Chinese Lexicography - A History From 1046 BC to AD 1911

CHINESE LEXICOGRAPHY

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CHINESE

LEXICOGRAPHY

A History from 1046 bc to ad 1911

Heming Yong

Jing Peng

1

3Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

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Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, IndiaPrinted in Great Britainon acid-free paper by

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ISBN 978-0-19-953982-6

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contents

List of Illustrations xi

Acknowledgements xii

Preface xiii

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Introduction 3

PART I I THE GENES I S AND EMERGENCE OF LEX ICOGRAPHICAL

CULTURE AND WORKS IN ANCIENT CHINA

(from the Zhou Dynasty, 1046 bc–256 bc

to the Han Dynasty, 206 bc–ad 220)

2 The emergence of lexicographical culture in China 15

2.1 The origin of Chinese characters and their formation 16

2.2 Ancient Chinese literature and exegetic interpretation

of characters 21

2.3 Theories on the origin of lexicography 25

3 The progress of exegetic practice and the advent

of lexicographical works in China 29

3.1 Language studies during the Pre-Qin Dynasties 30

3.2 Teaching and explaining ancient characters and the

emergence of lexicography 34

3.3 Literature in ancient times 37

3.4 The beginnings of Chinese lexicography 41

4 Historian Zhou’s Primer – the source of lexicographical

culture in China 44

4.1 The historical background to HZP’s birth 45

4.2 The background and motivation for HZP’s compilation 46

4.3 The format and style of HZP 48

4.4 The cultural and academic implications of HZP 55

5 The Ready Guide – the initiator of thesaurus dictionaries in China 59

5.1 The historical background to RG’s birth 59

5.2 The background and motivation for RG’s compilation 63

5.3 The format and style of RG 67

5.4 The cultural and academic implications of RG 73

6 The Dictionary of Dialectal Words – the beginnings of dialect

dictionaries in China 76

6.1 The historical background to DDW’s birth 76

6.2 The background and motivation for DDW’s compilation 80

6.3 The format and style of DDW 84

6.4 The academic value and cultural inXuence of DDW 90

7 An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters – the origin

of character dictionaries in China 95

7.1 The historical background to EDCC’s birth 96

7.2 The background and motivation for EDCC’s compilation 100

7.3 The format and style of EDCC 102

7.4 The academic value and cultural inXuence of EDCC 109

8 The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms – the inception

of etymological dictionaries in China 114

8.1 The historical background to DCCT’s birth 115

8.2 The background and motivation for DCCT’s compilation 118

8.3 The format and style of DCCT 120

8.4 The academic value and cultural inXuence of DCCT 128

9 Theoretical inquiries into lexicographical issues in ancient China:

a survey 134

9.1 The origin of lexicography 135

9.2 The advent of lexicography 136

9.3 The formation of macro-level styles for dictionary making 141

9.4 The formation of micro-level format for dictionary making 146

PART I I I THE EXPLORAT ION AND CULT IVAT ION

OF LEX ICOGRAPHY IN CHINA

(from the Wei Dynasty, 220–265 to the Yuan Dynasty, 1206–1368)

10 An overview of Chinese lexicographical culture during

the period of exploration and cultivation 155

10.1 The historical background 155

10.2 The academic background 159

10.3 An overall view between the Wei and Yuan Dynasties 165

v i contents

11 The development of Chinese character dictionaries 176


11.2 The evolution of lexicographical theories 179

11.3 The development of format and style 185

11.4 A brief introduction to some representative

character dictionaries 192

11.5 The academic value and cultural implications 202

12 The development of Chinese word dictionaries 205


12.2 The evolution of lexicographical theories 208

12.3 The development of format and style 210

12.4 A brief introduction to some representative

word dictionaries 213

12.5 The academic value and inXuence 221

13 ClassiWed dictionaries – the encyclopedic dictionary

in ancient China 223

13.1 The historical background to the birth

of classiWed dictionaries 223

13.2 The emergence of classiWed dictionaries 225

13.3 A brief analysis of some important classiWed dictionaries 228

13.4 The social and academic inXuence 235

14 Rhyme dictionaries – a special dictionary type in ancient China 237

14.1 The historical background to the birth of rhyme dictionaries 238

14.2 The burgeoning growth of rhyme dictionaries 243

14.3 A brief analysis of some important rhyme dictionaries 245

14.4 The social and academic inXuence of rhyme dictionaries 252

PART IV THE REFORM AND SHAPING

OF LEX ICOGRAPHY IN CHINA

(from the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644

to the Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911)

15 An insight into lexicographical culture in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties 259

15.1 The historical background to the reform and shaping of

Chinese lexicography 259

15.2 The academic background to the reform and shaping of

Chinese lexicography 264

contents v i i

15.3 A survey of dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 268

15.4 The characteristics of dictionary making in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties 275

16 The formation of Chinese character dictionaries 280

16.1 The social and cultural background in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties 280

16.2 The development of character dictionary compilation

in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 282

16.3 The development of format and style in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties 286

16.4 A brief introduction to the masterpieces

of character dictionaries 290

16.5 The academic value and inXuence of character dictionaries

of the Ming and Qing Dynasties 293

17 The formation of Chinese word dictionaries 298


17.2 The evolution of lexicographical theories in the Ming

and Qing Dynasties 300

17.3 The development of format and style in the Ming


17.4 A brief introduction to the masterpieces of word dictionaries


17.5 The academic value and inXuence of word dictionaries


18 The evolution and reformation of special and encyclopedic

dictionaries in China 319

18.1 The historical background in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 320

18.2 Lexicographical paradigm in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 321

18.3 The analysis of format and style in the Ming


18.4 A short analysis of some representative dictionaries


18.5 The academic value and inXuence of special and encyclopedic

dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 342

19 The evolution and formation of rhyme dictionaries in the Ming


19.1 The historical background in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 347

v i i i contents

19.2 The development of lexicographical theories in the Ming


19.3 The evolution of format and style in the Ming


19.4 The representative dictionaries in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties and their academic inXuence 357

PART V CHINESE B IL INGUAL LEX ICOGRAPHY:

A BR IEF OVERVIEW

(from the Tang Dynasty, 618–907 to the Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911)

20 The origin and emergence of Chinese bilingual lexicography 367

20.1 Buddhist preaching and the advent of bilingual lexicography 369

20.2 Buddhist sutras and the compilation of dictionaries

of sounds and meanings 370

20.3 Dictionaries of sounds and meanings and the

dawn of bilingual dictionaries 371

21 The archetype and evolution of Chinese bilingual dictionaries 372

21.1 Buddhist culture and the emergence of bilingual glossaries 372

21.2 Chinese socio-cultural life and the evolution of

bilingual dictionaries 373

21.3 The writing of history books and bilingual

glossary compilation 375

22 Ethnic minority languages and their bilingual dictionaries 376

22.1 Western Xia culture and Tangut bilingual dictionaries 377

22.2 Mongolian culture and Mongolian


22.3 Turkish culture and Turkish bilingual dictionaries 379

22.4 Tibetan culture and Tibetan bilingual dictionaries 381

22.5 History studies and bilingual dictionaries for history books 382

23 Religious preaching from the West and Chinese

bilingual dictionary compilation 384

23.1 Matteo Ricci’s contributions to Chinese

bilingual lexicography 384

23.2 Robert Morrison and the Wrst Chinese–English dictionary 386

23.3 Dialect studies and Chinese bilingual dialect dictionaries 388

23.4 The end of missionary compilation of Chinese


contents ix

24 Chinese government establishments and Chinese

bilingual dictionary compilation 391

24.1 Government establishments and bilingual

glossary compilation 392

24.2 Chinese–foreign language dictionaries

and their three versions 393

24.3 The spread of Western learning and the compilation

of specialized bilingual dictionaries 395

24.4 The compilation of Manchurian–Chinese bilingual

and multilingual dictionaries in the Qing Dynasty 396

25 The characteristics and inXuence of early Chinese


25.1 Early bilingual dictionaries and their characteristics 399

25.2 The socio-cultural inXuence of early bilingual dictionaries 401

Appendix I List of book titles from English to Chinese

with English titles arranged in alphabetical order 403

Appendix II List of book titles from Chinese to English

with Chinese titles arranged in Pinyin order 422

Appendix III 中国历代纪元表/ The chronology

of Chinese history 445

Bibliography 447

Websites 452

Index of Chinese names 453

x contents

illustrations

Plate 1 First Emperor of Qin Dynasty

Plate 2 Stone Drum Characters

Plate 3 The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms

Plate 4 Xu Shen

Plate 5 The Dictionary of Rhymes

Plate 6 The Dictionary of Rhymes

Plate 7 The Dictionary of Initial Consonants

Plate 8 The Beitang Collections of Copied Books

Plate 9 The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books

Plate 10 Li Shizhen

Plate 11 The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature

Plate 12 The Compendium of Materia Medica

Plate 13 The Yongle Compendium

acknowledgements

Many people have kindly helped us, inspired us, and spurred us on to the

completion of this arduous and intricate undertaking and contributed in various

ways to making our long-cherished wish come true. We would particularly like to

thank the following people.

Our gratitude and sincerest thanks go to J. H. Prynne of Cambridge University,

who read the manuscript with keen observation, raised a series of thought-

provoking questions, discussed various academic issues in relation to the book

both in China and at Cambridge, and kindly accepted our invitation to write the

preface.

We would like to thank Huang Jianhua of Guangdong University of Foreign

Studies, who suggested the idea of writing a history of Chinese lexicography in

English and making it accessible to a wider readership and also discussed with us

a great number of issues concerning the project.

We would like to thank R. R. K. Hartmann of Exeter and Birmingham

Universities for his continuing interest in and kind attention to the book. His

helpful comments and warm encouragement have been a great inspiration to us.

Our thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for their favourable

comments and kind suggestions concerning the publishing proposal and the

manuscript, to Tian Bing, who helped in data collection in the initial stage, to

Huang Hua, who read through the manuscript and made many interesting

suggestions, to Luo Zhenyue and Xue Xue, who helped us with the index of

Chinese names, and to Ma Chijie, Zhang Xiangming, and Rong Yueting, who

helped in the search for and preparation of pictorial illustrations.

Finally, we are deeply indebted to John Davey of Oxford University Press, who

was always available to help and ready to make comments and oVer suggestions.

These have been extremely insightful and a valuable guide to us throughout the

preparation of the book.

Naturally, we, as authors, are responsible for any errors of fact, deWciencies in

coverage or content, and oversights that still remain in the presentation. We

would greatly appreciate our readers’ thoughts and recommendations regarding

the book. Your comments and suggestions will be most welcome. Please email us

at [email protected] or write to us at Guangdong University of Business

Studies, 21 Chisha Road, Guangzhou 510320, Guangdong Province, People’s

Republic of China.

preface

It is widely understood throughout theWestern world that the culture of China has

had an exceedingly rich and varied history, and is in fact one of the most

remarkable empires that ever existed: not merely an empire in the political and

territorial sense but as a coherent life-ordering structure for social continuity and,

as is also well recognized, the connecting basis for this intricate continuity is the

Chinese language. What is less well known, however, is that this near-unique

system of written and spoken practice generated over the span of successive

dynasties its own scholarly and descriptive self-consciousness, with well-developed

theories of language structure and usage, including analysis of a reWned literary

tradition as well as the idioms of administrative, philosophical, and mercantile

activity. Language in this historical context is an important philosophical con-

cept but is also a functioning system of expressive and communicative action.

And knowledge of this latter aspect is especially concentrated in the production

and use of dictionaries.

It can be said that a linguistic culture understands itself by means of its native

lexicography, both by analysis of current practice at the time of study and in

retrospect by historical investigation to deWne a tradition or indeed many part-

separate traditions linked to this common linguistic base. It is not so well known

that China has been extraordinarily rich in lexicographical activity, with layer

after layer of specialized compilation within a variously sophisticated philological

framework. In short the present synoptic history has the great ambition of

making a history of a history by bringing into orderly review the successive

stages within scholarly and practical enterprise of the making and using of

dictionaries of all kinds, at all levels, and from the earliest beginnings to a

point just short of the present day. We are dealing with a specialist historiography

that is also foundational; or a cultural philology in the Germanic sense but with

this diVerence that the perspectives of inquiry are also themselves fromwithin the

Chinese language and its culture, even if deeply retrospective, rather than from

the outside.

Despite its apparent compactness this synoptic history is an extremely ambi-

tious project, with little precedent on anything like this scale or with this degree

of concise scholarly detail. To my knowledge there is nothing like it in a Western

language, and only scattered segments of this work have yet been attempted in

Chinese. The nearest comparable existing enterprise would be the relevant

sections in Science and Civilisation in China by the late Joseph Needham and his

collaborators. The idea is to construe widely the category of reference works

codifying linguistic knowledge concerned with Chinese, including, for example,

word dictionaries, encyclopedias, teaching primers, manuals of calligraphy and

writing practice, rhyming dictionaries, text commentaries and indexes, dialect

dictionaries and phrasebooks, specialist subject glossaries and vocabularies,

works concerned with pronunciation and tone usage, dictionaries of synonyms,

medical, engineering, and technological handbooks, manuals of religious inter-

pretation (sacred texts), proper name lists and biographical records, bilingual

wordbooks (e.g. early Sanskrit–Chinese, Tibetan–Chinese, etc.), and many hy-

brid works whose status may be described in diVerent ways. The arrangement of

the material is chieXy historical and descriptive; but there are also well-controlled

and highly signiWcant parallel reasons for introducing new critical and compara-

tive methodologies, and for interpreting the function of such reference compen-

dia as part of an overall culture, ordering knowledge and promoting structures of

interpretation and understanding and practical use as integral to the fabric of an

educated community. These forms of analysis and larger inquiry very much

amplify the value of this work and its scope of usefulness.

This synoptic history is also extremely and valuably self-conscious concerning

matters of coherent and up-to-date critical methodology, and adopts many

criteria which may be thought to be more at home in Western academic research

than in the earlier styles of subject review practised in China. There is, for

example, a comparative review discussion of historical period segmentation

which brings to the fore the question of sequence ordering, rather than simply

assuming a traditional framework which would be a very usual Chinese practice.

This means that reading this synoptic history could be very instructive for a

Western-trained scholar because it is presented according to procedures which

will be in outline largely familiar, even though the material may be quite exotic

and challenging. Within the adopted period framework there are section formats

based on particular types of reference work, reviewing specialist compendia in

groupings of materials with similar functions or kinds of data – all well sign-

posted. The terminology for describing linguistic features and functions is a

pragmatic blend of traditional Chinese categories andWestern linguistic analysis;

a Western reader unfamiliar with the Chinese material will need to adjust, but the

general framework is quite recognizable and unfamiliar methods (e.g. descrip-

tions of character evolution and contemporary explanations) are demonstrated

with clear discussion of examples.

It is well known that China has a very long cultural and linguistic history, and

that its vigorous intellectual life has included many scholarly functions and

xiv preface

institutions of learning devoted to codifying the knowledge base of that culture.

The history of knowledge of the language is thus a baseline history of the entire

fabric of the Chinese experience; and this pioneering study measures itself against

this recognition. I would, on this ground alone, judge it a landmark work, likely

to be a pivotal reference in Western and Chinese scholarship alike. The functional

approach considers the apparently inert reference manual as a decisive node in a

pattern of communication practice: the intentions of a knowledge book can be

gauged by reconstruction of its user community, and the changes in presentation

can proWle changing patterns of use. Prefatory editorial statements and argu-

ments at the start of works of reference can prove highly informative concerning

context and function and assumed backgrounds of existing knowledge. All this is

for China a new kind of social history, and here too this work could initiate

several new trends.

The historical scope of the synoptic history runs from The Ready Guide (Erya)

of c.200 bc to almost modern times, just up to the threshold of computer-based

lexicography and international bilingual works responding to the new policy of

an open China. A vast number of individual works are listed and described: some

brieXy, but the major landmark works in much greater depth, with cited ex-

amples and discussion of purposes and use-patterns, as well as review of retro-

spective appraisals of earlier treatments made in successive waves of developing

practice. The ordering of presentational sequence, with interspersed reviews of

current method and with the subject-based sections incorporated within the

larger period units, is quite complex but very clearly managed. There is good

internal balance and proportion, and evidently a considerable economy of

treatment is required in order to accommodate this inclusive and synoptic

range within one reasonably-sized volume. A much more elaborate and extensive

treatment could have been mounted in many volumes, probably with specialist

authorship for various component parts; however, that would be a totally

diVerent project, and would lack the distinct virtues of the succinct, well-

informed, and well-proportioned overview which is oVered here. It is more

than possible that the publication of this pioneering synopsis, placing the long

rich tradition of Chinese traditional lexicography on a modern footing, will

stimulate a new phase of lexical and philological studies, together with more

informed comparisons across separate language systems, both in China itself and

in Western sinology. The work could thus become an agenda for a whole host of

specialist derivatives, and for collaborative reWnement of the methodologies

appropriate to speciWc segments of the larger task.

Not only is the structure clear and well laid out, with consistent nomenclature

and a well-managed narrative progression, it is also written in an English style

preface xv

somewhat remarkable for native Chinese scholars. To have assembled and con-

ducted this analysis of a complex language tradition in a foreign language is a

striking achievement, valuable for this reason over and above the content be-

cause, being written in a clear, readable English, it opens up all the material to

non-Chinese readers and scholars; most of this material has never before been

available (if not all of it) outside the Chinese-language domain. I have not been

able to ascertain how the authors have divided up responsibility for this collab-

orative study. Polishing this work to bring it to its present high level of Wnish

must have demanded exceptional eVorts. It is worth saying, also, that the

argumentation of this book is subtle and vigorous; the thought processes are

active, and the material is handled with intelligence rather than merely with

proWciency.

Within the Oxford University Press list it will indeed be a highly specialized

monograph with a well-focused though largely professional core appeal. But

because of its accessible discussion it should be read by many more than the

ranks of trained sinologists, comparative linguists, and historians of language; the

general style is lively and interesting and illustrated with many examples, and

obscure technical terminology is kept to a minimum; moreover, this work is not

likely to be superseded or overtaken in any great hurry. Most Western scholars

and general readers will have little idea of the richness and diversity of this

reXexive self-knowledge and analytic practice within the Chinese language system

and its long history; the book will display a previously almost unknown aspect of

Chinese cultural theory and practice. It will also bring some authoritative and

well-informed material into an area which for the West has been beset with much

folklore and half-ignorant conjecture about the nature of the Chinese language.

I contend that its landmark signiWcance will quickly be recognized and I believe

that it will attract positive reviews even though there will of course be some

critical points of view from specialists; indeed, to initiate diVerent lines of

discussion and divergent points of view will be one of the book’s distinctly

valuable functions.

I believe that this study will aVord the opportunity to grasp the full scope of

such diverse linguistic history running like a thread through the larger historical

record, and to recognize how the Chinese thought about their own language, and

what eVects these thought traditions had on their understanding and use of

language in every sphere of social life. It will massively extend our overall

knowledge and insight on a far more inclusive scale than ‘mere’ lexicography

might seem at Wrst to suggest. Dr Yong Heming and his collaborator have

established a landmark presentation that is both ambitious and judicious in its

balance of close descriptive scholarship with investigative analysis and at the

xv i preface

same time radically extending and testing the contentious tasks of productive

methodology. When Dr Yong Heming was my student (ever-industrious and

talented) at Suzhou University in 1991, I little imagined that such a culminating

and important achievement as this new publication was in prospect for the future

that then lay ahead. The important work presented here is without doubt

deWnitive: large-scale and organized with careful alternating contrast between

descriptive detail and wider evaluations of method and practice. It is indeed a

landmark publication, and it deserves to be closely and widely read.

J. H. Prynne

Gonville and Caius College

University of Cambridge

preface xv i i


p a r t i

INTRODUCTION


1

INTRODUCTION

THE history of Chinese civilization traces back to Yandi (also known as Shen

Nong, Divine Peasant) and Huangdi (also known as Xuan Yuan, Emperor

Huang), legendary rulers of China in remote antiquity and the commonly

recognized ancestors of the Chinese nation. The earliest dictionary in the

Chinese language, The Ready Guide (<尔雅>, also known as Erya), boasts a

history of around 2,200 years. However, a systematic and coherent probe into

the history of Chinese lexicography is something of a novelty, having started in

the last quarter of the twentieth century. A Narrative History of Lexicography in

China (<中国辞书史话>, 1979) by Fang Houshu (方厚枢) is the Wrst serious

monologue concerned with that part of dictionary research and with a wide

time span, initiating a whole series of articles and works. Their pioneering

endeavours, especially those studies on the classic wordbooks, have provided

illuminating insights into later research. However, there is still a great deal of

new ground to be covered and problems solved, some of which are fundamental

in nature. This introduction will give an overview of various aspects of dia-

chronic studies of lexicography in China, covering the status quo, the ap-

proaches to adopt, the methodology to employ, the segmentation of historical

periods, and the practical implications, paving the way for discussions that run

throughout this presentation.

