Abstract:

The explanations of “Wěi Wěi Tuó Tuó” from the poem “Growing old together with the gentleman” in The Book of Songs have varied from each other sinceMao’s Commentary.How to read “Wěi Wěi Tuó Tuó”? DAI Jun-ren uses traditional “repetition” pronunciation to read “Wěi Wěi Tuó Tuó”. From the angle of Chinese bronze inscriptions and bamboo slips, “Wěi Wěi Tuó Tuó” can be written as “Wěi = Tuó =”, if the characters have the same pronunciations. YU Sheng-wu uses “new evidences” and regards them as “compound words”, so he reads them as “Wěi Tuó Wěi Tuó”. The bamboo slips scholars in Anhui University follow YU. From the view of “consecutive characters and words”, the statement of DAI is right. “Wěi Wěi Tuó Tuó” means the bending and long pattern of mountains and rivers on the “Gown of the Queen”.

Key words: “Growing old together with the gentleman”, “Wěi Wěi Tuó Tuó”, consecutive characters and words, DAI Jun-ren, YU Sheng-wu