The Discussion about Qu Yuan Who Used 'ZHEN' to Call Himself from The Songs of Chu of the Warring States

摘要

This article starts from taking 'ZHEN' as the first exclusive person pronoun from Qu Yuan of The Songs of Chu in the Warring States, indicating that it is not universal to explain that ordinary people could use 'ZHEN' to call themselves though Qu Yuan did. On this basis, the article puts forward different views on 'ordinary person could call himself "ZHEN" before the emperor Qin Shi Huang'. It pointed out that seeing from the existing corpus, with the time periods from oracles of Shang Dynasty to Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, 'ZHEN' usually served as a claim when the emperor of Shang Dynasty did divination as well as legendary ancient emperors, the emperors of Shang and Zhou emperors talked and gave imperial edict. Though it remained the situation that person except the king used 'ZHEN' to call himself, occasionally 'ZHEN' was utilized by princes, ministers and other nobles.