The status quoChinese lexicography originated in quite remote times, when there appeared

what resembled a dictionary in the present-day deWnition, or further back with

the primers, for example character-learning books, compiled for children around

800 bc. The Ready Guide, written around 200 bc, is universally acknowledged as

the earliest dictionary in a real sense in the Chinese academic world. The

lexicographical culture in China has evolved and developed for more than two

millennia, and its broadness, uniqueness, profundity and analytical precision

have remained the admiration of the world academic arena. A general review of

diachronic studies on dictionary compilation and theorization in China, how-

ever, manifests some obvious drawbacks.

First, prior to the 1970s, relevant research, mainly introductory monologues,

reXective thoughts, and critical comments and reviews, was limited to various

wordbooks as front matter items, such as preface, introduction, and guide to use,

which summed up previous experiences, reviewed previous lexicographical

works, criticized citations of the literature, and provided additional information

concerning their motivation, initiation, organization, and compilation. The

systematic investigation of the history of Chinese lexicography has continued

for only three decades and signiWcant Wndings and achievements are still not

substantial. By the end of the twentieth century, there were only a few books

dealing exclusively with this subject, notably A Brief History of Chinese Character

Dictionaries (<中国字典史略>, 1983) by Liu Yeqiu (刘叶秋), An Introduction to

Ancient Dictionaries in China (<中国古代字典辞典概论>, 1986) by Qian Jianfu

(钱剑夫), Talks on the History of Ancient Word Books and Dictionaries (<古代辞书史话>, 1986) by Zhao Zhenduo (赵振铎), Lectures on Ancient Wordbooks (<古代词书讲话>, 1990) by Cao Xianzhuo (曹先擢) and Yang Runlu (杨润陆),

A Brief History of Dictionary Compilation in China (<中国辞书编纂史略>,1992) by Lin Yushan (林玉山), and Talks on the History of Chinese Dictionaries

(<中国字典词典史话>, 1998) by Zhang Minghua (张明华). Other research is

found in the academic periodicals of social sciences published by Chinese

institutions of higher learning and in the journals of lexicography in China,

particularly Lexicographical Studies (<辞书研究>), conference proceedings, andcollections of lexicographical articles. All the works listed above are limited to

ancient wordbooks, neglecting dictionary compilation and theoretical general-

ization in modern and contemporary times. The most recent publication Talks on

the History of Chinese Dictionaries covers the broadest time span, extending from

ancient times up to the present day, but unfortunately it provides only a meager

sketch of Chinese lexicography, overlooking some of the major works and even

some important periods. Geographically, none of the above works has taken into

consideration dictionary compilation and research in Hong Kong, Macao, and

Taiwan. Thus, there remains much work to be done in order to give a panorama

of the development of lexicography in China.

Second, those studies are, to some extent, defective in methodology. They

focus on individual wordbooks and fail to make analyses from societal, cultural,

4 introduction

and interdisciplinary dimensions. Dictionaries are the product of the evolution

of human civilization and the development of human society. The needs from

society and culture are the catalyst for the inception and development of lexi-

cography. Owing to the strong and persistent inXuence of ontological language

studies, previous research is mainly limited to dictionaries proper, and dictionary

compilation is viewed as a purely linguistic activity. Consequently, diachronic

studies of Chinese lexicography have not been approached from a socio-cultural

perspective and lack an interdisciplinary basis, resulting in both its separation

from what counts as the environments without which lexicography could not

evolve and develop, and its separation from dictionary use and other socio-

cultural needs. Lexicographical studies could go no further without some sub-

stantial modiWcation in methodology and an adoption of multiple perspectives.

Third, those studies are generally not comprehensive or systematic. It is

frequently apparent in their research that more emphasis is laid on the parts

than on the whole, that more attention is paid to the isolated analysis of cases

than to theoretical generalizations, and that more consideration is given to

accumulation of practical experiences than to formulation of lexicographical

theories. The works mentioned above are, to some extent, based on historical

context, overlook theoretical conWguration, and follow a well-beaten path: sub-

sequent to a brief survey of the development of ancient wordbooks, the whole

text is mostly devoted to the evaluation of several speciWc and representative

wordbooks and dictionaries, and no attempt is made to establish a theoretically

comprehensive and coherent framework incorporating all the Wndings and

various aspects concerning the history of lexicography in China. For instance,

the major parts of Liu Yeqiu (1983) and Zhao Zhenduo (1986) are evaluations of

such speciWc works as The Ready Guide, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters (<说文解字>, also known as The Origin of Chinese Characters) by Xu

Shen (许慎), The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms (<释名>) by Liu Xi

(刘熙), and The Dictionary of Rhymes (<广韵>) by Chen Pengnian (陈彭年).

Evaluations of these works are necessary but, if they are carried out separately, the

continuity of history, the systematicity of theory, and the integrity of research will

be greatly reduced and impaired.

Fourth, the majority of research focuses on Chinese monolingual dictionaries,

making little or no mention of bilingual dictionaries, special-purpose dictionaries,

or encyclopedic dictionaries. These dictionary types, however, also play an indis-

pensable role in the development of Chinese lexicography in modern and contem-

porary times. Their number is several times greater than Chinese monolingual

dictionaries. Any work on the history of lexicography in China without covering

those dictionary types is doomed to be incomplete and should be discounted.

introduction 5

Lastly, the lexicographical terms employed in the above works are inconsistent

and potentially misleading, which frustrates those interested, especially beginners

in lexicography. Lexicographical knowledge cannot be popularized and the

education of lexicography cannot be promoted if this situation remains un-

changed. It hinders the introduction of Chinese scholars’ achievements to the

rest of the world, in particular their western counterparts. There is still no work

on the history of lexicography in China written in English or other languages,

which renders Chinese lexicographical achievements over the past two millennia

inaccessible to scholars outside China.

ApproachesLexicography has evolved and developed in China for more than two millennia,

and it is impossible to cover such a long span of lexicographical activity within a

limited scope of presentation without a scientiWcally sound framework. A theor-

etically coherent framework must be established into which that long span of

lexicographic activity can be incorporated, reXecting the trajectory of lexico-

graphical development in China. The study of the history of lexicography in

China should start from and be based on what has been achieved and focus on

Wlling in the blanks. Diachronically, we cannot deal only with the ancient period

and leave modern and contemporary periods untouched. The ancient, modern,

and contemporary periods should all be treated in appropriate measure. Geo-

graphically, relevant discussions should not be conWned only to mainland China.

They should cover lexicographical studies and activities in Hong Kong, Macao,

and Taiwan as well. As to the typology of dictionaries, the studies should not

be conWned only to Chinese monolingual dictionaries. Chinese bilingual dic-

tionaries, special-purpose dictionaries (particularly specialized dictionaries)

and encyclopedic dictionaries should all be covered, and special types, such as

dictionaries for speciWc purposes (special-interest dictionaries) and dialect dic-

tionaries, should be taken into the lexicographical scene as well. Only when all

the relevant Wndings and achievements are collated, evaluated, analysed, and

incorporated can we embrace China’s over two millennia of dictionary making

and research and put them under one umbrella. Only then can we further portray

the trajectory and patterns of the evolution of Chinese lexicography against the

background of China’s social development. There should be a balance between

the ancient heritage and the reform and innovation in modern and contempor-

ary times. Emphasis should be laid not only on the evaluation and analysis of

representative dictionaries but also on historical continuity and the heritage of

lexicographical evolution. The systematicity of theoretical investigation and the

6 introduction

comprehensiveness and unity of diachronic explorations should all be emphasized.

Only then can we provide a relatively comprehensive holograph of the history of

lexicography in China, covering its development from ancient to contemporary

times and the status quo both in the mainland and in Hong Kong, Macao, and

Taiwan.

As our review of the literature shows, the existing works of the history of

lexicography in mainland China are mostly case studies of individual dictionaries

and wordbooks of ancient times. These studies are very signiWcant in their

historical and academic value, as these ancient dictionaries and wordbooks are

the roots of Chinese lexicographical culture and are priceless treasures for further

in-depth explorations. Nevertheless, the development of Chinese lexicography in

ancient times was slow and uneven over diVerent periods. It began to accelerate

only from the Ming Dynasty and reached its climax in modern and contempor-

ary times, particularly in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Therefore,

the study of the history of lexicography in China should incorporate both ancient

times and modern and contemporary times. A comprehensive and coherent

historical framework should be established to incorporate and faithfully reXect

the evolutional characteristics and patterns of Chinese lexicography over the past

two millennia.

A new policy should be adopted in writing the history of lexicography in

China. While emphasizing the scientiWc and academic nature of the undertaking,

adequate attention should be paid to its readability and popular appeal, avoiding

obscurity, lack of intelligibility or inconsistency in employing lexicographical

terms. The English version should adopt a style more appealing to western

readers and should manifest what is essential to the lexicographical culture in

China – the cornerstone dictionaries, the advanced experiences in dictionary

compilation, and the leading achievements in theoretical inquiry. In addition,

there should be indexes and appendixes to list and explain diYcult and obscure

terms. All this will make the work more enticing and friendly to its readers and

will greatly help popularize lexicographical knowledge and promote education in

this Weld.

MethodologyThe basic methodology in the study of the history of lexicography should be a

combination of sequence, evaluation, and generalization, following the dia-

chronic sequence as the main thread of inquiry and exploration, making object-

ive assessment of major lexicographical works, formulating theoretical

generalizations, and eventually establishing a coherent framework to incorporate

introduction 7

all the Wndings of such research. This is also applicable to the study of the history

of Chinese lexicography. In addition, some substantial breakthroughs will have to

be made in methodology in order to achieve the intended goal.

First, the investigations should not be conWned within the limits of the

dictionary-ontology paradigm. Socio-cultural dimensions will have to be taken

into account. In other words, two interwoven themes should run in parallel

throughout the whole study: socio-cultural evolution and lexicographical devel-

opment in China. The study of the history of lexicography in China should be

carried out against the background of China’s socio-cultural development. There

is undeniable evidence that the development of Chinese wordbooks and diction-

aries is contingent upon the prosperity or adversity of the nation, the develop-

ment of the society, the transmission of religion and culture, and the progress of

science and technology. Prominence must be given to the interactive relation-

ships between socio-cultural advancement and dictionary production and devel-

opment, and between socio-cultural demands and dictionary compilation and

use. Similar interactive relations and mechanisms exist between language and

dictionary, between society and dictionary, and between dictionary and culture.

Lexicographical culture is an essential part of the culture of a nation. The

historical trajectory of the evolution of a nation, whether it rises or falls, will

accordingly leave an imprint upon the development of lexicography of that

nation. In a sense, a history of lexicography is a history of the culture of a nation

and a history of the evolution of its civilization. Thus, it can be safely assumed

that the study of the history of lexicography should be societal, cultural, and

interdisciplinary. The mainstream patterns and characteristics of the develop-

ment of lexicography in China cannot be adequately described if inquiries into

Chinese lexicography are taken out of their socio-cultural context.

Second, the practice of separate case study and the unsystematic theoretical

generalization should be viewed, reWned, and elevated in the general context of

over 2,200 years of Chinese lexicographical experiences so that lexicographical

products and culture can be approached and evaluated under a more consistent,

coherent, integrated, and interrelated framework. The practical implication and

historical value of speciWc dictionaries will be better appreciated when they are

taken into the picture of the whole historical process in which they have evolved

and developed. A dictionary should be regarded as an outcome of the evolution

of a nation’s civilization, as a marked product of a nation’s culture, and as an

indispensable member of a nation’s dictionary family. Dictionary study should

not follow the ontological pattern for language study and be conducted for its

own sake. It should relate itself to the course of the development of a nation’s

culture and to the historical growth of its lexicographical culture. In so doing, the

8 introduction

diachronic inheritance in history, the systematic formulation in theory, and the

integration of sequence, evaluation, and generalization will become conspicuous

throughout this presentation. Moreover, the development of lexicography in

China should be studied and analysed against the wider background of world

lexicography and civilization so as to pinpoint the role that it plays in world

civilization and lexicographical culture and highlight the national features of

China’s lexicographical culture.

Third, the single-perspective mode in the diachronic study of dictionary compil-

ation should be re-evaluated and improved. Traditionally, Chinese lexicography and

its development have been examined mainly from a single perspective, i.e. the

compiler’s perspective. The general truth is that the history of lexicography in

China cannot be fully investigated without taking into consideration the socio-

cultural evolution of the Chinese nation. Thus, a communicative approach should

be introduced to establish a theoretical model for the study of the history of lexicog-

raphy: integrating the compiler, the dictionary, and the user into a trinity so that the

dictionaries and their development canbe examined froma threefold perspective–the

dictionary, its compilation, and its use. Such an approach can help free us from the

conWnements of the conventional practice of looking at dictionaries only from the

perspectiveof dictionary itself. Thus, the ‘trinitarian’ approachwill incorporate socio-

cultural andpsycho-cognitiveperspectives into the studyofdictionaryuse, dictionary

users, and their language needs. User needs and dictionary development, user

research and dictionary use, and dictionary use and language teaching can all be

investigated under and integrated into a uniWed framework. Dictionaries are the

product of the evolutionof human civilization and the product of the development of

human society. The need from society and culture is a catalyst for their birth and

development and user need is a direct driving force for their production and

expansion. Naturally, manifold perspectives should be adopted, and dictionary

evolution should be examined and analysed from the perspective of the dictionary,

the compiler, and the user, taking linguistic, socio-cultural, psycho-cognitive, and

other dimensions into account. The theory of the dictionary as communication (see

雍和明, Yong Heming, 2003; Yong Heming and Peng Jing, 2007) takes the process

school in communication studies as its basic theoretical framework and proposes a

theoreticalmodel for lexicographical communication.The communicativemodel for

lexicography shouldbe introduced into this study so that the analysis of speciWcworks

canbe conductedunder a general framework and canbe eventually incorporated into

it. It helps to examine the development of lexicography in China, work out method-

ologies and principles to reveal the regularities and patterns of dictionary develop-

ment, discover the mechanisms of dictionary compilation and use, and inquire into

the cognitive principles regulating dictionary use.

introduction 9

Historical SegmentationThe segmentation of historical periods is considered one of the most fundamen-

tal theoretical issues in the study of the history of lexicography in any language

and it is essential that the division of the history of the development of lexicog-

raphy into periods is made upon a scientiWc, distinctive, and objective basis.

A scientiWc and feasible way to divide history into periods will help the reader to

see how Chinese dictionaries have evolved from one phase to another in the

Chinese cultural setting, how they distinguish themselves via distinctive features,

and how various phases are interrelated to show the trajectory of their progress,

thus forming a clear panorama of the development of Chinese lexicography in

the mind of the reader.

There are diVerent viewpoints on the segmentation of the lexicographic

history in China among the scholars in the mainland. Liu Yeqiu (1983), repre-

senting one school of scholars, divides the history of Chinese lexicography into

Wve periods:

(1) the Emerging and Foundation-laying Period: 475 bc–ad 220 (Warring

States Period, Qin Dynasty, and Han Dynasty);

(2) the Inheriting and Evolving Period: 220–581 (Three Kingdoms, Jin Dyn-

asty, and Southern and Northern Dynasties);

(3) the Constructing and Developing Period: 618–1368 (Tang Dynasty, Song

Dynasty, and Yuan Dynasty);

(4) the Progressing and Booming Period: 1368–1911 (Ming Dynasty and Qing

Dynasty); and

(5) the Changing and Reforming Period: 1911–present.

This historical segmentation is strongly motivated by the evolutionary char-

acteristics of dictionaries, emphasizing some periods and their characteristics but

overlooking others. Its drawbacks are obvious.

Lin Yushan (1992), representing another school of scholars, proposes a six-

period division:

(1) the Emerging Period: c.2070 bc–221 bc (Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty,

Western Zhou Dynasty, and Pre-Qin Period);

(2) the Foundation-laying Period: 206 bc–ad 581 (Han Dynasty, Three King-

doms, Jin Dynasty, and Southern and Northern Dynasties);

(3) the Preliminary Developing Period: 581–1368 (Sui Dynasty, Tang Dynasty,

Song Dynasty, and Yuan Dynasty);

(4) the Further Developing Period: 1368–1911 (Ming Dynasty and Qing

Dynasty);

10 introduction

(5) the Maturing Period: 1911–1978 (modern times); and

(6) the Booming Period: 1978–present (contemporary times).

This division is speciWc and wide-ranging, and under this division the

general picture of the history of lexicography in China can be better delineated,

although there is still much room for improvement in terms of criteria for

division and characterization of each period. For instance, what are the dis-

tinctive features between ‘the preliminary developing period’ and ‘the further

developing period’? What are the criteria for identifying ‘the maturing period’?

And what are the indexes for maturing? Should the development of lexico-

graphical theories be taken into consideration in the historical segmentation of

lexicography? These questions are all fundamental and need further serious

study.

For a scientiWcally feasible, objective, and systematic segmentation of lexico-

graphic history, both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective should be

adopted in observing and describing the origin and progression of lexicography

over a relatively long period of time, and at a certain point of time as well.

SuYcient attention should be paid to both the general trends in the develop-

ment of dictionaries and the marked characteristics of dictionaries in the

synchronic state, especially the radical changes and reforms in dictionary

compilation and the breakthroughs in inquiries into fundamental issues and

theoretical generalization. Considering synchronically distinctive features of

each of the divisions above, the actual evolutionary patterns of Chinese lexi-

cography, and the merits of the propositions by both scholars, a four-period

division is put forth as follows:

(1) the Pioneering and Emergence Period: 1046 bc–ad 220 (Western Zhou

Dynasty to Eastern Han Dynasty);

(2) the Exploration and Cultivation Period: 220–1368 (Three Kingdoms to

Yuan Dynasty);

(3) the Reform and Shaping Period: 1368–1911 (Ming Dynasty to Qing

Dynasty); and

(4) the Depression and Booming Period: 1911–present (the twentieth century).

The present study will adopt this division of historical periods as the frame-

work for discussion and analysis and will be mainly devoted to the development

of Chinese lexicography from the Zhou Dynasty (1046 bc–256 bc) to the Qing

Dynasty (1616–1911). Twentieth-century Chinese lexicography, which is extremely

diYcult to encompass within this limited scope of presentation, is well worth a

separate study.

introduction 11

Practical ImplicationsFor various reasons, historical, political, and linguistic, no in-depth, comprehen-

sive, and consistent studies have ever been made of the history of lexicography in

China. It is no wonder that the achievements in dictionary making and lexico-

graphical cultivation in China are little known to the West, and, surprisingly, not

many Chinese are aware of their own lexicographical accomplishments over the

past two millennia. Therefore, such an undertaking is of great value in philology,

sinology, sociology, and cultural and historical studies, in addition to its far-

reaching signiWcance to lexicographical practice and theorization.

The history of lexicography in China is closely related to the study of the

Chinese language, its characters and history, to the socio-cultural history of

the Chinese nation, and to the progression of Chinese civilization. It is an

essential part of theoretical lexicography. Studies on the history of lexicography

will greatly contribute to theoretical explorations in lexicography, help formulate

principles guiding dictionary making, facilitate dictionary compilation and re-

search, and eventually enhance the development of lexicography as a whole. Such

studies will play a signiWcant role in pushing forward Chinese historical lexicog-

raphy, in promoting the association of dictionary compilation and dictionary use

with language teaching, and in reforming modes and patterns of Chinese and

foreign language teaching.

Robert Collison (1982:20) states: ‘Dictionary-making in China, for example,

was already well advanced some two thousand years ago, but the extent of this

achievement was not appreciated by the West for more than a thousand years.’

It is high time that a work on the history of Chinese lexicography be written

and published in English, presenting a panorama of its historical development,

and the status quo. It is hoped that this work will promote the development and

exploitation of lexicographical culture in China and facilitate the worldwide

awareness of the magniWcence of Chinese civilization and lexicographical culture.

It is also hoped that this work, written in English, will help to remove barriers

between Chinese and western lexicography, initiate new forms of comparative

research in the global context, and converge the history of Chinese lexicography

into the general Xux of the history of world lexicography.

12 introduction

p a r t i i

THE GENES IS AND

EMERGENCE OF

LEXICOGRAPHICAL

CULTURE AND

WORKS IN

ANCIENT CHINA

(from the Zhou Dynasty, 1046 bc–256 bcto the Han Dynasty, 206 bc–ad 220)


2

THE EMERGENCE OFLEXICOGRAPHICALCULTURE IN CHINA

THERE are numerous myths and legends about the origin of human beings.

In the West, it was popularly circulated that men were created by God.

A man was Wrst created and named Adam, and a woman was made from one

of his ribs and named Eve. They were pronounced man and wife and gave birth

to children that were the ancestors of human beings today. In China, there was

a diVerent story – human beings were created by Nuwa, a Goddess in the Chinese

legend, out of clay. She moulded clay Wgurines by mixing water with clay. After

making a number of them she stopped to blow breath and life into each of

them and they became the Wrst human beings on Earth. The development of

the means of production and the progress of science and technology provide

a better understanding of the origin of human beings and a scientiWc theory

of its evolution: human beings evolved from ancient apes and labour played

a decisive role in this process of evolution.

