Eastern Han Chinese, Later Han Chinese or Late Old Chinese is the stage of the Chinese language revealed by poetry and glosses from the Eastern Han period (first two centuries AD). It is considered an intermediate stage between Old Chinese and the Middle Chinese of the 7th-century Qieyun dictionary.
Sources
The rhyming practice of Han poets has been studied since the Qing period as an intermediate stage between the Shijing of the Western Zhou period and Tang poetry. The definitive reference was compiled by Luo Changpei and Zhou Zumo in 1958. This monumental work identifies the rhyme classes of the period, but leaves the phonetic value of each class open.
In the Eastern Han period, Confucian scholars were bitterly divided between different versions of the classics: the officially recognized New Texts, and the Old Texts, recently found versions written in a pre-Qin script. To support their challenge to the orthodox position on the classics, Old Text scholars produced many philological studies. Many of these works contain remarks of various types on the pronunciation of various words. The sources with the most glosses are the Shiming, a dictionary of classical terms, Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi, a study of the history and structure of Chinese characters, and Zheng Xuan's commentaries on various classics.
Buddhism also expanded greatly in China during the Eastern Han period. Buddhist missionaries, beginning with An Shigao in AD 148, began translating Buddhist texts into Chinese. These translations include transcriptions in Chinese characters of Sanskrit and Prakrit names and terms, which were first systematically mined for evidence of the evolution of Chinese phonology by Edwin Pulleyblank.
The Shiming glosses were collected and studied by Nicholas Bodman. Weldon South Coblin collected all the remaining glosses and transcriptions, and used them in an attempt to reconstruct an intermediate stage between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese, both represented by the reconstructions of Li Fang-Kuei. Axel Schuessler included reconstructed pronunciations (under the name Later Han Chinese) in his dictionary of Old Chinese.
The customary writing style of the period was strongly modelled on the classics, and thus provides only occasional glimpses of contemporary grammar. However, some works, while generally following the conventional archaizing style, contain passages in a more colloquial style thought to reflect contemporary speech, at least in part. Many such examples are found in translated Buddhist literature, particularly direct speech. Similarly, Zhao Qi's commentary on Mencius includes paraphrases of the classic written for the benefit of novice students, and therefore in a more contemporary style. Similar passages are also found in the commentaries of Wang Yi, Zheng Xuan and Gao You.
Dialects
Several texts contain evidence of dialectal variation in the Eastern Han period. The Fangyan, from the start of the period, discusses variations in regional vocabulary. By analysing the text, Paul Serruys identified six dialect areas: a central area centred on the Central Plain east of Hangu Pass, surrounded by northern, eastern, southern and western areas, and a southeastern area to the south and east of the lower Yangtze. Distinct rhyme systems of the Han period poets identified by Luo and Zhou broadly correspond to these dialect areas.
The most influential dialect was the Qin–Jin dialect, from the western group, reflecting the ascendency of the state of Qin. Second was the Chu dialect, from the southern group, which spread both to the south and to the east. These two dialects were also the principal sources of the Han standard language. The central dialects of the area of former states of Lu, Song and Wei were the most conservative. The dialects of the eastern area, which had been more recently and slowly Sinified, include some non-Chinese vocabulary.
The Eastern Han glosses come from 11 sites, all to the north of the Huai River. They often show marked phonological differences. Many of them exhibit mergers that are not found in the 7th-century Qieyun or in many modern varieties. The exception is the Buddhist transcriptions, suggesting that the later varieties descend from Han-period varieties spoken in the region of Luoyang (in the western part of the central dialect area).