Abstract
The Chinese character tai denotes a humble slave, and examples of its use abound in the literatures handed down since ancient times. However, only four examples of such use in the unearthed documents have been deciphered by academia, which may be deemed as a rarity. In contrast to the above, examples of use in respect of the two characters chen and pu, both having similar meanings to tai, are found in large numbers in the unearthed documents. This asymmetry of use, however, does not necessarily reflect how the characters tai, chen and pu were used in the unearthed documents.
In this paper, I argue that there are some characters similar in meaning to tai in oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions that have not been accurately deciphered. I also attempt to re-decipher such characters in oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions through association of character configuration and comparison of contextual relations. Structurally, these characters share the same configuration: a character chen is in pairs and on top of the other. This structure also serves as the basic phonological symbol of these characters. The character tai can be deciphered as chi and characters associated with chi may be pronounced as tai, or even directly deciphered as tai. These characters can be pronounced as tai outside of being used as personal names and place names.
Deciphering from the perspective of meaning and form of the two tai variants in the oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, I argue that tai denoting the status of a slave may have evolved from the status of a captive, as have the characters qiang and xi.
Slavery during the Shang and Zhou dynasties was a common social status. By providing new examples of deciphering the character tai in oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, I hope this paper would facilitate further understanding of the social stratification of said dynasties.
Keywords
unearthed documents, slave, tai
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