Over the last century quite a few fossils and relics of ancient human beings

have been discovered. These discoveries have justiWed Darwin and Engels’ theory

of the origin of human species. Judging from the discovery of Australopithecus

africanus, the earliest humanoid fossils, and stone tools, human beings must have

emerged two or three million years ago. In China, the unearthing of the Muddy

River Bay (Nihewan) Relics shows how human beings dined about two million

years ago: the ancestors of human beings could have walked out from the Muddy

River Bay, in the same way as they might have come out of Tanzania’s Olduvai

Gorge, known as the cradle of mankind and the birthplace of our human

ancestors. It had taken our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years to transform

themselves from apes into erect walking beings and primitive languages had

gradually evolved to meet their primitive labour needs.

2.1 the origin of chinese charactersand their formation

Language emerges, develops and changes as human society develops and changes.

The writing system, however, does not evolve simultaneously. Human beings have

a long history of communicating with each other in speech without a writing

system. The earliest writing system, conWrmed by archeological discoveries, has a

history of only 6,000 years, which is a mere drop in the ocean relative to the

evolution of human species. There are still a large number of languages in the

world that have only spoken forms, without having evolved to the stage of creating

a writing system.

Chinese characters are signs used to record the speech form of the Chinese

language. The Chinese writing system is among those that have had the longest

history and profoundest inXuence in the world. There is still a great deal of

controversy concerning when it originated and who created it. Scholars in the

Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220) proposed that Chinese characters had their origins

in knot tying – the earliest means by which people kept records of signiWcant

events in their primitive life, in the light of accounts from The Book of Changes

(<易经>, also <易>) that ‘in ancient times tribes were ruled by means of tying

knots, which was later replaced by using characters introduced by Man of God’.

Greater numbers of scholars tend to accept that Chinese characters were created

by Cang Jie (or Ti’ang Chieh,仓颉). In classic Chinese works, Cang Jie’s creation

of characters has been frequently noted:

When Cang Jie creates characters, self-conWnement is dubbed 厶(私) [private], and

turning one’s back to selWshness was being 公 [public], which manifests that Cang Jie

is already well aware of the contradiction between being private and being public.

It was alsomentioned inThe Lu’s Spring and AutumnAnnals (<吕氏春秋�君守>)that the Chinese writing system is ascribable to Cang Jie. In the Preface to An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which was compiled by Xu Shen in the

Eastern Han Dynasty, this was once again noted and further indication was given as

to ‘how’ – the inspiration for creating Chinese characters came from hunting: when

16 genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

Cang Jie examined the trails and marks left behind by animals and birds he came to

recognize which was which and could diVerentiate through careful inspection. Thus,

Chinese characters were created as a result of such reasoning and keen observation.

There are also legends and myths about Cang Jie’s creating Chinese characters. One

legend has it that Cang Jie saw a god fromHeavenwith a very odd face, which looked

very much like a painting consisting of characters. Cang Jie copied the picture of the

face and created characters. In another legend, Cang Jie’s character creation was

thought to be the leakage of secrets from Heaven, which induced the millet to fall

and the ghost to cry every night. In the eyes of scholars today, legends are just legends.

The creation of Chinese characters should be a product of collective endeavour and

gradual accumulation over a broad time span. Cang Jie, as the historiographer of

Emperor Huang, must have made indispensable contributions to the creation of

Chinese characters, especially in sorting and codifying, though he could not be

credited as the only creator.

The evolution of Chinese characters has a history of more than 6,000 years.

These characters evolved from the symbols and graphs for keeping memories of

signiWcant events in primitive life. The rudiments of characters are generally

thought to be those curves and sketches on the coloured earthenware of the late

Neolithic Age. The earliest mature Chinese characters discovered in archae-

ology are those inscriptions carved on tortoise shells and animal bones of the

Shang Dynasty (c.16th–11th century bc), from which the current Chinese

language has evolved. These characters are called Jiaguwen (甲骨文). There

are approximately 4,600 Jiaguwen characters discovered, a considerable pro-

portion of which are phonograms, fairly sophisticated words even by today’s

standards.

Since the appearance of Jiaguwen, the form and structure of Chinese characters

have undergone three main phases of evolution: from ancient writing called

dazhuan (大篆), which is a style of calligraphy with complicated strokes current

in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties (c.1600 bc–256 bc), to xiaozhuan (小篆), which

stands for ‘fewer-stroke seal characters’ simpliWed from dazhuan by Prime Min-

ister Li Si (李斯) of the Qin Dynasty (221 bc–206 bc); from xiaozhuan to oYcial

script in the Han Dynasty (206 bc–ad 220); and from oYcial script to regular

script in the Tang Dynasty (618–907) and onwards. Since Jiaguwen characters are

symbols carvedwith sharp instruments, the strokes aremainly in square forms and

their structures look very delicate. The characters in the Shang andZhouDynasties

are inscriptions mainly found on bronze and copper wares. These inscription

characters were principally used to record important activities at that time:

oVering sacriWces to gods or ancestors, waging wars against enemies, conferring

awards on heroes for their accomplishments, or making treaties and agreements.

genesis of lexicographical culture 17

This can be taken as a window on the society of that time. These inscription

characters are very similar to Jiaguwen and it is evident that they have inherited

and retained many of the characteristics of Jiaguwen. In the late Zhou Dynasty,

these inscription characters changed to dazhuan. In 221 bc, Ying Zheng, the Wrst

Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, uniWed China for the Wrst time in Chinese history.

He promulgated the decree of ‘Writing Same Character’ (书同文) – promoting a

new writing system. This new writing system was based on the system formerly

used in Qin State and it also adopted some popularly used writing forms from

other states. Compared with the previous writing systems, the new system is

more convenient in that the new characters are greatly simpliWed and oYcially

codiWed. The new characters come to be called xiaozhuan. In order to popularize

the new writing system nationwide, the Emperor also ordered some of his

oYcials to write standard textbooks, including The Cangjie Primer (<仓颉

篇>), The Yuanli Primer (<爰历篇>), and The Scholarly Primer (<博学篇>).Up to the stage of xiaozhuan, the irregular form and structure of characters have

become relatively more regular and consistent straight or arched lines. The

characteristics of inscriptions, such as pictographs, have become much less

salient. Moreover, the basic structural parts of characters were becoming stabil-

ized, which has paved the way for Chinese characters to transform into ‘square

characters’.

Although xiaozhuan signiWes a great leap forward in the transformation of

Chinese characters, its structure is still rather complex and its writing not very

practical. What is to follow naturally is an essential reform in the writing system

of Chinese characters – the introduction of oYcial script in the late Han Dynasty.

Xiping Stone Inscriptions (<熹平石经>) in the Eastern Han Dynasty is the most

representative calligraphic work of the oYcial script. The basic structure has

undergone a revolutionary transformation from xiaozhuan to the oYcial script:

stroke lines have changed from arches and bends to squares and straight lines,

abandoning the distinctive pictographic features. The oYcial script has, to a large

extent, facilitated the process of turning ancient Chinese characters into signs

symbolizing modern Chinese characters. The Chinese characters have gradually

evolved into a more convenient writing system, and it was not until the Western

HanDynastythattheoYcialscriptbecamegenuinelyoYcialandcameintowideuse.

In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the regular script was introduced, which was a

further simpliWcation and adaptation of the oYcial script, and that quickly

became the standard script. Between 220 and 420, it came to be used widely

and became the general script in early engraved printing. Ever since, regular

script has always remained the standard script for the Chinese language. Except


for some simpliWcation in strokes, the form and structure of Chinese characters

has not undergone much radical change since then.

The writing systems of the world generally fall into two categories: phonography

(e.g. alphabetic writing) and ideography (e.g. logographic writing). The former

consists of phonetic symbols such as phonemes or syllables. Usually, there exists a

correlation between the pronunciation and the spelling, and the pronunciation of

the word can be inferred easily from its formation, as in the case of English and

French. For the latter, the form of the character is employed to designate a word or

morpheme. The form and the meaning are to a certain extent relevant but the

pronunciation of the word cannot be inferred from its form, as in the case of

Chinese. The form and structure of the character are related to speciWc meanings

but not to its pronunciation, unlike the phonograph in alphabetic writing systems.

As far as the formation of Chinese characters is concerned, there are four

main types in its constitution: pictographic (象形法), self-explanatory (指事法),

ideographic (会意法), and pictophonetic (形声法). Of these four types, picto-

graphic formation is the earliest. In pictographic formation, the physical form

and property are depicted according to the things they designate. These earliest

characters mainly denote things common in everyday life. Due to the dramatic

changes in the form of characters, the original features of the pictographic

characters cannot be ascertained from the form and structure of the regular

script, but those characteristics of pictographic characters can be readily recog-

nized in Jiaguwen and inscription characters. For instance, in the inscription

characters 日 (the sun) was written as , 月(the moon) as , 水 (water) as ,

and 牛(cow) as . The pictographic characters evolved gradually, and they all

changed their original form and Wnally Wxed as square characters.

Self-explanatory formation uses symbols only or symbols coupled with some

deictic labels to designate meaning. There are two subtypes in this formation:

one using symbols only, the other using symbols plus some labels.一 (one),上

(above), and下 (below) belong to the Wrst subtype, and本 (root),末 (branch),

刃 (blade),甘 (sweet), 牟 (moo), and 血 (blood) belong to the second subtype.

The Wrst subtype might have been employed in the same period as the picto-

graphic method while the second subtype must have occurred some time there-

after. The pictographic method can only be used to designate some concrete

entities whereas the self-explanatory method can be used to refer to more

abstract meanings. It is apparent that the self-explanatory method is greatly

restricted and used only in a limited way. As a result, the number of self-

explanatory characters is not great. This is especially true of the symbol-only

ones – only several characters are identiWed as belonging to this subtype in the

Chinese writing system.


The ideographic formation, as indicated by its name, integrates two or more

extant character symbols to designate a new meaning. The ideographic characters

are all composite characters. According to the ancient scholars, the Chinese char-

acters can be classiWed into wen (文) and zi (字). Wen refers to single-element

characters and zi to composite ones. The pictographic and the self-explanatory

characters are mainly composed of single elements, thus falling into the wen

category. The ideographic characters are composed of two or more characters,

thus falling into the zi category. DiVerent symbols or pictographic characters plus

some deictic labels are combined to designate a new abstract meaning in the

ideographic formation. For instance,明 (bright) was written as , whosemeaning

is a composition of日 (the sun) and月 (the moon).旦 ( morning) was written

as , whose meaning is a composition of日 (the sun) and一 (horizon) – the time

when the sun rises from below the ground.

The pictophonetic formation refers to those characters that consist of two

elements, one indicating meaning and the other indicating sound. The meaning

element, also called the form element, indicates the category to which the

meaning (or the relevant concept) belongs while the sound element indicates

the character’s pronunciation. Numerous new characters can be created by means

of putting a sound element and a meaning element together to stand for a new

relevant thing or idea. For instance,爸 (dad) is a combination of巴 indicating its

pronunciation /ba/, and父 (father), its meaning. Similarly,芭 is a combination of

巴 andþþ, designating a kind of grass. Studies show that pictophonetic characters

account for 20 per cent of the total in Jiaguwen. The percentage of pictophonetic

characters increased dramatically in the Qin Dynasty and quickly took the

dominant position. Xu Shen’s An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters

brought together 9,353 characters, among which 7,697 are pictophonetic,

accounting for more than 80 per cent of the total. In contemporary Chinese,

pictophonetic characters account for approximately 90 per cent of its lexicon.

As to the form and structure of Chinese characters, there was the so-called ‘Six

Categories of Chinese Characters’ (六书, shortened to Six Categories) theory in

ancient times. This theory put forward six basic methods of creating Chinese

characters. In addition to the four methods discussed above, there are mutually

explanatory formations (转注法) and phonetic loans (假借法). According to

Dai Zhen (戴震) and Duan Yucai (段玉裁, 1735–1815), in the mutually explana-

tory formation, characters with the same or similar meaning can be mutually

used to explain lexical meaning. For instance, in An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters, the explication of 老 (old) is 考 (long life, aged), and the

explication of 考 is 老. Phonetic loaning refers to the method by which an

irrelevant character with the same or similar pronunciation is borrowed to


indicate a new meaning. For instance,来 originally refers to 麦 (wheat) but it is

loaned to indicate来 (come) as in来往 (come and go) in contemporary Chinese.

Similarly, 求 originally refers to 求 (fur), but it is loaned to mean 求 (request)

as in 请求 (plead, request). The phonetic loaning acts as a typical example

of phonograph, which indicates a substantial progress in the development of

Chinese characters. However, in essence, mutually explanatory formation and

phonetic loaning cannot be counted as methods of character creation. In actual

practice, there are only four ways of creating Chinese characters, namely, picto-

graphic, self-explanatory, ideographic, and pictophonetic.

The creation and adoption of writing systems mark a signiWcant advancement

in the history of human civilization. The Chinese writing system enjoys an

indispensably unique position for its distinctive features and charming callig-

raphy. More and more scholars using phonographic languages have come to

realize and appreciate the uniqueness of Chinese characters and started to

examine and study Chinese characters from linguistic, historical, and artistic

perspectives.

2.2 ancient chinese literature and exegeticinterpretation of characters

To have a language, i.e. language in its spoken form, is a prerequisite for characters

and words in their written form to evolve. And characters and words form the basis

for literature to be produced. The source of Chinese literature can be traced back

to the Xia Dynasty (c.2070 bc–1600 bc), though there is still no material data

unearthed of characters and literature produced at that time. The earliest literature

presently available is the oracle inscriptions on tortoise shells or animal bones

made by the kings and nobles in the late Shang Dynasty (c.1600 bc–1000 bc). In the

sixth century bc, six classics (六经) were compiled by Confucius (孔子 551 bc–479

bc), namely The Book of Changes, The Book of Ancient Texts (<书>, also <尚书>),The Book of Songs (<诗经>, also <诗>), The Book of Rites (<礼记>, also <礼>),The Book of Music (<乐>), and The Spring and Autumn (<春秋>). These six

classic works mark the real beginning of ancient Chinese literature.

Since the late Spring and Autumn Period, private schools prevailed and a

generation of scholars and theoreticians matured. There emerged a mix of

numerous schools of thoughts and a great number of scholarly works were

written. According to The Book of the Han Dynasty (<汉书�艺文志>), more


than 140 kinds of works survived the Burning Book Event launched by the

Wrst Emperor of the Qin Dynasty and remained in the Western Han Dynasty

(206 bc–ad 5). They were all written by the pre-Qin Dynasty scholars.

Themushrooming of classical literature in this period contributed a great deal

to Chinese culture. But, as time passed by, the characters themselves had

undergone changes in both form and meaning. Many characters and their

pronunciations were not generally intelligible. This is especially true of the

more scholarly and remote classics. The Wve Confucius Classics, namely The

Book of Changes, The Book of Ancient Texts, The Book of Songs, The Book of Rites,

andThe Spring and Autumn had been codiWed as textbooks. And the explanation

and interpretation of characters in these classics seemed to be an important and

urgent task. The explanation of characters and expressions in ancient books is

deWned as exegesis (训诂). The earliest citation of this term, spelled as诂训, may

be traced back to Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs (<毛诗诂训传>,shortened as Mao’s Exegesis <毛传>), a work by Zheng Xuan (郑玄, 127–200)

written in the Han Dynasty (206 bc–ad 220). Prior to that,训诂 (exegesis) was

split as诂 or训 in literature. According to The RectiWed Interpretation of Mao’s

Book of Songs (<毛诗正义>),训means describing the appearance of something

so as tomake it known to others, that is, explicating some characters or sentences

by means of explanation or description, whereas 诂 means expounding the

diVerences of characters in ancient and contemporary language and making

them intelligible, i.e. using contemporary language to explain ancient charac-

ters. Lu Deming (陆德明, 550–630) once stated: ‘诂means the diVerent expres-

sions between the classic and the contemporary; and训 means that characters

bear the signiWcance of their own.’ Huang Kan (黄侃), a prominent scholar in

the late Qing Dynasty, adopting a modern linguistic approach, summarized诂

as 故 (old, the original naming) and 训 as 顺 (sorting out, the extended

meaning). 训诂, so to speak, means using language to explain the meaning of

language. The practice of explaining the expressions in one region with the

expressions in another, or of using today’s words to explain those of the past,

is surely part of exegesis, but does not constitute fundamental principles. The

purpose of exegesis not only resides in explaining language with language but

also in revealing the patterns and laws for language use and exploring the

principles of linguistic meaning and the process of language evolution.

For every language in the world, if it is still in use, it will inevitably be in

constant change. Language changes with time and space, resulting in diYculties

for the new generation in understanding the language of the old. The funda-

mental reason for the birth of exegesis lies in the diVerences of language in time

and space. There has been a long tradition of Chinese scholars adding notes to


the classic works of ancient times. These explanatory notes centre around the

theme of the text, the understanding of sentence and character meaning. It is

generally accepted that the Wrst book with systematic explanatory notes began

with Zi Xia’s (子夏, also卜商, Bu Shang) adding notes for Confucius’ works.

During the pre-Qin Dynasty period, the addition of notes to works other than

Confucius’ classics also took place. The actual practice of exegesis emerged in the

late Spring and Autumn Period but was not called thus until the Han Dynasty.

Originally, exegesis concentrated on adding explanatory notes to diYcult char-

acters and words in ancient classic literature. It was during the Han Dynasty that

these explanatory notes evolved into systematic exegetic works. It is evident that

exegesis originated from the practice of adding notes, but with the development

of culture and the change in academic paradigms both exegesis and note-adding

involved into independent branches of learning in Chinese philology.

In the early Han Dynasty, the booming study of Confucius’ classics provided

impetus for the practice of adding notes, which turned into more systematic and

organized academic activity. Rigorous styles and terms came into being and were

gradually adopted consistently for note addition in one and the samework, thus训,

its style and particular methods for adding notes. From the late Western Han

Dynasty to the early Eastern Han Dynasty, textual research on characters in the

pre-Qin Dynasty classics prevailed as part of explanatory studies of Confucius’

works. Consequently, the practice of exegesis established itself as a formal branch

of learning. From The Book of the Han Dynasty, written in the early Eastern Han

Dynasty, we can see a diVerence between故 and训: the explanatory books entitled

故 or 训故 are mainly those identifying and discriminating ancient and current

character forms, and pronunciation in diVerent dialects and of diVerent regions;

whereas those entitled训 or训纂, though fewer in number, concentrate on explor-

ing and explaining the principles for meaning change. The so-called ‘collective

compilations (纂集)’, are actually accumulated collections of exegetic material.

These exegetic books had already displayed some of the features of character books

orwordbooksanddictionaries.This is the sourceof lexicographical culture inChina.

In the Western Han Dynasty, the achievements of exegesis, especially of the

collective compilations, are best embodied in The Ready Guide. There sprang up,

in the late Han Dynasty (206 bc–ad 220), numerous exegetic works of this type,

notably An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and Terms, The Dictionary of Popular Words (<通俗文>),and The Pocket Ready Guide (<小尔雅>). Interestingly, these specialized exegetic

works became the focus of exegetic works which were to come in later times. It is

the work of adding notes to andmaking explanations and interpretations of these

specialized exegetic works that laid the foundation for the development of


exegetic studies on lexical semantics of early historical literature and continued

throughout as the theme of research in traditional exegesis.

The exegetic study in the Western Han Dynasty was completely dependent on

the study of the Confucius’ classics. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the horizon

of exegetic studies was greatly widened, embracing historical works and literary

works other than the Confucius’ classics or pre-Qin Dynasty scholars’ works. From

the late Western Han to the early Eastern Han Dynasty, exegetic studies witnessed

unprecedented growth, marking the establishment of exegesis as a formal academic

discipline – having its principles and styles in investigating and explaining the

Chinese characters, the Chinese language and its dialects in historical literature.

The exegetes in this period paid more attention to bringing into full play collective

endeavours, following rigorously established work styles, and sticking persistently

to prescriptions handed down by their predecessors. Consequently, exegetic works

Xourished, especially the explanatory-note type and collective-compilation type;

themethodologies in exegetic studies becamemore systematic, and phono-exegesis

in Neoclassic studies and form-exegesis in Paleoclassic studies became more

naturally integrated, leading to the new pictophonetic perspective. Moreover, the

scholars in exegetic studies began to devote more attention to standardizing and

codifying the terms employed, which paved the way for the scientiWc development

of exegetic studies as an independent discipline.

From the Three Kingdoms (220–280) to the Tang Dynasty (618–907), the ‘dual

noting’ developed quickly. Representative works include The Exegesis of the Book of

Rites (<礼记义疏>) and The Exegesis of the Analects of Confucius (<论语义疏>) byHuangKan (皇侃) in the LiangDynasty (502–557), andTheRectiWed Interpretation of

Five Classics (<五经正义>) by Kong Yingda (孔颖达) in the early Tang Dynasty.

