Similarities and differences between Chinese characters and philology

"Chinese Character Studies" and "Philology" are two closely related but not exactly the same branches. From the research scope, "Chinese Character Studies" only studies Chinese characters, while "Philology" can study all human characters. In fact, when Chinese scholars use the term "philology", they usually limit their research scope to Chinese characters, so some people regard these two terms as synonyms.

However, there is still a difference between the two. First of all, the proposed time is different. "philology" (or philology) was put forward long ago, while "Chinese character study" was put forward much later, and it was not until after liberation that scholars explicitly put forward it. Secondly, the research scope is different (see above). In addition, the research methods are different. Traditional philology is closely related to phonology and exegetics, while modern Chinese philology mainly studies the glyphs of Chinese characters.

As a subject name, "Chinese Character Studies" appeared late, but the research work of Chinese Character Studies started very early, and its research first began in the Han Dynasty. Only before the late Qing Dynasty, people called the learning of Chinese characters "primary school". "Primary school" includes three sub-disciplines: writing, exegetics and phonology. The study of Chinese characters mainly inherits the branch of philology in the traditional primary school, but it is different from the traditional philology. Traditional philology analyzes glyphs, explains the meaning of words, and finally implements the task of "thinning classics"; Modern Chinese character science is to study the structure and development law of Chinese characters themselves.