Abstract: In texts on bamboo slips and silks, the interchangeable characters and the different forms of one word are generally called ‘characters of borrowing’ by researchers such as Zhou Zumo (1984). In fact, some of the so-called characters of borrowing are cognate. They are interchangeable because they have similar sounds and meanings. This paper means to distinguish the cognate characters from the so-called characters of borrowing. We also reconstruct the voiceless nasalized and the compound initial in classical Chinese for the Sino-Tibetan historical comparative study.

Key words: texts on bamboo slips and silks, characters of borrowing, variant character, cognate characters, interchangeability, Sino-Tibetan