The essence of ‘dual noting’ resides in semantic empiricism, i.e. reexamining the

meaning-exegesis of characters (or words) in the explanatory-note books. The

purpose of conducting reexamination is to explain the texts of certain historical

literature and the characters, words, or language in general historical literature as

well. Meanwhile, the emphasis of exegetic work shifted to noting and explaining the

specialized exegetic works and the exegetic material gradually became the focus of

the Erya Studies and the Shuowen Studies. The representative works in this period

include The Annotated Ready Guide (<尔雅注>) and The Annotated Dictionary of

Dialectal Words (<方言注>). The scholars in the Song Dynasty explicitly pointed

out that xiaoxue (小学, literally ‘little learning’, in ancient times, primary schools

started education from the Six Categories, hence its name) was extended to refer to

such branches of learning as the studies of characters, glossaries, prosodies, and

exegesis, suggesting that xiaoxue be renamed philology or philological studies. This

notion basically followed from The Book of the Sui Dynasty (<隋书�经籍志>) but


further speciWed the contents of the study of xiaoxue. Thus, exegesis became a

relatively independent branch of learning in xiaoxue as from the Song Dynasty.

As indicated above, xiaoxue originally referred to the elementary schools estab-

lished for the royal children in the Zhou Dynasty. For the educational system in the

Zhou Dynasty, six kinds of art (六艺) and six types of rituals (六仪) would be

taught. Later, the contents of teaching shifted to the theory of ‘Six Categories of

Chinese Characters’ – knowledge about the Chinese language and its characters. To

meet these new needs in ‘xiaoxue’, character glossaries were compiled, notably

Historian Zhou’s Primer (<史籀篇>) compiled in the Zhou Dynasty, and followed

by The Cangjie Primer, The Yuanli Primer and The Scholarly Primer at later times.

In the early Western Han Dynasty, great changes in politics, economy, ideology,

and culture spurred on semantic studies in the Chinese language and the number

of the Chinese characters increased dramatically. For instance, the basic vocabulary

of The Cangjie Primer, The Yuanli Primer, and The Scholarly Primer in the Qin

Dynasty amounted approximately to 3,300, whereas in the middle of the Eastern

Han Dynasty, the characters used in classical literature and collected in An Ex-

planatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters rose to 9,353. In the Western Han

Dynasty, the teaching of characters was emphasized, and this gave rise again to

the compilation of character glossaries and vocabularies, among which are The

General Primer (<凡将篇>) by Sima Xiangru (司马相如), The Instant Primer

(<急就篇>) by Shi You (史游), and The Yuanshang Primer (<元尚篇>) by Li

Chang (李长). The appearance of these character glossaries and vocabularies in

turn facilitated the development of Chinese philology, especially the study of Six

Categories. This laid the literature and academic foundation for the compilation of

character books or wordbooks, vocabularies and dictionaries.

2.3 theories on the origin of lexicography

There exist various theories regarding the origin of lexicography in China. Some

scholars hold that The Book of Changes should be regarded as the earliest

dictionary in China. Other scholars believe that the earliest textbooks for char-

acter learning should be considered as the fountainhead of Chinese lexicograph-

ical practice. Both theories will be clariWed and analysed in this section.

Liu Changyun (刘长允, 1985) proposes that The Book of Changes is ‘an ancient

dictionary’, i.e. a philological dictionary. His idea is that The Book of Changes is

compiled in the dictionary style, bearing the features of a dictionary – ‘a reference

book for explaining words in language and a textbook for guiding people to behave


in society’; it does not give abstract explanations but lists the senses of the characters

to be explained by means of giving corresponding citations, and ‘the arrangement

of head characters and entries is not in a Wxed fashion’. ZhouDemei (周德美, 1999),

however, approaches The Book of Changes from a diVerent perspective, treating it in

the form of literature. He holds that The Book of Changes ‘is a dictionary. It is a

dictionary for a special Weld, i.e. divination, not a dictionary for philology’.

Other scholars hold a conXicting point of view – The Book of Changes is not a

dictionary. For the Jing (经) part in The Book of Changes, there are eight trigrams

(八卦), which can be multiplied to form sixty-four trigrams. For each trigram,

there are six types of line, called yao (爻). Words and sentences are employed to

explain each of the trigrams or yaos. These words or sentences are called trigram

commentary (卦辞) or yao commentary (爻辞). Although the trigram and yao

commentaries are regularly arranged, bearing some features of the style of the

dictionary, as pointed out by Liu Changyun, these commentaries are all designed

to elaborate the truth (理) shown in the trigram symbols (卦象) and yao symbols

(爻象). Moreover, these signs of truth are all manifested in a symbolic way. This

is totally diVerent from the way a dictionary explains and interprets characters

and words in more readily intelligible expressions. In the commentaries of

trigrams and yaos, metaphors and inferences are more frequently used for the

trigram and yao symbols. These commentaries, which would not be understood

without further explanation and interpretation, are extremely rich and profound

in implication and may be interpreted in highly Xexible ways. So, what about the

Zhuan (传) part? Can that part be considered as a dictionary? This part of the

book mainly concentrates on explaining the general meaning of the Jing part. In

addition, the texts, ten altogether, are written and revised by many hands and

over a wide time span. The styles in these texts manifest great discrepancies,

which make it quite alien to the dictionary format.

Thus, it can be safely assumed from the perspective of dictionary compilation

that The Book of Changes is in all major aspects dissimilar to a dictionary.

Nevertheless, did it have any role to play in initiating lexicographical practice

in China? For instance, did it enlighten and incite those early pioneers to compile

a wordbook, a vocabulary, or indeed a dictionary? Or did it function as some-

thing of a model for dictionary makers to follow? So far no solid connection can

be forged between The Book of Changes and ancient dictionary compilation.

Further research needs to be carried out to answer these questions.

Another group of scholars hold the view that character glossaries and vocabu-

lary books in ancient times could be regarded as the archetype of the Chinese

dictionary. It was recorded in The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty (<周礼>) that:


Bao Zhang criticized the evilness of the king and wanted to foster and train the children

in the kingdom with morals and virtues. Therefore, the children were taught six kinds of

classic art: Wrstly, Wve kinds of proprieties; secondly, six kinds of musical instruments;

thirdly, Wve kinds of archery; fourthly, Wve kinds of riding; Wfthly, Six Categories; and

sixthly, nine kinds of arithmetic. (Ruan Yuan, 1980:731)

Xu Shen, in the Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters,

reiterates that ‘according to the rites in the Zhou Dynasty, children enter school

at eight. Master Bao Zhang teaches them, beginning with the Six Categories’. It is

evident that the teaching of characters was formally introduced in education as

early as the Zhou Dynasty. To meet such a demand, more and more characters

were collected, sorted, and compiled into books to teach children from royal

families. The best-known is the textbook, Historian Zhou’s Primer, which was

compiled by Zhou (籀), the historian of Emperor Xuan (827 bc–782 bc). This

leads some scholars today to think that ‘word books can be traced back to as early

as the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. As recorded in The Book of the Han Dynasty,

Historian Zhou’s Primer was a wordbook’ (Fang Houshu, 1979; Liu Yeqiu, 1983).

The original book was comprised of Wfteen texts but they are no longer in

existence now. According to the citations indicated in An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters, 223 characters can be attributed toHistorian Zhou’s Primer.

During the Warring States period, the seven states each had their own writing

systems, with peculiar variants for the same character. After State Qin defeated

the other six states and uniWed ancient China, the Wrst Emperor adopted the

proposal made by Li Si and enacted the character reform policy – ‘Writing Same

Character’. Mandates were issued to cease using those characters not suitable to

the writing system of State Qin. In order to promote a new type of character

writing system, i.e. xiaozhuan, in the Empire, Li Si compiled The Cangjie Primer

(seven chapters). Other books of this kind include The Yuanli Primer (six

chapters) by Zhao Gao (赵高), and The Scholarly Primer (seven chapters) by

Hu Wujing (胡毋敬). In the early Han Dynasty, some scholars combined these

three books into one and rearranged them into Wfty-Wve chapters, each dealing

with sixty characters. This combined book retained The Cangjie Primer as its title.

It is a pity that the book got lost as a result of war at the end of the Tang Dynasty.

Much work was done by scholars in the Qing Dynasty to restore the book. More

than two volumes had been restored for The Cangjie Primer, which shed a great

deal of light on how the book formulated its format and how it dealt with word

explanations. Some scholars thus conclude that The Cangjie Primer involved the

interpretation and explanation of single characters and compound ones and

demonstrated the prototype of a modern Chinese dictionary, though its style


and format were not particularly standardized and consistent to the eye of a

modern lexicographer.

The Cangjie Primer was originally compiled as a textbook for teaching children

to learn Chinese characters. After the uniWcation by the Wrst Emperor, it became

a model textbook for popularizing the newly codiWed writing system – xiao-

zhuan. In The Cangjie Primer, each sentence is made up of four characters and the

sentences are rhymed. This ensures that it is easy for children to recite. In The

Yuanli Primer, the sentences are also made up of four characters. For the original

textbook, there were no explanatory notes added to the diYcult characters and

words. The restored book, however, contained many interpretations and explan-

ations added to characters, words, or dialectal expressions, and obviously these

explanatory notes were added by scholars of later periods. In The Book of the Han

Dynasty, it was recorded that

The Cangjie Primer is Wlled with obsolete characters that are diYcult for ordinary

teachers to read. Emperor Xuan called for scholars that could pronounce them correctly.

Zhang Chang came and accepted the task. His work was passed on to his grandson-

in-law, named Du Lin (杜林), who completed the exegetic work. Thus both of them are

equally well-known to later generations.

It is probable that the great masters in the Qing Dynasty failed to make such

discriminations and considered the notes added by later scholars part of the

original texts.

NeitherHistorian Zhou’s Primer nor The Cangjie Primer can be claimed to bear

the distinctive features of a modern dictionary. They should be only taken as

textbooks aiming to teach children to learn Chinese characters. Nevertheless, it is

undeniable that they laid a solid foundation and initiated an enlightening start in

character standardization, corpus construction, and source material accumula-

tion for dictionaries to emerge in the foreseeable future.


3

THE PROGRESS OFEXEGETIC PRACTICEAND THE ADVENT OF

LEXICOGRAPHICAL WORKSIN CHINA

WHEN did man begin to inquire into language? There may be no

deWnite answers to this question despite serious research having

been conducted. It is generally believed that the history of man’s study of

language goes back about two or three thousand years. It is undeniable, however,

that man’s reXection on language must have evolved alongside the development

of language itself. The emergence of characters is undoubtedly the result of

man’s long-term thinking over language. When the development of human

thought and language reached a certain stage, a writing system would appear

inevitable. The continuous evolution of human civilization and the in-depth

and comprehensive study of language itself are the prerequisites for the creation

and development of characters. Without such prerequisites, the characters could

not have been shaped into such a perfect cultural vehicle, to say nothing

of designing and compiling diVerent types of dictionaries to meet extremely

varied user needs.

3.1 language studies during thepre-qin dynasties

The Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods (770 bc–221 bc) wit-

nessed upheavals in political and social life, prosperity in academia and culture,

and prevalence of theory construction and metaphysical argumentation. There

emerged numerous schools of thought and they argued on various topics among

which the relationship between ‘name’ and ‘content’ is the most essential and

most closely relevant to language studies. The great masters at that time, such as

Confucius, Mo Zi (墨子, also known as Mo-tse), and Xun Zi (荀子, ?335 bc–

255 bc), were all involved in the debate and aired their view on language and

characters. The majority of their discussions were philosophical reXections,

focusing on the relationship between ‘form’ (name) and ‘essence’ (physical

objects or contents), the origin of language and characters, and the relationship

between language and thought, etc. The argumentation on ‘form’ and ‘essence’ is

essentially one of a philosophical nature and one of great theoretical signiWcance

in lexicography as well.

Lao Zi (老子) was the pioneering advocate who initiated the debate on ‘form’

and ‘essence’. In DaoDe Jing (<道德经>, also known as TaoTe Ching), he put

forward this proposition: ‘The way that can be told of is not an unvarying way;

the names that can be named are not unvarying names. It was from the Nameless

that Heaven and Earth sprang; The named is but the mother that rears the ten

thousand creatures, each after its kind.’ It is evident that things had been without

a name for a long time before they were given a name individually. He also

emphasized that

the essence or form instantiates as physical things in that it appears and disappears or it

moves and stops. If it stops and appears, its image can be perceived; if it moves and then

disappears, its physics can be identiWed. Its nature and spirit exists further and deeper

behind the image. What is much truer is not the image but the nature and spirit, which

makes it more believable. Since ancient times, its name has permanently adhered to it. As

to viewing the countless things in the world, how could we diVerentiate and identify

them in terms of their physical appearance? By their names. That is what we can rely on.

As can be seen, Lao Zi holds that there exist in essence the image, the physics,

and the spirit. The spirit is the most basic nature and therefore it is completely

believable, and the name originates from there. The fundamentals of the things

in the world can be perceived through their names.


Confucius, following Lao Zi, advocates that ‘monarch be monarch; subject be

subject; father be father; and son be son’. This is what has been known as ‘clarifying its

name and broadening its meaning’. Yang Zhu (杨朱) argues that ‘the real content of

something has no name while the names have no real content. The so-called names

are actually the untrue . . . The real content is not what names originate from’. And

this is ‘non-nominalism’. The debate also involved some other well-known scholars,

such as Mo Zi, Gongsun Longzi (公孙龙子, ?325 bc–250 bc), and Xun Zi. Mo Zi,

representing the world of science, pays more attention to the actuality and he

criticizes the notion that gentlemen ‘should praise justice in name and not inquire

into the real situation’. He also formulates deWnitions for ‘name’ and ‘content’.

GongsunLongzi is aneminentphilosopher and thinker in the ideologicalhistory

of China. Of all his writings only six texts are still available today, mainly dealing

with philosophical issues like relativity, absoluteness, individuality, commonality,

and theory of knowledge. Of the six texts, only two are devoted to the debate of

‘name’ and ‘content’, namelyOnSubstance (<指物篇>) andOnNameandContent

(<名实篇>). He points out inOn Substance that ‘there is no object that cannot be

denoted and referred to . . . If there were no denotation and reference, there would

have been no object in the world that could be dubbed an object. If there were no

objects, then how could ‘‘referring’’ be referred to?’ Everything in the world has its

unique characteristic. An object that has no characteristics cannot be referred to as

an object. In addition, it is not possible to talk about characteristics without

referring to some actual objects. All the names have derived from these character-

istics and the names are just the symbols representing them. Since names were

originally in correspondencewith the contents, then ‘contents cannot be corrected’

without ‘correcting the names Wrst’. All names were created for contents but the

relationship between ‘name’ and ‘content’ was purely arbitrary before a name

was given to an object. ‘Thus, that that is that stops at that and this that is

this stops at this are acceptable; whereas, that that is this stops at that and at this

and that this that is that stops at this and at that are unacceptable. Therefore,

the name is what is used to refer to the content. Knowing that this is not this

and knowing that this is not at this, we would not be able to refer to it.’

Xun Zi was one of the greatest thinkers who recognized the relation-

ships between language and thought. His ideas on language and thought and

on ‘name’ and ‘content’ were more fully elaborated in On Name RectiWcation

(<正名篇>). In this text, after looking into the relationship between language

and thought, he came to grips with the demerits of ‘having no name’, stating that

the diVerence in form, shape, colour and texture depends on the eyes that perceive them;

the quality of the sound of human voices and that of the musical instruments depend

exegetic practice and lexicographical works 31

on the ears that hear them; the taste of sweet, bitter, salt, hotness, or sourness depends on

the tongues that taste them; the smell of fragrance, stink, stench, or odour depends on the

noses that smell them; the feeling of illness, itch, cold, hot, light, or heavy depends on the

physics of the body that feel them; the emotion of joy, anger, sadness, happiness, love,

hatred, or longing depends on the minds that construe them. In the mind, there are some

marks or cues that are perceived and construed. Once these marks or cues are recognized,

the sounds can be perceived and identiWed through the ears and the forms and shapes can

be recognized and diVerentiated through the eyes. Nevertheless, the marks and cues can

be construed only when the inherent faculties have fully developed.

To conclude, the experience of human emotions is realized through sense

organs of the human body. Our understanding of the world can only be realized

through the functioning of the mind, i.e. to form concepts through abstraction

and generalization about various complicated things and phenomena in the

world and to express them via words.

Howdoesmanwork out diVerent names to designate diVerent contents? XunZi

holds that ‘there exist diVerences in the means by which men perceive’. For men

of the same type and with the same feelings, the images they form in perceiving

the things in the outside world by employing their faculties are generally the

same. The common features of the things can be captured by comparison and

based on these common features a name can be given following the conventions of

the community. Nevertheless, in addition to the commonalities, the ‘innate

faculties’ also perceive the peculiarities of the things in the world. The form and

shape, the colour and texture, the taste and feeling will all be perceived through

sense organs and justiWed by the mind. ‘The mind has cues to perceive’ refers to

the cognitive process by which concepts form, and then names come into exist-

ence, hence the same name for the same thing and a diVerent name for a diVerent

thing.

If a single name suYces, then use this single name only; if it does not suYce,

use it in combination with another one on condition that they are not in conXict

and result in no chaos. Since diVerent names indicate diVerent contents, ensure

that things having diVerent contents bear diVerent names. This is what should

not be confused. It is also true that things of the same content should bear the

same name. As to the numerous things in the world, we sometimes want to refer

to them all, and we call them the same name ‘object’. By ‘object’ is meant a very

general name for the commonness of many things. The same name is extended to

cover those things that share common properties. Common names will cover

things where common features end. Sometimes we use ‘birds and beasts’ as

general names to diVerentiate things. ‘Birds’ and ‘beasts’ are diVerent names

and they should be applied to things where the diVerences are apparent. Thus,


names bear no inherent appropriateness and they are regulated by order.

If a name complies with the conventions of a community then it is appropriate.

If it violates the conventions then it is inappropriate. A name has no inherent

content but it is employed to name the content. If it has been conventionalized

then it is a real name. A name does not have inherent goodness. Ways have

changed but no violations result, then it is a good name . . . This is the key to

giving names.

The physical world is varied and complicated. People perceive the things in

the world and extract what they perceive to form abstract ideas. When people

convert these concepts into names they treat them diVerently: things of diVerent

types will form diVerent concepts which will be given diVerent names. If a single

name suYces, then this single name will be employed. If it does not, a complex

one will be employed. When language is employed to conduct abstract thinking,

human beings can employ concepts, judgements, and inferences to reveal the

patterns and laws of nature and society. Due to the diVerences in the range and

extent of abstraction and generalization, we have ‘big common names’, such as

‘object’, and ‘big diVerent names’, such as ‘birds and beasts’. Xun Zi’s comments

on the relationship between ‘name’ and ‘content’ are profound and concise,

highlighting the conventionality of name and the sociological nature of language.

There exist no natural or causal relationships between names and objects. Names

are merely the symbols human beings presumably use to label the things desig-

nated. This presumption, however, is not totally arbitrary, for which ‘name’ to be

chosen for which ‘object’ is completely determined by the conventions of the

community. It is remarkable that these basic principles of modern linguistics

were fully recognized, appreciated, and expounded by Xun Zi two millennia

ago. From this very instance it is not diYcult to see the uniqueness and pro-

fundity of ancient Chinese philosophy and philology. Nor is it diYcult to see

why Chinese classics, like Dao De Jing, passing down from generation to gener-

ation, have become so popular in the Western world and why the study of the

culture and academia of ancient China has become such an urgent issue.

The language studies by Pre-Qin Dynasty scholars greatly enriched the

culture of ancient China, promoted the development of diVerent branches of

learning, i.e. the study of language and character, and formulated basic theories

guiding and leading academic research, school teaching, and the exegesis of

Chinese classics. Alongside Chinese philological studies, there came the Xourish-

ing of textbook compilation for teaching children to learn Chinese characters and

exegetic explanation for characters and words in ancient Chinese classics, which

laid a good foundation for later work of revision and compilation of glossaries,

vocabularies, and dictionaries.


3.2 teaching and explaining ancientcharacters and the emergence of lexicography

In ancient China, there did not exist such disciplines as ‘philology’ or ‘grammar’.

Throughout the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, a lot of work

was done to explain ancient classics and ‘explicate the great import from the

minute words’, which was later called exegetic work or exegesis. For instance, The

Spring and Autumn, written by Confucius, described the history of Lu State.

Exegetic work on that book was carried out by Zuo Qiuming (左丘明), Gon-

gyang Gao (公羊高), Gu Liangchi (榖梁赤), and others. Zuo Qiuming, follow-

ing the doctrine of ‘explicating the Script with events’, made use of historical

events to add notes to that book, which eventually turned into a reference book

of historical studies. Gongyang Gao and Gu Liangchi, pursuing a diVerent

doctrine, i.e. ‘establishing the meaning from the Script’, added explanatory

notes to that book and produced a reference book of exegesis. In An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文�言部>),训 and诂 were explained and

deWned respectively: 训 means explaining characters and words in order to

cultivate and educate, while 诂 means interpreting the ancient language. In

other words, exegesis means explaining diYcult characters and words by means

of more readily intelligible words and simpler wording, or explaining ancient

characters and words in contemporary language. Lexicography in China origin-

ated from such exegetic works on ancient classics.

