Slangs in Dunhuang Manuscript Literatures

The so-called colloquial words mainly refer to the ancient folk oral words. This kind of oral language, which used to be unrefined, is very rare in orthodox classical Chinese. Buddhist documents account for the vast majority of the 60,000 or so ancient documents found in the Dunhuang cave, but they also contain a large number of long-lost Chinese man-made so-called “suspected pseudo-classics”, as well as a considerable number of popular literature works, case contracts and other social and economic documents. Because of the “folk” or “semi-folk” nature of these writings and documents, it provides a broad scope for oral words to “display their skills”. Whenever we open a Dunhuang scroll, whether it is buddhist or secular, we can often see some elements of spoken language. Because of their folksy nature and the passage of time, they are often much more difficult to understand today than “elegant” words. Therefore, when studying the popular literature of Dunhuang with oral language as the main body, it is a necessary condition to understand and grasp the colloquial words before and after the Tang dynasty, which is also the reason why we specially set up a special chapter to discuss this issue.