Reign Symbols as a Source on Chinese History (Part 1)

Abstract

This paper focuses on exploring the symbolical side of the Chinas emperors reign names as the highest sacral generalizations. Reign symbol is pair of characters, which defines a reign of a monarch (or a part of the reign). The first character is a so-called Attribute, second is an Object. This paper raises the question whether the historical dynamics of these symbols change reflects the real changes of socio-political processes. This question is resolved through methods of quantitative analysis of the entire assembly of the reign names of all the centralized empires in the history of East Asia. Methodologically taking these symbols (reign names) as a system, as one hypertext, we categorized their meaning into groups (semantic categories). By studying the dynamics of these groups proportional change through the epochs of various Chinese empires, we came to the conclusion, that the symbolic dynamic of reign names reflects the change the properties of political ideology, changes in the religious politics, and political institutions. Reign names symbols can be used as a historical source on those topics.