Of the Wve millennia of Chinese civilization, the period from the Spring and

Autumn through the Warring States is remarkable for its Xourishing in academic

thought and schools. Thanks to the rapid development of socio-cultural and

academic thought, researching language and characters was widespread, giving

birth to textbooks for teaching children to learn characters. In the time of Emperor

Xuan, Historian Zhou’s Primer was compiled by Historian Zhou. In the Qin

Dynasty, three well-known textbooks were compiled, i.e. The Cangjie Primer,

The Yuanli Primer, and The Scholarly Primer. These three books were later revised

and combined under one cover, keeping The Cangjie Primer as its title, simpliWed as

Three Cang Primer (<三苍>), with a coverage of 3,300 characters. In the Western

Han Dynasty, further textbooks were compiled, such as The General Primer, The

Instant Primer, The Yuanshang Primer, and Yang Xiong’s (扬雄) The Exegetic Primer

(《训纂篇>). During the reign of Emperor He (89–105), Jia Fang brought the

compilation of The Pangxi Primer (<滂喜篇>) to completion. From then on,

these textbooks were incorporated into one book, though not physically, with The


Cangjie Primer (the former Three Cang) as the Wrst volume, The Exegetic Primer as

the second volume, and The Pangxi Primer as the third. These three volumes were

once again entitled the Three Cang Primer, which later came to be called the Latter

Three Cang. All these textbooks were lost, except for The Instant Primer and some

parts of The Cangjie Primer. In these textbooks, a lot of common characters were

collected and arranged in the light of the categories to which they belonged, which

actually acted as the catalyst for the birth of ancient Chinese dictionaries.

The rapid progress of exegetic studies hinged upon the popularization of

learning language and characters, the continuing of relevant research, and the

evolution of language. The Cangjie Primer, a textbook for teaching children to

learn characters in the late Qin and early Han Dynasties, could be read only with

the help of specialized annotations. As a character-learning textbook needed

special explanations to be understandable, it is not hard to imagine what obstacles

might lie in the way of reading ancient Chinese literature. To interpret the

characters and words in the classics, scholars began to add pronunciations and

explanatory notes in the margins, in between lines and below the text. As time

passed, explanations and annotations began to accumulate. For the convenience

of reading and consultation, these explanatory notes were collected and put at

the front or the end of the text. Later on, independent books were compiled,

specialized in interpreting and explaining ancient classics. Mao Heng’s Exegesis,

was presumably among the Wrst of this kind and was also the earliest one presently

extant.

The Book of Songs, the earliest of its kind, was a collection of folk songs and

poems extending over Wve hundred years, dating from the early years of the

Western Zhou Dynasty (1046 bc–771 bc) to the middle of the Spring and Autumn

Period. In the Zhou Dynasty, scholars had already begun to interpret the words

and phrases in The Book of Songs from diVerent perspectives. As time passed, this

book became more and more diYcult to read and interpretation became a must.

In the Qin Dynasty,Mao’s Exegesis was compiled; this was a synthesis of previous

works on the exposition of the contents of the poems and the meanings of

diYcult words, and its coverage of words was considerably expanded. According

to The Book of the Han Dynasty (<汉书·艺文志>), it originally had thirty

volumes, with 4,800 entries, among which 3,900 were explanations of lexical

meanings, approximately 80 per cent of the total (Fan Congjun, 1996), but got

lost later. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zheng Xuan wrote an epilogue

(笺) for Mao’s Exegesis, which greatly elevated its status in exegetic work.

In the Tang Dynasty, Kong Yingda wrote The RectiWed Interpretation of

Mao’s Book of Songs to further comment on Mao’s Exegesis and on Zheng’s

Epilogue (郑笺). In the Qing Dynasty (1616–1911), The RectiWcation of Mao’s


Book of Songs (<诗毛氏传疏>) by Chen Huan (陈奂) and An Epilogue to The

Standardized Version of Mao Heng’s Exegesis of Book of Songs (<毛诗故训传定本小笺>) (thirty volumes) by Duan Yucai were produced to make more exact

and comprehensive comments on it. These successive commentaries and sub-

commentaries on Mao’s Exegesis greatly strengthened its academically dominant

position in exegetic work and in Chinese philology.

Mao’s Exegesis is one of the most important sources of literature for interpret-

ing and studying The Book of Songs. The exegetic studies in Mao’s Exegesis are

extremely wide-ranging and fall into several categories, such as text and sentence

parsing, interpreting words, phrases, and clauses, and explicating the semantics

of characters, but those that focus on the explication of character meanings

account for the major part. The great part of the contents of Mao’s Exegesis is

ascribable to pre-Qin Dynasty scholars. For instance, the interpretations of既醉

and昊天有成命 are from The National Language (<国语>); the interpretationsof葛覃 and草虫 are from The Book of Rites; and the interpretation of淄帛五两

in行露 was taken from The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty. In addition, there are quite

a few sayings from The Analects of Confucius (<论语>) and Meng Zi (<孟子>).As far as the exegetic style is concerned, Mao’s Exegesis involves interpretation of

the whole text placed as the Wrst chapter or appended as the last chapter,

interpretation of function words, identiWcation of phonetic loans, the employ-

ment of contemporary words to explain ancient words, or the use of contem-

porary senses of a word to explain those of an ancient word. Among the text

genres of fu (赋, a literary genre very much in vogue through the six dynasties

from the Han to the Wei Dynasty, combining verse and prose, often for narration

and scenic description), bi (比), and xing (兴), only xing was labelled to indicate

the distinctive features of wording so as to help appreciate implied meanings of

the poem. Mao Heng’s analysis of poems usually started from the ethics and

morals of feudal systems and, as a result, the tenor of the poems was occasionally

distorted, which can be considered a demerit of Mao’s Exegesis. Zheng’s Epilogue

was largely based on Mao’s Exegesis, aiming at complementing and explicating

what was obscure or oversimpliWed or putting forward diVerent opinions from

those in Mao’s Exegesis.

The interpretations and explanatory notes for ancient classics laid a good

foundation for later lexicographers to trace etymology, analyse words, diVerenti-

ate senses of polysemous words, and classify deWnitions of senses in compiling

philological dictionaries. The exegetic predecessors inMao’s Exegesis can be traced

back to Zi Xia, a disciple of Confucius. He initiated the exegetic work The Book of

Songs, which was considered the earliest and the most comprehensive, focusing

on the whole book rather than on just several texts or on a few characters or words.


In interpreting and explaining the words and characters, hemade it a rule to Wnd a

synonym which could be further employed to explain other words or phrases. As

a result, multiple words were explained in terms of one single word. The inter-

pretation and explanation of characters and words in Mao’s Exegesis could be

regarded as the source of lexicographical deWnition in China. Its pioneering and

paradigmatic work in interpreting and explicating lexical semantics of characters

still provides useful insights and thoughts formodern lexicography.Mao’s Exegesis

marks the emergence of lexicography in China. The Ready Guide, the Wrst

dictionary in a proper sense, stemming evidently from the exegesis on The Book

of Songs, owes its inheritance toMao’s Exegesis.

3.3 literature in ancient times

The change and development of language and characters makes it necessary to

teach and explain characters and words, which is especially true when the ancient

classics are read. Exegesis, as a branch of learning, centres around lexical meaning

interpretation, especially for diYcult words and characters in the ancient classics.

This turns out to be a common traditional practice of lexicographical cultures

of all languages and the very fountainhead from which such cultures Xow. As

pointed out earlier, the earliest exegetic work only added comments and notes

between lines but when this practice gathered pace to a certain extent, there

emerged the necessity of sorting them and incorporating them into glossaries

and wordbooks. For lack of evidence, it is uncertain when the practice of inter-

preting and explaining characters and words Wrst took place in Chinese lexico-

graphical culture. But it becomes evident from the literature available at present

that the practice of adding interpretation and explanatory notes started as early as

the pre-Qin Dynasty. It can be safely assumed that ancient glossaries, workbooks,

and the earliest dictionary, The Ready Guide, were all the product of the practice of

interpreting and explaining characters and words of the ancient classics.

Ancient glossaries and wordbooks are valuable linguistic data for studying

Chinese characters in remote times, providing a window through which to

examine and apprehend the evolution of the Chinese language and its characters

over time and to track down the changes in ancient Chinese cultures. As early as

the pre-Qin Dynasty, there came into existence a considerable number of word-

books. They more or less all bore some of the features of dictionaries to be

compiled later, and could be considered as the precursors of Chinese dictionaries.


According to The Book of the Jin Dynasty (<晋书�束皙传>), in the year ad 281, a

large number of bamboo slips were unearthed in Ji County from a tomb of the

Warring States period. Among those slips there were three texts under the title of

名 (term), which was very similar to The Book of Rites and The Ready Guide. This

clearly indicates that at that time there were classiWed glossaries similar to The

Ready Guide. Another well-known book was Shi Zi (<尸子>), in which syn-

onyms or near synonyms were gathered together and explained in groups. This

arrangement of entries was very similar to that of The Ready Guide, suggesting

that there might exist an inherent relationship between the two.

Shi Zi was compiled by quite a notable rhetorician named Shi Jiao (尸佼,

c.390 bc–330 bc) in the mid-Warring States period. The Ready Guide adopted

a fair number of exegetic explanations of object names from Shi Zi. For instance,

the category of domestic animals in释畜 (Explaining Beasts) and the category of

auspiciousness in 释天 (Explaining the Sky) were the same as those in Shi Zi.

What is diVerent between them is greater precision in its explanation in the

former. In addition to Shi Zi, there were many other literary works that became

the data source of The Ready Guide. For instance, 比肩民 in 释地 (Explaining

the Earth) and 河山昆仑墟 in 释水 (Explaining Water) were taken from

The Shanhai Scriptures (<山海经>); 西王母 in 释地 and 小领盗骊 in 释畜

came from The Mutianzi Biography (<穆天子传>);扶摇谓之猋 in释天 and蒺

藜 (puncture vine, Tribulus terrestris) in 释虫 (Explaining Insects) came from

Zhuang Zi (<庄子>). The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals, which came out at the

end of the Warring States period, also provided lots of material for The Ready

Guide.星名 in释天, the五方 and九练州 categories in释地 apparently bear the

inheritance marks of The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals (see Hu Qiguang and

Fang Huanhai, 2001).

Ancient Chinese literature, especially exegetic literature, laid solid foundations

for the birth of lexicography. The contribution of exegetic works to lexicography

chieXy resides in the teaching and explaining of characters and words in classics.

Explicating the meanings of characters and words is also a key part of dictionary

making, i.e. sense deWnition in lexicography. In the history of world lexicography,

no dictionary has been compiled without recourse to previous works. The

beneWts that Chinese dictionaries derive from these exegetic works come not only

from the material for explicating word meaning but also the patterns for deWning

words and the implications generated from usage. In the exegetic works, what is

used to explain word meaning and to transcribe the pronunciation is Chinese

characters. There are two modes of speech sound transcription: direct notation

(直音) and fanqie (反切). Direct notation means using one character to indicate

the pronunciation of the other that shares the same pronunciation. The one used


as the indicator is usually the one more frequently encountered and much easier

to recognize, for instance 古 is used as an indicator for 蛊. In classic Chinese,

unfortunately, there was not always such a one-to-one pattern for all words. Very

many words did not match entirely in pronunciation, and it often happened that

words with similar but not identical pronunciation or with relatively low fre-

quency were employed to indicate pronunciations of other words. This mode of

notation was frequently questioned for its validity and precision. Towards the

end of the Han Dynasty, the second mode, i.e. fanqie, was invented; it was quickly

adopted and became the dominant means of pronunciation notation. Fanqie

indicates the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters, the Wrst

having the same consonant as the given character and the second having the same

vowel and tone. For instance, the pronunciation of 塑 (su) is indicated as 桑故

切, that is,桑 s(ang)þ故 (g)u, taking the initial consonant of the Wrst character

and the Wnal vowel of the second which shares the same tone – the fourth tone.

This mode of notation Wrst came into general use in Sounds and Meanings of the

Ready Guide (<尔雅音义>) by Sun Yan (孙炎) in the Three Kingdom period

(220–280) and has been in use up until modern times, as can be seen in Ci Yuan

(<辞源>) and in Ci Hai (<辞海>).It is apparent from extant Chinese classic literature that three modes were

adopted to interpret and explain characters and words, i.e. form interpretation

(形训), phonetic interpretation (音训), and semantic interpretation (义训).

Form interpretation means explaining the meaning of a character by analysing

and interpreting its formation – the shape and structure of the character. This

method relates the meaning of a character to its form so as to understand the

meaning from its form. The formal analysis of the structure of Chinese characters

began in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. For instance, Zuo’s

Spring and Autumn Annals (<春秋左传>) made a record of 止戈为武, which

implies ‘military power means cease-Wre’. The formal analysis of the word 武

(military power), i.e. 止戈 (stopþ arms), reveals that a powerful state in its real

sense should know when to stop using arms rather than waging wars all the time.

This notion of military power unambiguously reXected the prevalent political

ideology of the warring states at that time – respecting the king, repelling foreign

invasion, and observing rites and morals. Phonetic interpretation means explai-

ning the meaning of a character by analysing and interpreting its pronuncia-

tion–the meaning of a word can be explained by using another word with the

same or similar pronunciation, for instance, 物生必蒙,故受难之以蒙。蒙者, 蒙

也 in The Book of Changes (<周易�序卦>),政者,正也 in The Analects of Confucius

(<论语�颜渊>), and仁者,人也 inThe Book of Rites (<礼记�中庸>). This practicehad its origin in the pre-Qin Dynasty classics. Semantic interpretation, without


recourse to the pronunciation or the form of the character, makes use of the context

and expounds themeaning of a character or aword bymeans ofmore common and

readily intelligible synonymous words or a short discourse. For instance,勤 (toil)

means ‘to labour’ (劳);肇 (commence) means ‘to start’ (始);康 (healthy) means

‘to be secure’ (安); 怙 (depend) means ‘to rely on’ (恃); and 享 (oVer) means

‘to oVer sacriWce’ (祀). In the pre-Qin Dynasty literature, the practice of semantic

interpretationmainly involved discriminating synonyms and generalizing the inter-

pretations and explanations of words and phrases.

In contemporary Chinese dictionaries no specialized terms can be found that

are exclusively used inwriting deWnitions. But in ancient exegetic literature the use

of this kind of term had developed into a convention to be observed. These terms

include 也 (as well), 者 (as), 曰 (stated as), 谓之 (called), 为 (regarded as), 之

(being),言 (said as),读为 (read as),读如 (read like),当作 (treated as), and古曰

(said in ancient terms as). These terms could be regarded as markers for exegetic

interpretations of the meanings of characters and words. The study of these terms

might help to reveal the relationship of heritage between exegetic interpretations

in ancient literature, in early wordbooks and glossaries, and in lexicographical

deWnition. Here is a passage quoted from Shi Zi (<尸子•广泽篇>):

墨子贵兼, 孔子贵公, 皇子贵衷, 田子贵均, 列子贵虚, 料子贵别囿。其学之相非

也数世矣,而已皆弇于私也。天、帝、皇、后、辟、公、弘、廓、宏、溥、介、纯

. . . . . . ,皆大也。十有馀名,而实一也。若使兼、公、虚、均、衷、平易、别囿一

实也,则无相非也。

(Mo Zi values mutuality (兼); Confucius values justice (公); Huang Zi values loyalty (衷);

Tian Zi values equality (均); Lie Zi values modesty (虚); Liao Zi values solitude (别囿).

The diVerences between them have existed for several generations and reside deeply in

themselves. 天 (heaven), 帝 (God), 皇 (Emperor), 后 (Queen), 辟 (inception), 公

(public), 弘 (grandeur), 廓 (extensiveness), 宏 (magniWcence), 溥 (broadness), 介

(uprightness), 纯 (purity) . . . all denote ‘greatness’. There are more than a dozen

names but only one meaning in essence. If兼,公, 虚, 均, 衷,平易, and别囿 are to be

identiWed with one essential meaning, then there would be no diVerence to be identiWed

in the world.)

The interpretations of words in this passage are basically the same as those in The

Ready Guide (<尔雅•释诂>). In Shi Zi (<尸子•仁意篇>), there was another

passage:

春为青阳,夏为朱明,秋为白藏,冬为玄冥。四时和, 正光照, 此之谓玉烛。甘雨时降,

万物以嘉, 高者不少, 下者不多, 此之谓醴泉。其风春为发生, 夏为长赢, 秋为方盛,

冬为安静, 四时和为通正, 此之谓永风。


(In spring, the plants become green and the sun warmer; in summer, the Xowers become

red and the sun bright; in autumn, the leaves turn white and the sun is hiding; in winter,

things die out and the sun is dark. When the seasons are in harmony, the sunlight comes

at the right time. This can be compared to a perfect candle. Good rain falls at the right

time and all things grow prosperously. Not insuYcient in high places and not Xooded in

lower places. This could be compared to a good spring. As to the wind, it begins in

spring, grows stronger in summer, prevails in autumn, and becomes mild in winter. In all

the four seasons, it behaves itself and can be dubbed ever present wind.)

As stated, this interpretation was roughly the same as that in The Ready Guide

(<尔雅·释天>). It is evident that deWnition styles in later Chinese dictionaries

originated from the exegetic interpretation of characters and words in ancient

literature, and this mode of deWnition has been evolving side by side with the

development of Chinese lexicography for approximately two millennia.

3.4 the beginnings of chinese lexicography

TheChinesepeople have a long traditionof respecting ceremonyandpropriety and

attachinggreat importance to education. In theXiaDynasty (2070bc–1600bc), the

heavenly order was revered; in the ShangDynasty (1600 bc–1046 bc), the gods and

ghosts were revered; and in the ZhouDynasty, the ritual systems were revered. It is

the prevalence of the practice of revering ritual systems in the Zhou Dynasty that

marks China out as the land of ceremony and propriety throughout the world. In

theZhouDynasty awholesome education systemwas established and teachingwas

consistent and systematic, which ranks China as the earliest country to have

introduced a programme of culture and education by the government. The Rites

of the Zhou Dynasty (<周礼�地官�保氏>) recorded Bao Zhang’s teaching royal

children six kinds of art and the Wfth kind was Six Categories. In one of his notes to

‘Mr. Bao’s teaching royal children Six Categories’ in the Preface to An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文解字�叙>), Duan Yucai comments that

‘the six categories are actually a synthesis of characters, speech sounds, and argu-

mentations’. It can be inferred that the pre-Qin Dynasty scholars had conducted

rather systematic studies on and investigation into the Chinese language and its

vocabulary from three perspectives, namely form, pronunciation, and meaning.

With the passage of time and the development of language itself, ancient Chinese

classics hadbecome almost unintelligible. Teaching and interpreting the characters

andwords became indispensable. Exegetic studies had become a distinctive feature


of language study in the Han Dynasty, which was well represented by large quan-

tities of both exegetic interpretations of and notes to the ancient classics and the

compilationof a seriesofmonographson languageandcharacters.Theseworks can

be divided into three categories (Liu Yeqiu, 1983:2–3): Wrst, dealing with the form

andmeaning of characters, as represented byAn Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters; second, exegetic dictionaries, as represented by The Ready Guide; and

third, dealing with the pronunciation and interpretation of ancient characters, as

represented by The Dictionary of Rhymes. Wordbooks and dictionaries compiled

later can all be classiWed as variations and derivations of them. An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters initiated the character dictionary in the Chinese

language and marked the establishment of Chinese philology. The Ready Guide

marked the actual appearance of Chinese lexicography, and The Dictionary of

Rhymes, the earliest extant rhyming dictionary, was completed as late as the Song

Dynasty (960–1279) though the predecessors of such rhyming dictionaries

appeared as early as the Three Kingdoms and JinDynasties, such asTheDictionary

of Initial Consonants (<声类>) by Li Deng (李登) and The Collection of Rhymes

(<韵集>) by Lu Jing (吕静).

From Historian Zhou’s Primer of Emperor Xuan in the Zhou Dynasty, to

The Ready Guide of the Qin Dynasty, to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and to The Jade Chapters (<玉篇>),which was compiled by Gu Yewang (顾野王) in the Southern and Northern

Dynasties (420–589), what can be easily perceived is not only a panorama of the

evolution of lexicography in China – from the textbooks for teaching children

to learn characters, to wordbooks, and to character dictionaries – but also its

interaction with language evolution, character education, and character reform.

Character education brought into being the textbooks for children for learning

characters inHistorian Zhou’s Primer and The Cangjie Primer. The exegetic studies

became the cradle for the birth of The Ready Guide. The popularization of xiao

zhuan in the Qin Dynasty promoted the codiWcation of Chinese characters,

which resulted in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. During the Jin

Dynasty, xiaozhuanwas replaced by regular script and The Jade Chapters emerged

as the times required. This interaction runs through the whole evolutional process

of Chinese lexicography and functions as the generator for its development and

Xourishing.

