The first is the word change method.
Changing words, as the name implies, is to change the names of the king and the people he wants to respect into other words. This method is the most commonly used taboo method in ancient times, and it is precisely because of its prevalence that we have great obstacles when reading ancient books. Many names and places in ancient books should be distinguished when they were changed and when they were changed back.
Qin Shihuang's name is Zheng. In order to avoid Qin Shihuang, the "first month" at that time was changed to "end the month". Among the Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Shuihudi, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, there are a number of bamboo slips named Yushu, in which the word "Zheng" is written as "Duanyue". This is obviously to avoid Qin Shihuang, so it can be seen that taboos in the Qin Dynasty were already very strict.
In the Han Dynasty, in order to avoid the taboo of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang, the word "bang" was changed to the word "country", and "bang" and "country" were regarded as words that agreed to train each other. During the period of Emperor Liu Qi of the Han Dynasty, in order to avoid the taboo of the word "qi", the word "qi" was usually changed to "respect". One of the 24 solar terms we are familiar with was originally called "Qi" in Zuo Zhuan, but in order to avoid this taboo, it was changed to "Jing".
In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in order to avoid Si Mazhao, the Emperor Wen of the Jin Dynasty, people changed Wang Zhaojun to "Wang Mingjun", and the once widely circulated song "Zhaojun" became the song "Mingjun".
The well-known Chang 'e was called "Heng E" in Huai Nan Zi and Shi Cai Tong Zhuan, but in Song Dynasty, in order to avoid the taboo of Song Zhenzong and Zhao Heng, it was changed to "Chang 'e" in Wenxuan and Yuefu.
Bai Juyi wrote the poem "This Jiujiang Official. Pipa, My blue sleeves are wet. Everyone knows that Sima is the official position of Bai Juyi, but this official position of Sima is not the same as that of previous dynasties. In order to avoid the taboo of Tang Gaozong and Li Zhi, its official name was changed from "Governing China" to "Governing China".
The second is the function word method.
The so-called empty word method is to write "A" or "□" directly without writing taboo words. In Shuo Wen Jie Zi, the names of Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu and the five emperors after him were written as "taboo" directly by empty word method.
In the Tang dynasty, in order to avoid taboos, Wang's name was written as "Wang Chong" every time. Later, some people didn't quite understand, and it often happened that "Chong Wang" was copied into "Chong Wang". When I arrived in Litchi, Tang Gaozong, I changed the original "Minister of Civil Affairs" to "Minister of Interior" in order to avoid Li Shimin's taboo.
The third is the lack of brushwork.
This method is generally the last stroke of taboo words. This pen-missing technique began to rise in the Tang Dynasty and was very popular in the Song Dynasty. In Shi Yu's New Theory, the names of all the emperors in the Song Dynasty are recorded in this way.
In addition to these "national taboos" mentioned above, there are also some "family taboos". In ancient times, some officials and scholars avoided them in their own homes for the honour person. For example, Ye Fan, the author of the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, changed "Guotai" to "Guotai" because his father's surname was "Tai".
Generally speaking, although taboo was regarded by the ancients as the expression of "respecting ancestors", it also made many ancient books very confusing and caused certain obstacles to the study of ancient books.