TANAKA Akio
Guantangjilin is the selection of works by WANG Guowei, which contents contains vast area of history, literature and linguistics. Some people say that his works is a thousand-year peak from Song era’s philosopher SHU Xi. I bought his book at Haifeng shudian, Kanda, Tokyo in my mid 20s. The date of colophon is February 1973, publisher is Zhonghua shuju Xianggang fenju.
Probably I bought it in 1973 or 1974. In those days I frequently went Haifeng shudian bookshop for buying Chinese classics, mainly Qing Dynasty’s linguistic works that is called ” Xiaoxue”, Small study at China. Guantangjilin is a very difficult book to understand by my poor study result.
His study era is from Yin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty some 2,500 years of Chinese literary history. At his vast works I was especially charmed in Qing Dynasty’s ancient Chinese hieroglyphic characters, Jiaguwenzi by Chinese. After 40 years, in 2003 I wrote a small paper on language universals through this ancient Chinese hieroglyphic characters at the view point of written language.
The title is On Time Property inherent in Characters. From at that time 10 years passed by. Now I am still learning on language universals but its style is far apart from the days 2003 or 1973. Ambiguity of approach by traditional linguistics is not for my part. I dare challenge to a new frontier of description for language study using mathematics or algebraic geometry.