When Chinese history entered the Han Dynasty, China achieved unpreced-

ented uniWcation and social stability. There came tremendous prosperity in social,

economic, and cultural life. Language studies and literacy educationwere elevated

to a new level, which stimulated the demand for glossaries, wordbooks, and

dictionaries. Glossaries, wordbooks, and dictionaries in the true sense sprang up


in great numbers and in many forms. The forerunners representing each type

of dictionary are The Ready Guide – the Wrst word dictionary; An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters – the Wrst character dictionary; The Dictionary of

Dialectal Words (<方言>) – the Wrst dialect dictionary; The Dictionary of PopularWords – the Wrst folk dictionary; and The Dictionary of Chinese Characters

and Terms – the Wrst phonetic-exegetic dictionary. All these dictionaries, to

a greater or lesser extent, bear an inherent relationship with Historian Zhou’s

Primer, the Wrst reading primer for teaching children characters in ancient times.


4

HISTORIAN ZHOU’SPRIMER – THE SOURCE OF

LEXICOGRAPHICALCULTURE IN CHINA

THE role reading primers play in the advancement of world civilization and

their signiWcance to the study of the history of world civilization have not

attracted due attention or received serious study, but it is undeniable that the

evolution of any civilization is intimately related to reading primers, which

facilitate human progression, social development, and literacy education. As

pointed out by the American anthropologist Leslie Alvin White (1900–1975) in

The Science of Culture (1949), all human civilization relies on symbols. It is the

ability to produce and use symbols that makes it possible for culture to be created

and passed on. And it is the use of symbols that makes culture eternal. There

would be no culture without symbols and human beings would be identiWed with

animals without symbols. Only when human beings have had a Xuent command

of the language system can culture and civilization progress from one generation

to another. The children’s reading primers are the most primitive and direct tools

for the inception and initiation of human civilization and the activation of

language symbols. It is these textbooks that help make the language and culture

of a nation expand, extend, and prosper.

No lexicographical culture of any civilization in the world has developed

overnight but evolved and extended over a rather long period. The Middle East

is assumed to enjoy the longest history of lexicographical culture, roughly four or

Wve thousand years. The lexicographical culture of China, dating from The

Ready Guide, has a history of no less than two thousand years. Dictionaries,

whether in the East or the West, and whether with a long or short history, all

seem to have taken the same path in evolution: from inscribed clay plates (or

bamboo slips) to word and character reading primers, from word and character

reading primers to wordlists, glossaries, wordbooks, and vocabularies, and from

glossaries and wordbooks to character dictionaries and word dictionaries. This

is a universal pattern for the natural development of lexicographical culture

throughout the world. Presumably, dictionaries in any language of the world

originate from ancient character or word learning textbooks compiled in that

language, and there should be a direct or an indirect heritage relationship

between textbooks and dictionaries. The fountainhead of the lexicographical

culture of China is generally presumed to be Historian Zhou’s Primer (abbrevi-

ated to HZP hereinafter within this chapter) – the Wrst character learning

textbook in the Zhou Dynasty.

4.1 the historical background to hzp’s birth

As noted in the previous chapter, HZP was written at the time of Emperor Xuan

of the Zhou Dynasty. Emperor Xuan’s reign began after an upheaval during the

time of Emperor Li. He had ‘two premiers to assist in his administration,

following the examples of the great emperors such as Emperor Wen, Emperor

Wu, Emperor Cheng, and Emperor Kang, and as a result all the small kingdoms

came over and pledged allegiance. The reign of Emperor Xuan lasted for forty-six

years and is known as ‘Emperor Xuan’s Prosperity Period’. Times of prosperity

and peace are usually marked by more prominence and attention given to the

construction of civilization and culture. HZP was compiled at such a time.

At the time of Emperor Xuan of the Zhou Dynasty there was an oYcial

historian, named Zhou (籀). He was commissioned to take charge of surveying

and ‘tidying up’ the characters and words circulating in the country. He wrote a

reading primer, altogether Wfteen volumes, later known as Historian Zhou’s

Primer, aiming at ‘helping royal teachers to instruct royal children in learning

characters’. This is the direct background against which HZP was compiled.

To Wnd an eVective way to facilitate children’s learning and memorizing

Chinese characters, the educationists theorized the ‘Six Categories’ to account

for the formation and structure of Chinese characters before HZP had come into

historian zhou ’s primer 45

use. The theory of Six Categories was actually a course for children in the Zhou

Dynasty. What does ‘Six Categories’ really mean? Ban Gu (班固), a scholar in the

Eastern Han Dynasty, held that it is ‘the essence of character creation’. SpeciW-

cally, it refers to the Six Categories – pictographic, self-explanatory, ideographic,

pictophonetic, mutually explanatory, and phonetic loaning (Ban Gu, 1962:1720).

The theory of Six Categories has provided a solid theoretical basis for studying

Chinese characters, for analysing their formation and structure, and for compil-

ing dictionaries of the Chinese language.

4.2 the background and motivation forhzp’s compilation

Character primers in the general sense do not fall into the same category as

wordbooks and dictionaries, but HZP, the Wrst character primer in the history of

Chinese civilization shares quite a number of the features of a wordbook or

indeed a dictionary: it is a collection of characters, and it includes many implicit

explanations of the meanings of characters. In other words, it could be regarded

as the real source of lexicographical culture in China.

史籀 is a combination of a name and an oYcial title: 史 is the title of an

oYcial in charge of historical aVairs, and 籀 is the name of the oYcial of

Emperor Xuan, who actually compiled HZP. During the Zhou Dynasty, a wise

king would knight those of high morality and bestow valuable property on those

who achieve great feats. The rites would take place in the Big Temple. At that

grand ceremony, the Wrst thing was to oVer a sacriWce to Heaven. At this moment,

the king would usually stand next to the steps south of the altar, facing the south.

The one to be given the title or award would stand opposite the king, facing the

north. The oYcial historian stands on the right side of the king. He holds the

bamboo slips and makes the announcement on behalf of the king. The second

thing is for the receiver to kneel down, accept the slips, return home, and have

another formal rite at his own temple. It is easy to conclude from this ritual

ceremonywhat an important role an oYcial historian played in the ZhouDynasty.

It needs to be pointed out that in the unearthed inscriptions史籀 was sometimes

written as史留. These inscriptions give further evidence of what Xu Shen says in

his Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters: ‘Till the time of

Emperor Xuan, the Supreme Historian Zhou wrote Wfteen texts in dazhuan,

which was diVerent from the ancient characters in some aspects.’


In the Zhou Dynasty, an oYcial historian’s duty was to record historical events.

However, from the mid-West Zhou Dynasty (1046 bc–256 bc), the oYcial

historian had gained the power to announce orders on behalf of the king. The

role that an oYcial historian played was of a dual nature: on the one hand, he

enjoyed the right to prescribe and codify the characters, which required him to

have great accomplishments in literature, and on the other hand, the perform-

ance of his duties got him very much involved in the political life of the ruling

class of the state, which endowed them with very high political prestige among

the oYcials. Thus, HZP’s compilation by Historian Zhou at the time of Emperor

Xuan should be considered part of his oYcial responsibility, and an authoritative

textbook compiled on behalf of the government. HZP is no longer in existence

and what are left to us are those character forms retained in An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. There are 223 characters explicitly noted as

Zhou characters (王国维, Wang Guowei, 1983:四, 256).

In the early years of theWestHanDynasty, ‘the students are not allowed to take an

oYcial examination until seventeen. Only those capable of reciting more than nine

thousand characters from HZP get the opportunity to be selected as candidates for

government positions’ (see the Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters). There is solid evidence that the number of headword characters origin-

ally collected inHZP is probably well over 9,000. The time span between the Wrst year

of the West Han Dynasty (206 bc) and the time of Emperor Xuan in the West Zhou

Dynasty is about 600 years, during which period new characters would have been

frequently created and added toHZP.The Cangjie Primer, whichwas compiled at the

beginning of the West Han Dynasty after the model of HZP, contained 3,300

characters. Yang Xiong’s The Exegetic Primer had 5,340 characters according to

The Book of the Han Dynasty (<汉书�艺文志>) and An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters collected 9,353 characters as headwords. There are altogether

4,972 inscription characters collected in A Collection of Inscription Characters of

the Yin and Zhou Dynasties (<殷周金文集成>, eighteen volumes)(张亚初,

Zhang Yachu, 2001:1478). The number of Jiaguwen characters unearthed at present

is 4,672 (The Archaeology Institute of China Academy of Social Sciences, 1965:

Preface). Taking all the above factors into consideration, the characters collected in

HZP suitable for children to learn should have amounted to roughly 3,500. Even as a

standard to be measured against what a student has to learn today, the number of

characters in HZP was of a very considerable size. There is every reason to consider

HZP as a standardized textbook for children to learn characters at that time.

HZP was designed and compiled for royal children to learn dazhuan charac-

ters. When regular script became the standard writing system for the Chinese

language, dazhuan soon became outdated. Moreover, characters will inevitably


change, being modiWed and replaced by newly created ones. It is a natural process

for new forms of character to emerge and old ones to die out. That is why HZP

gradually went out of vogue and only some remnants were to be found in some of

the academic writings of the time. It was a change of environment and culture

that Wnally led to the demise of HZP.

4.3 the format and style of hzp

Principles for lemmata selection and coverageAs HZP was targeted at children learning characters, its scope of selection was

basically limited to ‘those naming things and people’. The characters for objects

and people that were frequently encountered in everyday life were candidates for

inclusion as headwords in the book, which means that these characters were

essential to and commonly used in everyday communication. These characters

were of two kinds: common characters and newly created ones.

Common characters refer to those already stabilized but still in contemporary

use. These words usually enjoyed a rather high frequency in everyday commu-

nication. For instance, in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, there

are the following characters:

1. 人,天地之性最贵者也。此籀文。象臂胫之形。

(人, man, the most noble between the earth and the sky; a Zhou character

in the shape of an arm and legs.)

2. 鸡, 知时畜也。从隹,奚声。籀文鸡从鸟。

(鸡, chicken, a kind of poultry that knows the time; categorized into隹 and

pronounced as奚; a Zhou character that falls into the category of 鸟.)

3. 车,舆轮之总名。夏后时奚仲所造。象形。籀文车。

(车, vehicle, any vehicle with wheels; invented by Xi Zhong (奚仲) at the

time of the post-Xia Dynasty; a pictographic character and the same as the

Zhou character.)

4. 西, 鸟在巢上。象形。日在西方而鸟栖, 故因以为东西之西。西, 或从

木、妻。古文西。籀文西。

(西, west, the direction in which birds are seen on the nest; a pictographic

character; when the sun is in the west the birds perch on the branches;

therefore, used to designate the direction of west; categorized into 木

(wood) or 妻 (wife); the same as the ancient character and the Zhou

character.)


Common characters signifying ‘objects and people frequently encountered’,

such as 人, 鸡, 车, and 西, were already frequently used in everyday life in

the Shang Dynasty when Jiaguwen was the dominant writing system. Certainly,

these characters should be included in HZP. The inscriptions on the unearthed

bronze wares of the time of Emperor Xuan can also conWrm the existence of those

characters and their status, designating basic concepts to be conveyed in the

inscriptions. The following are some of the sample sentences from the inscrip-

tions (陈梦家, Chen Mengjia, 2004:318, 324, 328):

5. 唯九月初吉戊申。

(Only the Wrst of September is auspicious in the year of Wu Shen, which is

the Wfth of heavenly stem and the ninth of earthly branches.).

6. 王令我羞追于西,余来归献擒。

(The king disgraced me and I ran west to chase. I returned and oVered

what I had captured.)

7. 子子孙孙其永宝用享。

(His sons and grandsons will enjoy all these treasures forever.)

8. 王赐兮甲马四匹, 驹车。

(The king bestowed four horses and some foals and carts.)

9. 敢不用令。

(Dare not obey order.)

10. 其唯我诸侯百姓。

(Only my monarch and people.)

11. 折首五百,执讯五十。

(Five hundred were beheaded and Wfty were penalized and reproached.)

Newly created characters refer to those that were created during the time of the

West Zhou Dynasty (or Emperor Xuan’s time). These new characters should also

have a high frequency of use.

12. 城以盛民也。从土从成,成亦声。城, 籀文城从郭。

(城, city, town, a place created and used to hold its people; categorized into

土 ‘soil’ and 成 ‘completion’, with the latter also representing its pro-

nunciation; categorized into郭 ‘suburb’ in Zhou characters.)

13. 则等画物也。从刀从贝。贝, 古之物货也。则, 古文则。则, 亦古文则。

籀文则从鼎。

(则, ruler, a toolused forequaldivision indrawing; categorized into刀 ‘knife’

and贝 ‘shell’, which, in ancient times, was used as currency for the exchange

of goods; the same as its ancient form; categorized into 鼎 ‘pod’ in Zhou

characters.)


14. 道所行道也。从辵从首。一达谓之道。古文道从首寸。

(道, road, way, a long narrow place for people to walk from place to place;

categorized into辵 ‘walk intermittently’ and 首 ‘head’; directly leading to

a place; its ancient form was categorized into 首 ‘head’ and寸 ‘inch’.)

The above characters 城,则, and道 were not found until the time of Emperor

Xuan and could be identiWed as newly created characters. One of the fundamental

indicators of the civilization of human society is city construction and conceptual-

ization. Of the divinatory symbols unearthed from the Ruins of the Yin Dynasty, the

character 城 was not found but the character京, which means ‘capital of a city’. It

was during the West Zhou Dynasty and with the standardization of town construc-

tion that some towns were gradually dubbed as城, which is clear from the citation:

15. 以乃族从父征,出城卫父身。(<班簋>)(Under the leadership of the father, the clansmen fought in war. They went

out of the city to act as bodyguards to the father.) (from Ban Gui)

In the Zhou character form,则 looks like a knife curved on the pod. Since the pod

was a kind of vessel frequently taken as an indicator of one’s social status, it was

naturally extended to refer to ‘system’, which was further grammaticalized as an

adverb or conjunction. In the Jin (金) characters, the main uses of则 are as follows:

(a) to cut or draw, e.g. 用明则之于铭。(When in wide use, it will be in-

scribed.)

(b) the soil, e.g. 王蔑段历, 念毕仲孙子, 命龏戒贻大则于段。(The king

belittled Duan Li but, after thinking of his second grandson, he ordered

Gong Jie to give a large piece of land to Duan.)

(c) as an adverb to indicate a completed action, e.g.牧牛则誓。(While herding

sheep and cattle, he swore an oath.)

According to the head character selection criterion of An Explanatory Diction-

ary of Chinese Characters (i.e. zhuan characters, which are to be contrasted with

ancient Zhou characters, form the focus for character selection), when deWni-

tional explanations contain such glosses as古文 ‘in the ancient form of . . .’, the

character whose xiaozhuan character bears the same form as the Zhou character

should be listed Wrst. Look at the following example in An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters:

16. 奭盛也。从大, 从皕, 皕亦声。此燕召公名。读若郝。<史篇> 名丑。

奭,古文奭。

(奭meansXourishing; categorized into大 ‘bigness’ and皕 ‘double hundred’,

with the latter also indicating its pronunciation; Yan Zhaogong (燕召公)

bears the same name; pronounced as郝 /hao/; in the ancient form of奭.)


It can thus be deduced that the Wrst character form listed under the entry道 in

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters should also be the form of the

Zhou character. 道 was written as 衜 on the Raccoon Vessel, a bronze small-

mouthed and big-bellied wine vessel of the West Zhou Dynasty. More often than

not, the Jinwen inscription of the character 衜 was accompanied by 止 (stop,

stand still), symbolizing ‘foot in motion’. Taken as a whole,衜 forms a picture of a

person standing at the crossroads, trying to Wgure out which direction to take.

Consequently, 衜 was used to designate ‘road’ or ‘way’. The usage of 道 in the

West Zhou metal inscriptions could be illustrated in the following example:

17. 封于兽道, 封于原道, 封于周道。(<散盘>)(Sealed at the animal’s path, on the original road, and on Zhou’s way.)

(from San Pan)

After examining the speciWc usages of several newly created characters in the

unearthed literature of the West Zhou Dynasty before Emperor Xuan, it can be

tentatively inferred that HZP had already taken note of those newly emerged

characters and that they were given as supplemented entries.

AnExplanatoryDictionary of ChineseCharacters encompasses 540 radical sections

within its scope of headword coverage, which involves ‘heaven and earth, ghosts and

gods, mountains and rivers, grass and trees, birds and animals, insects and worms,

sundries, odd objects, the king’s ruling systems, and etiquette and rites. In aword, all

the things under the sun are recorded exclusively’ (Epilogue to An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters). The characters explicitly marked as Zhou char-

acters are also put under these 540 radical sections. For instance:

上部:旁 (the radical section of上:旁)

示部:祺、斎、禋、祷、祟 (the radical section of示:祺,斎,禋,祷,祟)

玉部: 璿 (the radical section of 玉: 璿)

牛部: 牭 (the radical section of 牛: 牭)

口部: 嗌、啸 (the radical section of口: 嗌, 啸)

食部: 饴、餔、饕 (the radical section of 食: 饴, 餔, 饕)

禾部:秋、秦、稯 (the radical section of禾:秋,秦, 稯)

米部: 糂、糟 (the radical section of 米: 糂, 糟)

女部:姚、妘、婚、姻、妣、娲、娈、娄 (the radical section of女:姚,妘, 婚,

姻,妣, 娲, 娈, 娄)

酉部: 酸、酱、醢 (the radical section of 酉: 酸, 酱, 醢)

If a comparison is made between HZP and An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters for their coverage, it is conspicuous that the latter has

broadened its scope and reinforced its contents, though the former has also

claimed to have ‘recorded all things under the sun’.


LayoutHZP is no longer in existence, but what can be done is to restore it from The

Cangjie Primer. These two books took the shortest time to be compiled and

shared basically the same style. Since the Qin Dynasty was rather short-lived, the

textbook series for children to learn xiaozhuan characters, compiled by Li Si in

the light of HZP, lasted for only several dozens of years. Early in the Western Han

Dynasty, the textbooks handed down from the Qin Dynasty were under revision:

the teachers and learned people in the towns and villages combined The Cangjie Primer,

The Yuanli Primer, and The Scholarly Primer under one cover and segmented the book

into Wfty-Wve chapters, each chapter containing sixty characters. This new textbook

retained the original title The Cangjie Primer. (Ban Gu, 1962:1721)

As for The Cangjie Primer in the Han Dynasty, the character form was trans-

formed from xiaozhuan into oYcial script. The total number of entry characters in it

was 3,300, and it soon became popularized and widely recognized as the standard

textbook for character learning. From the unearthed bamboo slips of The Cangjie

Primer in the West Han period, we can see two outstanding features in layout:

1. Semantically grouped and radical-orientedIn The Cangjie Primer, the characters that were synonymous or related in some

meaning components were put together on the basis of radical classiWcation.

For instance, 开 (open), 闭 (close), 门 (door), and 闾 (town) all fall under the

heading of门, for their meanings are all related to the concept of ‘door’. Likewise,

病 (illness),狂 (madness),疵 (blemish),疕 (head sore),灾 (burn),疡 (sore) are

all semantically related to 病 and come under 疒 (the radical characterizing

characters denoting ‘illness’).

2. Four-character sentences that are rhymed and easy to reciteThe character textbook serves the purpose of character learning. Its headword

characters should be arranged in such a way as to facilitate character acquisition

and literacy education. Rhyming is conducive to recitation and memorization.

The format is specially designed in each chapter of The Cangjie Primer so as to

have four characters in one sentence and keep the sentences rhymed. Here are

some of the sentence quotations from The Cangjie Primer :

18. 幼子承诏。(<说文解字�序>引<苍颉篇>)(The younger son was the one to be summoned by the Emperor.) (from


the Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters quoting

from The Cangjie Primer)

19. 汉兼天下,海内并厕,豨黥韩覆,畔讨灭歼。(颜之推, Yan Zhitui, 1980:438)

(The Han Dynasty annexes the whole world and all the kingdoms observe

its decrees. Its ruling will be like slaughtering the pigs and pulling down

the fences. For those kingdoms that disobey, they will be denounced, sup-

pressed, and destroyed.) (from Yan Zhitui of the Northern Qi Dynasty,

1980:438)

20. 苍颉作书, 以教后嗣。幼子承诏, 谨慎敬戒, 勉力风诵, 昼夜勿置。苟务

成史,计会辨治,超等轶群,出尤别异。(李振宏, Li Zhenhong, 2003:120)

(Cangjie creates characters for educating the young. The youth are sum-

moned and they should learn to be serious, cautious, respectful, and self-

disciplined. They should make up their mind and study hard and show

perseverence in reading and reciting day and night. If selected to serve as

oYcials in the government, they should be qualiWed in calculating,

accounting, discriminating good from evil, and ruling. They should be

trained to be the elites and the exceptional but not the deviants.) (from

Li Zhenhong, 2003:120)

These four-character sentences are just the right stuV for playful children to

recite and memorize. In the time of HZP’s compilation four-character-style

poems were prevalent, and it was probable for HZP and The Cangjie Primer to

inherit the prevalent style from poetry writing and for HZP to adopt the format

of four-character-style poems.

