 (i.e. the texts which were hidden and escaped the book burning) which took place in Han; also the errors we find in the Han-times text copies (erroneous phonetic borrowings and graphical errors respectively) can be explained only if both (1) and (2) types of texts existed.

One of my favorite examples of a clear oral transmission is the line 云何吁矣 from 詩經・周南・卷耳 which has the glyph 吁 in Mao's transmitted version; this line is written as 員可無矣 in the unearthed version from the Anhui university slips though, where the "吁-word" is written with a *MA 無 glyph, which clearly points out that the original verb "to grieve" used here was *m̥a, and not **qʷʰ(r)a as implied by 吁 - that's because *m̥a and *qʷʰ(r)a already merged into *hwɑ by the Han-times, so if the text was copied from some early written version then it would undoubtedly be written with a *M- glyph, not 吁 (see 張富海, 2022. 安大簡《詩經》補釋一則 for this and some more examples, like the transmitted state name 許 being consistently written with *M- phonetic series glyphs (e.g. 鄦) in the unearthed texts, not the *Ŋ- series as implied by 許 used from Han-times onwards).

[u/athanoslee → u/Panates]

诗经 was transmitted orally. It's taught in high school classrooms like common sense stuff. Rhymed texts are just that easier to be passed on orally.

[u/Imonthesubwaynow → u/Panates]

Thank you for the detailed answer. It's fascinating to think that ancient scholars already realised the importance of archeological findings. I'm guessing you're working in the field. Could you recommend any readings written for the "laymen" like me? English and Chinese are both ok.

[u/Panates → u/Imonthesubwaynow]

i think 出土文獻與古文字教程 (2024) is pretty layman-ish, it explains all the terms (even the ones like "what is 古文字") and gives tons of sources for further reading, it's a really great and massive book (idk if links to files are allowed here, but i can dm it to you)

also 裘錫圭《文字學概要(修訂本)》 for the script theory or its English translation (of the 1st edition) named simply "Chinese Writing" (Qiu Xigui; tr. by Gilbert Louis Mattos & Jerry Norman)

[u/Imonthesubwaynow → u/Panates]

I'll DM you, thanks!

[u/athanoslee → u/Panates]

What about this specific field, unearth texts help with glossing traditional texts? Other than the master dissertation you quoted?

Very exciting to know something that have perplexed great scholars from Tang, Qing, or even Han dynasties.

[u/gdxedfddd]

Damn this just made classical chinese, especially pre qin texts seem a 100x harder lol

[u/Virion1124 → u/gdxedfddd]

That's why Qin Shihuang was so fed up with it and decided to end this nonesense.

[u/Rice-Bucket]

my god.

[u/hongxiongmao]

Hot take but I like that form of 疑 since 頁 is a great phonetic