HIST4702 (2023-24) Digital History Project: 火攻挈要
Investigation of Gunpowder Usage through Word Frequency Analysis
《火攻挈要》 Huo gong qie yao covers knowledge of both artillery and gunpowder but it is the artillery part that received more scholarly attention. So in the following parts, we will navigate you through a world of gunpowder formulas assisted by Voyant-Tools, an open-source and web-based application for text analysis.
“Cirrus” word cloud showing the word frequency of the top 55 words in Huo gong qie yao’s Vol 2 on gunpowder (Here and below we used Voyant’s default stopword list for Chinese text):
The most frequently used nouns in Vol 2 include 藥drug, 銃gun, 彈bullet, 觔 (斤)catty (unit of weight), 兩liang (unit of weight), 硝saltpeter (chemical) and 磺sulfur (chemical).
Then, we used “WordTree” to see the phrases following and preceding a specific target word. We found that Voyant had different performances in reading simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. For example, in the word tree chart, Voyant failed to read “藥方”(prescription) in traditional Chinese as one word and, instead, it interpreted the word as two one-character words (藥drug and 方recipe).
“Word tree” chart showing the phrases that follow and precede the target word 藥(drug) in traditional Chinese:
Word tree showing the phrases follow and precede the target word 药方 (藥方prescription) in simplified Chinese:
Interestingly, although Voyant recognized 藥(drug) in the traditional Chinese text as the target word, it provided more inclusive results showing the phrases preceding the target word. On the contrary, its reading in the simplified Chinese version presented the correct phrases right after the target word.
With the help of Cirrus and WordTree, we can easily locate all the formulas of gunpowder and from the Reader panel, we can manually sort out some of the major components in the formulas:
| Component (in English) | Component (in Chinese) | Word Frequency by Voyant |
| charcoal | 炭 | 17 |
| sulfur | 磺/硫 | 16 |
| saltpeter | 硝 | 15 |
| realgar | 雄黄/石黃 | 8 |
| rosin | 松香 | 5 |
| tung oil | 桐油 | 4 |
| borax | 硼砂 | 3 |
| camphor | 潮腦(=樟腦) | 6 (counted manually) |
| large blister beetle | 斑貓(=斑蝥) | 5 (counted manually) |
| burnt ashes of gourd and indocalamus leaves | 葫箬灰 | 2 (counted manually) |
| sea horse | 水馬 | 2 (counted manually) |
| frass from willow trees | 柳屑 | 2 (counted manually) |
The main materials of gunpowder are saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, whose proportion is the highest among gunpowder components. Other gunpowder materials include rosin, tung oil, borax, realgar, etc. However, some ingredients with more frequency failed to be counted by Voyant-Tools, such as camphor潮腦 and large blister beetle斑貓, so we counted them manually.
We also categorized the gunpowder formulas with the help of WordTree:
| Gunpowder with ejective function | 大銃藥方，鳥鎗藥方，火門藥方， 火箭藥方，起火藥方，噴筒藥方， 噴銃藥方，埋伏走線藥方，火信藥方 |
| Gunpowder with explosive function | 火罐藥方，地雷藥方，爆火藥方 |
| Poisonous gunpowder | 藥制毒彈方，藥彈方，藥餅方， 又埋伏扁線藥方，飛兔飛鼠方，火種方 |
| Auxiliary Gunpowder | 放火藥方，逆風藥方，烽煙藥方 |
| Antidotes | 解火毒藥方，避火毒藥方， 敷火毒藥方，貼火瘡藥方 |
And the proportion of raw materials in gunpowder formulas, for example:
| Category | Formula example | Components and proportion |
| Ejective gunpowder | 噴銃藥方 Pen chong yao fang | 硝十兩、磺一兩、炭二兩 Saltpeter 10 liang, sulfur 1 liang, charcoal 2 liang |
| Explosive gunpowder | 爆火藥方 Bao huo yao fang | 硝十兩、磺二兩五錢、班貓五錢、炭一兩五錢 Salpeter 10 liang, sulfur 2 liang and 5 qian, blister beetle 5 qian, charcoal 1 liang and 5 qian |
| Poisonous gunpowder | 藥彈方 Yao dan fang | 柳屑一觔，松香三觔，潮腦二觔，硫黄一觔，乾漆半觔，牙皂一觔，石黄硼砂各八兩 frass from willow trees 1 catty, rosin 3 catties, camphor 2 catties, sulfur 1 catty, dried lacquer tree sap 0.5 catty, abnormal Chinese honey locust fruit 1 catty, realgar 8 liang, borax 8 liang |
To sum up, saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal are the most important components. In the formula of ejective gunpowder, the ratio of saltpeter(硝) to sulfur(磺) is high, while in the formula of explosive gunpowder, the ratio of saltpeter to sulfur is lower.
Bubbles graph highlighting 硝(saltpeter) and 磺(sulfur)：