DeWnition and citationThere is now extremely limited source data directly obtained fromHZP, but there

is strong evidence from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters that

HZP did oVer word deWnitions, as in the case above of 奭. Here is another

example:

21. 姚 –虞舜居姚虚,因以为姓。从女,兆声。或为:姚,娆也。<史篇>以为:

姚,易也。

(姚 Yao, surname, Yu and Shun lived in Yaoxu, which they took for their

family name; categorized into女 ‘female’ and pronounced as yao ‘兆’; also

possible that姚 ‘yao’ means 娆 ‘enchanting’; HZP interprets姚 as mean-

ing易 ‘pleasant’.)

Some inferences can be made from the above citation. First, the chief means

of deWnition in HZP is to use synonymous characters or expressions. Second,


there are some explanatory notes about the general usage of some characters in

HZP. For instance,奭 could be used interchangeably with丑 in HZP. HZP, as a

glossary of common characters of its time, manifests its inXuence on lexicog-

raphy of later generations chieXy in its arrangement of contents and layout. For

the majority of characters, there are no deWnitions or illustrative examples. This

is due to HZP’s function as a textbook. The responsibility of explaining

the meaning of characters and providing illustrative examples falls on the

teachers during the process of instructing pupils. It is no wonder that only a

limited number of deWnitions and examples are discovered in HZP and that they

usually take the form of annotations attached to their corresponding headword

characters.

PronunciationThere are some characters in HZP, though very few in number, whose pronun-

ciations are provided by means of indicative labels like 读若,与 . . . . . .音同,

and 音如, which mean ‘pronounced in a similar or the same way as . . .’. For

instance:

22. 匋, 瓦器也。从缶, 包省声。古者昆吾作匋。案: <史篇> 读与缶同。

(<说文解字>)(匋, pottery, earthenware; categorized into 缶 ‘fou, earthen utensil with a

large body and small opening’; pronounced as 包 /bao/, with a silent

consonant; in ancient times, Kun Wu was well known for making earth-

enware. Note: in HZP, it is annotated as being pronounced in the same

way as 缶.) (from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters)

Similarly, this style of giving pronunciation was also employed in The Cangjie

Primer. Let’s take痏, for example:

23. 痏,创也。音如鮪鱼之鮪。

(痏, trauma; wound from injury; pronounced like the character 鮪, as in

鮪鱼.)

The inXuenceofHZPonTheCangjiePrimer andTheReadyGuide is foundchieXy in

the arrangement of contents and themethod of deWning characters. On the one hand,

the arrangement of contents in both books is based on semantic relations and classiW-

cations. The contents of the Wrst version ofThe Cangjie Primer are classiWed, grouped,

andarrangedonasemanticbasis, i.e. inthe lightof theconcepts theydesignate,whichis

clearly a practice that originated in HZP. Characters with radicals sharing the same,

similar, or opposite meanings are normally treated in one chapter or section, for


instance, 寸 (inch), 薄 (thin), 厚 (thick), 广 (broad), 侠 (narrow), 好 (good), 丑

(ugly), 长 (long), 短 (short) (Wang Guowei, 1983: 4, 352). On the other hand,

characters are deWned according to their semantic classiWcation. The case of姚 above

is typical, fromwhose analysis we can see that姚 and易 are synonyms. It is apparent

that the method of deWnition in The Ready Guide was inspired by the practice of

synonym deWnition inHZP. Here are somemore examples fromThe Ready Guide :

24. 乔、嵩、崇: 高也。(<尔雅�释诂>)(乔, 嵩, and 崇 mean 高 ‘tall, high’.)

25. 怀、惟、虑、愿、念、惄: 思也。(<尔雅�释诂>)(怀, 惟, 虑, 愿,念 and 惄 mean 思 ‘thinking’.)

26. 颠,顶也。(<尔雅�释言>)(颠 means 顶 ‘summit, top’.)

To conclude, the deWning method in The Ready Guide, such as general explan-

ation (通训) and mutual explanation (互训), is the result of being inXuenced by

the semantic classiWcation style in HZP.

4.4 the cultural and academicimplications of hzp

HZP was intended to help children learning characters and to educate the

illiterate during the Western Zhou Dynasty, which necessitated its bearing

some characteristics of both an instructional textbook and a reference book

such as a dictionary (Yong Heming, 2003:25).

Prior to the time of Emperor Xuan, there had been no authoritative textbooks

for teaching and learning characters. There might have been teaching materials of

this kind in some oYcial schools and the materials were probably collected by the

teaching oYcials. Things became quite diVerent when the oYcial primer HZP

came into use, for it was authoritative and in wide circulation as a textbook in

oYcial schools. Since it was a standardized textbook of high quality, it would in

some way compensate for intellectual deWciency in the teaching staV and help the

students to review and preview. Consequently, it would dramatically increase the

eYciency and eVectiveness in teaching and learning characters.

As shown from the study of the oracle inscriptions unearthed from the Ruins

of the Shang Dynasty, the characters used in the Shang Dynasty were not very

standardized, as evidenced by profuse use of variants for the same character.


These variations could be roughly classiWed into the following categories (徐中

舒, Xu Zhongshu, 1989:1499):

(a) A character may have both its original complex form and simpliWed form.

For instance, the simpliWed character车 (cart, vehicle) was used alongside

its original complex forms like 舆, 辕, 轭, and 衡. These complex forms

still retain the shape of two wheels in their formation, while the simpliWed

form 车 functioned only as a component of the original complex form

(Xu Zhongshu, 1989:1499).

(b) The position of certain radicals in a character may be arbitrary, i.e. either

placed on the right side or on the left. For instance, in the character 令

(order), the part which looks like ‘a man kneeling down’ could be written

either facing the right or the left (Xu Zhongshu, 1989:1000).

(c) The radicals on the upper and lower parts of a character could mutually

exchange their positions. For instance, in the character侯, the component

of ‘arrow head (矢)’ usually faces upwards, but it may also be written

facing downwards (Xu Zhongshu, 1989:583).

(d) The use of radicals was not conventionalized yet in cases where radicals

had the same or similar meanings. They could be used interchangeably.

For instance, in the character莫, the uppermost radical could either be艸

(grass) or林 (wood).

It can be deduced that one of the motivations for Emperor Xuan ordering his

oYcial historian Zhou to compile a primer was to standardize the form and use

of characters. These standardized forms and styles of character writing, as shown

in HZP, would be naturally reXected in its contemporary literary works and other

literature.

The term ‘Zhou character’ is used to refer to the particular style of form and

structure of character writing during the time of Emperor Xuan. In the period

from Spring and Autumn toWarring States, people in the Qin State still used this

type of character but the Oriental Six States were using ancient characters – the

type of characters used in the ‘books found in the walls of Confucius’ home’

(Wang Guowei, 1983:319). As for the use of the Zhou character by the Qin people,

the representative work is Stone Drum character (石鼓文) of Qin State. Stone

Drum characters refer to the poems carved on the drums – each drum with

one four-character poem depicting the grand scene of the king and monarchs

hunting and entertaining. This type of poem usually consisted of four lines,

each on one side of the stone drum. Its genre is very similar to that of the

poems in The Book of Songs with similar subjects. As is shown in the following

poem: 吾车既工, 吾马既同。吾车既好, 吾马既阜 (My carts are exquisitely


constructed, and my horses are equally chosen; my carts are among the best, and

my horses are among the loftiest).

During the time of the Wrst Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, xiaozhuan was

oYcially codiWed as the standard writing form. There came the need to rewrite

and recompile textbooks for teaching and learning characters. Naturally, HZP

was taken as an example for selecting the content materials and for making

decisions on the formats of the new textbooks. The Prime Minister Li Si and two

other Ministers, Zhao Gao and Hu Wujing, were authorized to compile the

textbook. Li Si wrote The Cangjie Primer (seven chapters), Zhao Gao wrote The

Yuanli Primer (six chapters), and Hu Wujing wrote The Scholarly Primer (seven

chapters). All these texts were written in xiaozhuan and the textbooks were

oYcially issued and circulated nationwide; and, as a result, HZP gradually

went out of vogue. There are, however, some characters that have retained the

form and structure of those Zhou characters but have been in continuous use up

until now.

HZP, as the Wrst textbook intended to teach children to learn characters in the

history of Chinese civilization, played an unprecedented role in initiating the

history of dictionary compilation. As pointed out earlier, a series of textbooks for

character learning, taking HZP as an example, were compiled in the Qin Dynasty.

In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the textbook for children to learn

characters was The Instant Primer, whose name 急就 (instant success) suggested

‘fast learning’, and the opening remarks made it all the more clear:

27. 急就奇觚与众异: 罗列诸物名姓字, 分别部居不杂厕, 用日约少诚快意,

勉力务之必有喜。请道其章。

(Quickly learn the rarely seendrinkingvessels andmanydiVerent things: listing

the names of objects, people, and family names; classify them into diVerent

sections so that they will not be easily mixed up. Occasional consultation will

deWnitely be a great delight – for it is quick to retrieve, and, if hard eVort is put

into it, there will surely be surprising rewards. Please follow the guidelines in

each chapter.)

It is certain that there were predecessors for The Instant Primer to model on.

For its stylistic features, it collected the characters with the same radicals together

and then divided them into diVerent chapters. For each chapter, the number of

characters in each line is Wxed: three characters, four characters, or seven char-

acters. The sentences are all in rhyme, which makes it easy to read and recite.

From the Northern and Southern Dynasty, there appeared some other popular

textbooks, such as One Thousand Characters Text (<千字文>), The Book of

Family Names (<百家姓>), and The Three-Character Primer (<三字经>). All


these textbooks have displayed some noticeable trace of HZP in their compilation

styles and formats.

As HZP is no longer available today, all that can be ascertained about it comes

from relevant data sources serving as citations found in An Explanatory Diction-

ary of Chinese Characters and certain other dictionaries. The pioneering studies

of HZP are mainly the by-products of the studies on An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters. Among studies on HZP, Wang Guowei’s The RectiWcation of

Historian Zhou’s Primer (<史籀篇疏证>) ranks among the most comprehensive

and systematic works. Wang Guowei conducted thorough textual research into

each one of the 220 characters explicitly marked as Zhou characters in An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and went on further to verify

them against the unearthed materials. It is his opinion that the character 籀 as

in史籀 should be interpreted as ‘read’ and史籀 should not be taken as a person’s

name but an abbreviation of the Wrst four characters 太史籀书 (literally, the

oYcial historian reads books), which is actually the Wrst sentence in HZP

(Preface to The RectiWcation of Historian Zhou’s Primer). Wang Guowei’s study

on HZP still remains one of the monumental works in this Weld.

As far as the history of human civilization is concerned, all the textbooks, like

HZP, which are oriented towards enlightenment, have played an indispensable

role in cultivating the thoughts of a nation, especially those of the younger

generation. In the meantime, these textbooks, bearing some of the features of

a dictionary, have played an equally important role in sustaining a nation’s

culture and handing down the accomplishments of human civilization from

generation to generation. The concept of ‘big uniWcation’, as manifested in 汉

兼天下, 海内并厕 (Han annexes the whole world and all the kingdoms observe

its decree) in The Cangjie Primer, has been inherited by every generation since

very remote times through textbooks in the course of teaching and learning

Chinese characters.


5

THE READY GUIDE – THEINITIATOR OF THESAURUSDICTIONARIES IN CHINA

T HE Ready Guide (abbreviated to RG hereinafter within this chapter) enjoys

a very remarkable position in the history of philological and linguistic

studies in China. It is the Wrst work of exegetic studies conducted on a systematic

basis and the Wrst thesaurus dictionary of an encyclopedic nature. It aims to

explain the meaning of ancient words and a great variety of object names and

serves as the starting point from which other classic works can be justiWably

interpreted. That partly explains why RG has always been placed into the category

of ancient Chinese classics rather than ancient Chinese dictionaries. This chapter

will concentrate chieXy on the role it plays as the initiator of dictionary compil-

ation in ancient China.

5.1 the historical background to rg’s birth

When Historian Zhou’s Primer and The Cangjie Primer were used for teaching

and learning characters, there also emerged the need to explain the meanings of

the characters collected in them that changed over time as language evolved. RG

was compiled to meet this need. So, what does the title尔雅mean? According to

Confucius’ interpretation, ‘RG assists in understanding and analysing ancient

classic works and suYces to diVerentiate between words and expressions’, which

is further collaborated by the remark that ‘the so-called standard speech, as

Confucius suggests, alludes to the classic works and the justice and courtesy

advocated in them. Only these can be ranked as standards’ (from The Analects of

Confucius, <论语�述而>). In a note to The Book of the Han Dynasty Zhang Yan

(张晏) states that ‘尔 means近 (close, approximate) and雅 means 正 (justice,

standard)’. In the light of this explanation,尔雅 can be interpreted as attempting

Wrst to understand the character’s meaning as accurately as possible and then to

interpret it in actual use. Moreover, the character雅 itself was a fashionable word

in the Western Zhou Dynasty, as is shown in The Book of Songs, which contained

characters like风,雅, and颂. In RG, there is an illustrative citation of张仲孝友,

which contained the name of a Wgure in Emperor Xuan’s time –张仲, strongly

suggesting that RG was used as supplementary teaching material for Historian

Zhou’s Primer. To conclude, it is very probable that RG was compiled as a

‘teaching material’ book.

Between the Qin and theHanDynasty, The Cangjie Primerwas used for teaching

and learning characters, and a reference book was needed to assist and facilitate not

only the learning of characters but also the appreciation of the conceptualmeanings

and cultural connotations attached to the characters. And in the periods of the

Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, private schooling was becoming

popular and the mix of numerous schools of thought had created a favourable

academic atmosphere for studying and analysing language and characters. RGwas a

natural outcome of such a time. It was compiled to broadly identify the actual

references of words and expressions, to make a record of the songs and ideals of the

poets, to collect and sort the archaic words of previous times, and to discriminate

the words with diVerent labels but in essence with the same content.

The Book of the Han Dynasty did not classify RG into the category of Chinese

philology but into the category of works which promoted Wlial devotion. During

the reign of EmperorWen, people with the title of ‘doctor’, which roughly approxi-

mates to the title of professor, were assigned to teach The Analects of Confucius, The

Book of Filial Virtues (<孝经>),Meng Zi, and RG (钱穆, QianMu, 2001:193). These

studies were already established courses in the school syllabus. For those pupils in

school, they were compulsory courses. Only when they had passed these courses

were they entitled to enrol for advanced courses, such asThe Book of Songs, The Book

of Changes, The Book of Rites, and The Spring and Autumn. It can be concluded that

RG should have been Wnished no later than the time of Emperor Wen’s reign.

Generally speaking, it takes time for an academic work to get initiated, circulated,

established and codiWed, especially in ancient times. This wasmore than true of RG.

The Wrst draft of RG should have been written at the turn of the dynasty (i.e. from

the Zhou to the Qin Dynasty) but came to its completion early in theWestern Han


Dynasty. It can thus be safely assumed that RGwasWrst drafted in between the Zhou

and the Qin Dynasty and was completely Wnalized in the Han Dynasty.

‘Nine states (九州)’ in RG refers to the administrative regions in China in early

ancient times. A comparison will show that the actual names of the nine states in

RG are diVerent from those in Yu Gong (<禹贡>) but roughly approximate to

those in The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty, but are most like those in The Lu’s Spring

and Autumn Annals. In The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals, the state names are

冀,衮,青,徐,扬,荆,豫,雍, and幽 while in RG they are冀,衮,营 (青),徐,扬,

荆,豫,雍, and幽. The only diVerence lies in the change of the name of one state,

i.e. from 青 to 营. RG states that ‘齐 (the state of Qi) was called 营 (the state of

Ying)’. As is known to all, it was only twenty-two years between the birth of The

Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals and the Burning Book Event by the Wrst Emperor

of the Qin Dynasty. Thus, the Wrst draft of RG should have been completed at the

turn of the dynasty, subsequent to The Spring and Autumn.

The Wrst draft of RG was just an embryo – there was much to develop, improve,

and supplement, especially in content, wording, and format. The early part of the

WesternHanDynasty wasmainly a time for revision. From the time of EmperorHui

of the Han Dynasty, several new chapters of RG were in circulation, together with

the original version of RG. A comparison of the two versions of RG displays great

diVerence in wording. The following citations from Supplements to the RectiWed

Broad Ready Guide (王念孙, Wang Niansun, <广雅疏证补正>) will show some

changes in diction in deWning妻父: (1)妻父曰外舅 (‘Wife’s father’ means ‘father-

in-law’) (from The Book of Rites); and (2) 妻之父为外舅 (‘The father of wife’ is

called ‘father-in-law’) (The Standardized Ready Guide, <尔雅>定本). The revision

of RG consists of three types of editorial work: Wrst, notes or comments were added.

For instance, in RG, a note was added to explain五方 (the Wfth direction), i.e.此四

方中国之异气也 (the alienated from the four directions of China); second, special

explanatory notes were written for some chapters and sections, and some chapters

were reordered; and third, the number and names of classiWcation were revised and

modiWed. For instance, in The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals (<吕氏春秋�有始览>), there was said to be nine pools in the swampland, whereas in RG (<尔雅�释地>), the number of pools was changed to ten. The Wnalization of RG should be

subsequent to the revision of The Book of Rites but obviously prior to the appoint-

ment of the teaching doctor for RG by Emperor Wen in the Han Dynasty. For only

when RG had attained perfection and exquisiteness in literary and editorial style and

gained suYcient authoritativeness would it be possible for the Emperor to accept it

oYcially and to award an oYcial doctoral title to carry out its teaching.

RG was mainly devoted to explaining and interpreting linguistic and concep-

tual meanings of characters, words, and expressions. Linguistic problems, though

the ready guide 61

intricately involved, could be reduced to one – how the sound and meaning are

combined. The prerequisite for linguistic communication is the creation and

universal acceptance of meaning by the speech community and the meaning of a

word will be acceptable only after it has established itself in competition with other

temporary meaning constructions of words and expressions in the same typical

contextual situation. In Guo Pu’s opinion, RG is a book for ‘diVerentiating those

words with the same essence but diVerent names’ and ‘by means of which a more

broad range of things can be embraced without confusing them with each other’

(Preface to The Annotated Ready Guide). Thus, the theoretical core of giving

explanatory notes in RG was ‘to diVerentiate so as to eliminate confusion about

semantic categorization of words and expressions and to have a better understand-

ing of the charactermeaning. For instance, the parameters for RG for diVerentiating

between虫 (insect) and豸 (worm) and between禽 (bird) and兽 (beast) are ‘foot’

and ‘feather’:有足谓之虫,无足谓之豸 (If the creature has feet, then it is虫; and if

it does not, then it is 豸);二足而羽谓之禽, 四足而毛谓之兽 (If the animal has

two feet and feathers, then it is a bird; if it has four feet and fur, then it is a beast).

Generally speaking, the diVerentiation of names and objects is based on those

relationships, which are closely related to the names and objects or form contrasts

between them, and properties referring to the attributes, physical shapes of dispos-

ition, status, capacity, inXuence, etc. In RG, ‘foot’, ‘feather’ and ‘fur’ are taken as the

parameters to mark out the semantic categories in the animal world in that both of

them are themeans bywhich diVerent animals acclimatize themselves to their living

conditions and the markers by which they can be easily recognized.

The principle of ‘diVerentiation without confusion’ is best illustrated in the

Wrst explanatory note of RG (<尔雅�释诂>):初,哉,首,基,肇祖,元,胎,俶,落,

权舆,始也。In this entry, all the deWned characters are explained with the same

character始 (beginning, inception), but each character focuses on one aspect or

component in the meaning of 始. The following analysis will show how these

characters can be diVerentiated:

1. 初, 裁衣之始。(初: starting to cut cloth in dressmaking.)

2. 哉, 即才, 草木之始。(哉: the same as 才, beginning of grass or tree’s

growth.)

3. 首,人体之始。(首: beginning of human body.)

4. 基, 筑墙之始。(基: beginning in building a wall.)

5. 肇,开门之始。(肇: beginning in opening a door.)

6. 祖,人类之始。(祖: Wrst ancestors of human beings.)

7. 元,即人头,也是人体之始。(元: the same as人头 (human head), also the

beginning of human body.)


8. 胎,生命之始。(胎: beginning of a human life.)

9. 俶,动作之始。(俶: initiating of a motion or an action.)

10. 落,木叶陨坠之始。(落: (of leaves) beginning to fall from trees.)

11. 权舆, 草木迂曲出土,即植物生长之始。(权舆: (of grass or tree) coming

out of soil, i.e. the beginning of the growth of plants.)

