Mapping the Old Zhuang Character Script: A Vernacular Writing System from Southern China (Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Four: China / Handbuch der Orientalistik, 28) - Hardcover

David Holm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 900422369X ISBN 13: 9789004223691

Publisher: BRILL, 2013

Synopsis

The traditional Zhuang script is a character script based on Chinese, adapted for the purpose of writing the Tai languages of southern China and northern Vietnam. Mapping the Old Zhuang Character Script by David Holm, presents for the first time a systematic overview of such a script, based on a survey of traditional texts in 45 locations among the Zhuang and related peoples in Guangxi, Guizhou, eastern Yunnan, and northern Vietnam. Complete with 133 maps, it looks at patterns of geographic variation in relation to dialect, the domains of former native chieftaincies, the activities of ritual masters and Taoist priests, large-scale migrations, and the transplantation of garrisons of native troops. Internal evidence indicates the script has a history going back well before the Tang.

About this title

About the Author:

David Holm, D.Phil. (1980) in Chinese, University of Oxford, is Professor in the Department of Ethnology at National Chengchi University. He has published extensively on the traditional language and culture of the Zhuang, a Tai-speaking people indigenous to Southern China.

About this edition

• Publisher: BRILL
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 900422369X
• ISBN 13: 9789004223691
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 888