The derivation of the principle ‘diVerentiation without confusion’ in RG

developed into a pattern of naming ‘large’ and ‘small’ objects. Generally speak-

ing, ‘large’ objects could be pre-modiWed with such characters as 大 (big), 戎

(helmet), 王 (king), 牛 (cow), 马 (horse), 虎 (tiger), and 鹿 (deer). Look at the

following examples:

12. 魾,大鳠: bagarius; ‘big’ hemibagrus (from <释鱼> – Interpreting Fish)

13. 菺, 戎葵: sunXower in the Shu State: helmet sunXower (from <释草> –

Interpreting Grass)

14. 蟒, 王蛇: boa; king snake (from <释鱼> – Interpreting Fish)

15. 终, 牛棘: cow thorn (from <释木> – Interpreting Wood)

16. 蝒, 马蜩: big black cicada; horse cicada (from <释虫> – Interpreting

Worm)

17. 欇, 虎櫐: maple; tiger vine (from <释木> – Interpreting Wood)

18. 蔨, 鹿藿。其实莥: hyssop; deer hyssop, i.e. wrinkled giant hyssop (from

<释草> – Interpreting Grass)

By contrast, for small objects, the following characters will be used: 小 (little),

叔 (uncle), 女 (woman), 羊 (sheep), 狗 (dog), 鼠 (mouse), 雀 (sparrow), etc.

Look at the following examples:

19. 蘻, 狗毒: a kind of grass; dog poison (<释草> – Interpreting Grass)

20. 蘥, 雀麦: a kind of cattle grass; sparrow wheat (<释草> – Interpreting

Grass)

21. 遵, 羊枣: date; sheep date (<释木> – Interpreting Wood)

22. 楰, 鼠梓: catalpa; mouse catalpa (<释木> – Interpreting Wood)

5.2 the background and motivationfor rg’s compilation

As early as the middle and late West Han Dynasty, that is, when Liu Xiang and

Liu Xin compiled The Miscellaneous Collection (<别录>) and Seven Strategies

the ready guide 63

(<七略>), the author of RG was unknown to them. That is why when he

discussed RG in The Book of the Han Dynasty, Ban Gu claimed that there were

three volumes, twenty chapters altogether in RG, but he did not mention its

author. Thus, the author of RG could only be deduced from its contents. A

relevant work is Shi Zi, by Shi Zi, a well-known scholar in the Warring States

Period. In Shi Zi (<尸子�广泽>), a number of entries could be identiWed with

those in RG (< 尔雅�释诂>). Look at the following entries from Shi Zi:

23. 天、帝、皇、后、辟、公:皆君也。(<尸子�广泽>)(天, 帝, 皇, 后, 辟, and 公 are all used to refer to the monarch.) (from

Shi Zi)

24. 弘、廓、宏、溥、介、纯、夏、幠、冢、晊、昄: 皆大也。十有余名, 而

实一也。(<尸子�广泽>)(弘, 廓, 宏, 溥, 介, 纯, 夏, 幠, 冢, 晊 and 昄 are all used to mean ‘big,

large’.) (from Shi Zi)

25. 天神曰灵, 地神曰祗, 人神曰鬼。鬼者, 归也。故古者谓死人为归人。

(<尸子卷下>)(The god in heaven is called 灵 ‘spirit’, the god on earth is called 祗

‘reverence’, and the human god is called鬼 ‘ghost’. The ghost is the returned

soul. So the ancient people called the dead the returned soul.) (from Shi Zi)

According to The Book of the Han Dynasty, ‘Shi Zi has twenty chapters. The real

name of Shi Zi is Jiao. Hewas born in Lu State (now in Shandong Province) andwas

once taught by the Prime Minister, Shang Yang (商鞅), of Qin State. When Shang

Yang died he Xed to Shu State (now in Sichuan Province).’ As a teacher of Shang

Yang it was natural for Shi Zi to include exegetic interpretations of such characters

as君 (monarch) and大 (big) in his book. Therefore, it could be inferred that the

author of RG was possibly an educator.

If the deWnitions of RG texts are scrutinized, some aspects of the author’s life and

work would surface by themselves. RG is permeated with strong local colour, as is

evidenced, Wrst of all, by the centrality of Qi State and Lu State in the Chinese nation.

For instance, in RG, there is中有岱岳 (泰山),与其五谷鱼盐生焉 (In the centre

there isMount Tai, where corn,Wsh, and salt are all produced), and inRG, there is齐,

中也 (Qi State, which is the centre of the nation). Second, the author harbours a

feeling of great reverence for the Western Zhou Dynasty and preaches the ideals

advocated in The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty. For instance, when The Rites of the Zhou

Dynasty mentioned Da Ye (大野), a place in Lu State, it was placed in Wfth place,

whereas RG rankedDaYe in Lu State as theWrst of theTenMarshes. Third, the author

had a hostile attitude towards Qin State and Chu State. In the tomb of Zeng Houyi

(曾侯乙), whichwas unearthed in 1978 in Sui County, Hubei Province, a picture was


found depicting a diagram of a black dragon and white tiger with twenty-eight

constellations. After comparison, it was found that some obvious stars, like ‘With

Ghost’ (与鬼) [of Qin State], and ‘Wing’ (翼) and ‘Vehicle’ (车) [of Chu State] were

deliberately unrecorded in RG because they indicated the boundaries between Qin

State and Chu State. Thus, a tentative conclusion was reached that the author of

RG would be a Confucian scholar from Qi State or from Lu State, which conforms

to the legend that he was a disciple of Confucius – a rather improbable coincidence.

The author would not be something of an eclectic, like the author of The Lu’s

Spring and Autumn Annals, but a specialist in Confucian and other classic works.

It is a general practice for The Book of the Han Dynasty (<汉书�艺文志>) toprovide some background information about its author when recording the works

handed down from ancient times. If only the title of a book is provided, without any

comments or introduction about its author, then the book must have been written

anonymously. It is also possible that Ban Gu himself could not identify its author.

It is evident that the compiler of RG was intentionally not revealed to the public

for some special reason right from the time when it was initially circulated so

that it became well known for its contents rather than for its author.

The question is, why did the compiler of RG deliberately have his name hidden

from the public? The humanity background against which it was compiled has to

be taken into account to oVer a feasible explanation. This dictionary was com-

piled during the time of great social reform – roughly between the Qin and the

Han Dynasties. The situation could thus be reasonably assessed in the light of the

following quotations from The Records of the Historian (<史记�秦始皇本纪>):

非博士官所职, 天下敢有藏 <诗>, <书>, 百家语者, 悉诣守, 尉杂烧之。有敢偶语

<诗>, <书>者弃市。以古非今者族。吏见知不举者与同罪。

(If someone is not an oYcial and keeps The Book of Songs, The Books of Ancient Texts, or

the works of various other schools, he shall be arrested by the local government and have

those works burned; if someone dares to occasionally comment about these books, he

shall be thrown to the market for public condemnation; if someone dares to commend

the ancient times and belittle the contemporary ruling, he shall be executed together with

his family members and relatives; if an oYcial knows someone perpetrating such a crime

without informing the authorities concerned he shall be charged with the same crime.)

Over that period in history, only the books on ‘medicine, divination, and

forestry’ were excluded from the list of books that were oYcially ordered to be

burned. RG certainly did not fall into those three categories. Its author was

certainly concerned about being suspected of ‘commending the ancient times

and belittling the contemporary ruling’, though its only purpose was actually to

serve as teaching material for those learning to read and write, like The Cangjie

Primer. When the author of RG taught pupils to learn characters he was probably

the ready guide 65

not an oYcial appointed by the government. It would have been very dangerous

for him to have written such a book falling into the category of ‘works of various

other schools’. Understandably, he chose to keep his name a mystery.

According to The Book of the Han Dynasty, RG comprises three volumes,

twenty chapters, only nineteen of which are available today. RG would have

contained a preface originally but it was later lost. The general principle for

compiling RG is that ‘things are sorted by their classiWcation and grouped

accordingly’ (from The Book of Changes). RG set a precedent for the arrangement

of its lexicon according to the meanings they designate and classiWed its 2,000

or so entries into nineteen semantic categories:

<释诂> (Interpreting Exegesis) mainly focuses on the explanation of syn-

onymous archaic words by means of contemporary words;

<释言> (Interpreting Words) mainly focuses on explaining words;

<释训> (Interpreting Rhetoric) mainly focuses on explaining alliteration and

vowel rhyming words;

<释亲> (Interpreting Relatives) mainly focuses on kinship terms, which are

further classiWed into four types: relating to father, mother, wife, and marriage;

<释宫> (Interpreting the Court) mainly focuses on the names of palaces and

the relevant roads and bridges;

<释器> (Interpreting Utensils) mainly focuses on explaining various imple-

ments and utensils, such as vessels used in sacriWcing ceremonies, implements

used in farming and Wshing, writing utensils, metal tools, and weapons;

<释乐> (Interpreting Music) mainly focuses on explaining musical terms and

musical instruments;

<释天> (Interpreting the Heavens) mainly focuses on explaining astronomy,

the calendar, and weather, further classiWed into twelve sections, involving

four seasons, omen, calamity, the droughts and Xoods in a year, the diVerent

names in a year, the weather in a month, the diVerent names in a month, rain

and wind, star names, fetes, warfare, Xags;

<释地> (Interpreting Earth) mainly focuses on geographical names, involving

nine states, ten lakes, nine prefectures, Wve directions, Welds, and four poles;

<释丘> (Interpreting Mounds) mainly focuses on explaining the high lands

naturally formed, which are subdivided into two types: hills and cliVs;

<释山> (Interpreting Mountains) mainly focuses on explaining the names of

mountains;

<释水> (Interpreting Water) mainly focuses on explaining the names of

springs and rivers, involving four types: sources of natural water, islets,

meanders of rivers, and nine rivers;


<释草> (Interpreting Grass) mainly focuses on explaining various grasses and

their forms and properties;

<释木> (Interpreting Woods) mainly focuses on explaining various woods and

their forms and properties;

<释虫> (Interpreting Creatures) mainly focuses on explaining the names

of various worms and insects and their dispositions;

<释鱼> (Interpreting Fishes) mainly focuses on explaining the names of

various Wshes, their physical features and dispositions;

<释鸟> (Interpreting Birds) mainly focuses on explaining the names of vari-

ous birds, their physical features and dispositions;

<释兽> (Interpreting Beasts) mainly focuses on explaining the names of

beasts, further classiWed into four types: those residing in the house, rats,

deer, and those with palpus; and

<释畜> (Interpreting Livestock) mainly focuses on explaining the names of

livestock, covering six domestic animals: horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, chickens,

and pigs.

Of the nineteen chapters, the Wrst three are philological in essence and mainly

concentrate onwords and expressions in ancient classic works and the other sixteen

are of an encyclopedic nature, covering a wide range of subjects in both social and

natural sciences. It is a small-sized linguistic and encyclopedic dictionary.

5.3 the format and style of rg

RG is the Wrst dictionary with a relatively consistent and systematic format in the

lexicographical history of China. Its compilation style has had direct and far-

reaching inXuence on subsequent dictionaries.

Principles for entry selection and coverageRG shares the same principles as Historian Zhou’s Primer and The Cangjie Primer

in selecting characters, i.e. focusing on characters in common use. The most

prominent diVerence between them is that RG focuses to a greater extent on the

more confusable characters in reading and writing.

Previously, 3,300 characters were collected and treated inHistorian Zhou’s Primer,

and the great majority of them were in common use. Since RG served as teaching

material, there would be no necessity to explain those characters whose meanings

the ready guide 67

are apparent and easily understood, such as人 (human),男 (man),日 (sun), 山

(mountain),木 (woods),马 (horse),车 (vehicle), and一 (one). Consequently, the

number of entries inRG are far fewer than those inHistorianZhou’s Primer, totalling

only 2,091 entries and covering 4,300 characters, among which 623 are common

words and expressions. In the Wrst three chapters of RG,more than 2,000words and

expressions are dealt with, accounting for almost half of its total number. As to the

sources of these words and expressions, the majority of them come from the pre-

Qin classics, except for a few taken from dialects and folklores.

RG has three distinctive features in its entry coverage. First, it puts greater

emphasis on comprehensiveness. For the nineteen chapters in RG, the Wrst three

deal with general words and expressions in language, and the remaining sixteen

chapters deal with terms of an encyclopedic nature. Second, more attention is

paid to frequency in the use of diYcult words. Word frequency study, which

started in the Wrst half of the twentieth century, became one of the focal points of

modern lexicography. RG, however, had already made use of frequency counts in

selecting entry words around 200 bc. As mentioned previously, the linguistic

principle of interpretation adopted in RG was ‘to diVerentiate without confu-

sion’. In other words, what were diVerentiated were those synonyms, near

synonyms, or diYcult words that were likely to be confusing. In the Preface to

RG (<尔雅�序篇>), there is such a remark: Interpreting Exegesis and Interpreting

Words are to relate ancient characters to contemporary ones and see how they

diVer; Interpreting Rhetoric deals with the form and structure of characters.

Ancient characters had been diVerent from what they are in contemporary

times. They were more likely to puzzle language learners. These three chapters

aimed to help learners see more clearly the diVerences between these commonly

encountered confusable words so as to get a good command of the Chinese

language. According to relevant statistics, these Wrst three chapters diVerentiated

623 groups of words, involving more than 2,000 words and expressions, which

should fall into the scope of core vocabulary. As the number of the most common

words in a language usually stands at around 3,000, inference can be made that

most of the words RG chose to explain were in common use at the time of its

compilation. Third, more than half of the characters interpreted in RG are from

The Book of Songs. Almost all the headword characters in the Wrst three chapters

are from The Book of Songs and Interpreting Rhetoric is a direct interpretation of

the four-character poems in The Book of Songs. Why did RG concentrate so much

on The Book of Songs? This is possibly attributed to the strong instructive role that

The Book of Songs played at that time – A word can revive a nation; if one fails to

study one has no say in any matter, and all elegant language is in The Book of

Songs (from The Analects of Confucius).


Features of entry arrangementRG naturally follows the compilation style established in Historian Zhou’s Primer

andThe Cangjie Primer as they are the pioneers of similar endeavours. Entries in RG

are arranged according to themeanings they designate: words that are synonymous,

near synonymous, or related are collected and put in one chapter, or sometimes

even in one semantic group. So the arrangement of words in RG, to a certain extent,

reXects the structure of the knowledge and culture during the period of the Qin and

Han Dynasties. For instance, people at that time thought that roads and bridges ‘all

start from the court and they should be put under Interpreting Court’. In the present

day, however, roads, bridges, and the court are all classiWed into the Weld of civil

engineering. Unfortunately, the notion of civil engineering had not been concep-

tualized and lexicalized at that time. The practice of putting祭名 (sacriWcing),讲武

(warring aVairs), and旌旂 (banners and Xags) under the title of Interpreting the

Heavens is ascribable to the fact that they are the grand events related to the king’s

activity though they do not belong to things in heaven. In sacriWcing, whole cattle

are roasted like burning a Wre in heaven; warring aVairs are like the behaviour of

God; and waving banners and Xags will aVect the normal movement of the sun and

moon. All these things cannot be dealt with under other titles but can only be

attached to Interpreting theHeavens. These features indicate that the arrangement of

entries in RG is an epitome of the notion that ‘the heaven and the human are one’.

Mode of deWnition in RGThough used as an instructional aid, RG was actually an indispensable explanatory

complement toHistorian Zhou’s Primer, inwhich explanatory notes were regretfully

missing. RG aimed at explaining fully the diVerences between ancient and contem-

porary words and expressions and diVerentiating adequately the physical properties

and appearances of objects. All the diVerent modes of deWnitions in RG are

built upon this principle. They include direct interpretation (直训), general inter-

pretation (通训), separate interpretation (分训), mutual interpretation (互训),

factorial interpretation (递训), antonymous interpretation (反训), phonetic inter-

pretation (声训), delimiting interpretation (设立界说), and descriptive (描写)

or analogical (比拟) interpretation. Hu Pu’an (胡朴安, Hu Pu’an, 1937, 1983)

summarized RG’s deWnition modes as follows:

(a) Identical characters with diVerent interpretations The same character in

diVerent texts is interpreted diVerently but these interpretations are in

essence the same. Interpreting Exegesis contains entries like 幠, 厖: 大也

and 幠, 厖, 有也, in which 幠 and 厖 are interpreted as either 大 (big)

the ready guide 69

or 有 (possessive). The Book of Changes (<易�杂卦>) has the statement

of大有,众也, in which大 and有 are interpreted as众 (many). Thus,大

and有 both have the meaning of ‘rich and abundant’.

(b) DiVerent words with identical interpretations Interpreting Exegesis con-

tains entries like 皇、王:君也, in which 皇 (emperor) and 王 (king) are

interpreted as君 (monarch). In other words, 皇 and 王 are just the same

in meaning. In Hong Fan (<洪范�五行传>), there is an expression 王极

(king’s extreme power) as in建用王极, which is sometimes phrased also

as 皇极 (royal power).

(c) Identical interpretations with diVerent meanings Interpreting Exegesis

contains entries like 治、肆、古, 故也, in which 故 has two meanings.

According to Wang Yinzhi (王引之, 1766–1834), 治 and 古 should be

interpreted as故 as it is used in久故 (long-lasting and old) and肆 should

be interpreted as 故 when it is used for 语词 (words and expressions)

(from The Interpretation of Classics and Scriptures, <经义述闻>).(d) DiVerent interpretations with identical meanings Interpreting Exegesis

contains entries like 俶, 始也 and 俶, 作也, in which 俶 is interpreted

diVerently, either as始 (commencing, beginning) or as 作 (original). In

The Book of Songs (<诗经�駉>), there is 思马斯作, in which 作 is

interpreted as 始, as in 作, 始也 (from Mao’s Exegesis). Thus, 始 and

作, used to interpret俶, have the same meaning ‘original’.

(e) Antonymous interpretation Interpreting Exegesis contains entries like 愉,

乐也, and 愉,劳也, in which 愉 is explained with two words opposite in

meaning:乐 (happy) and劳 (laborious).

(f) Self-interpretation The contemporary character is employed to interpret

its ancient counterpart. Interpreting Exegesis contains an entry like于,於

也, in which于 is interpreted as於. According to Duan Yucai, whenever

于 is used in The Book of Songs and The Book of Ancient Texts,於 is used

correspondingly in The Analects of Confucius.

(g) Phonetic interpretation Words are interpreted with words of similar or

identical pronunciation. Interpreting Exegesis contains entries like 序, 绪

也, and晋,进也, inwhich序 (order, sequence) is interpreted as绪 (mood)

and晋 (promotion) as进 (progression).序 and绪 are pronounced in the

same way as /xu/, and晋 and进 as /jin/. The deWning character and the

deWned character share the same pronunciation. Likewise, Interpreting

Words contains an entry like幕,暮也, in which幕 (screen) is interpreted

as暮 (dusk) and they are both pronounced as /mu/.

(h) Circular interpretation Interpreting Exegesis contains these two entries:

法、则、刑、范、矩、律,常也 and刑、范、律、矩、则,法也. In the


Wrst entry,法, along with several other characters, is interpreted as常 and,

in the second entry, 法 is used as the deWning character to explain other

synonymous characters:刑、范、律、矩、则.

In addition, there are two special cases in relation to RG’s modes of deWnition.

One is the so-called ‘two deWnitions in one entry (二义同条)’, as in the case of

台、朕、赉、畀、卜、阳, 予也 in Interpreting Exegesis. According to Wang

Yinzhi,台、朕、阳 should be interpreted as予 (for), like予 in予我 (for me),

and赉、畀、卜 as予 (to), like予 in赐予 (grant to) (from The Interpretation of

Classics and Scriptures). The other is to employ an adjacent character in an

expression for interpretation. For instance, Interpreting Exegesis contains an

entry like 惄, 饥也, which could be traced back to one line in The Book of Songs

–惄如调饥.饥 is adjacent to惄 and饥 is used synonymously to interpret惄.

Illustrative citationsRG’s citations are chieXy quotations from those classic works. They serve as

conWrmation and veriWcation of the interpretations of characters in the texts and

supplement illustrative citations in textbooks, such as Historian Zhou’s Primer.

One distinctive feature of the illustrative citations in RG is that they are

implicitly embedded in the deWnitions. The practice was a direct consequence

of the ‘Burning Book Event’. Most of the citations were taken from the classic

works in the Pre-Qin Dynasty, which had been included in the list of books to be

burned. The educationists who were familiar with these classic works had to

resort to this covert means to cover up citation sources. The citations from The

Book of Songs account for approximately one tenth of RG’s total citations. For

instance, in Interpreting Exegesis, there are citations like:

26. 是刈是濩, 濩, 煮之也。

(In是刈是濩, 濩 means 煮 ‘boil’.)

27. 有客宿宿, 言再宿也。

(If there is a guest coming, then there is a need to talk about asking him to

stay for another night.)

28. 其虚其徐, 威仪容止也。

(其虚其徐 means ‘to behave elegantly in the extreme’.)

In Interpreting the Heavens, there are citations like:

29. 是类是祃,师祭也。

(是类是祃 means ‘to oVer sacriWces to one’s teacher’.)

the ready guide 71

30. 既伯既祷, 马祭也。

(既伯既祷 means ‘to use horses as sacriWces’.)

31. 乃立冢土, 戎丑攸行: 起大事,动大众,必先有事乎社而后出,谓之宜。

(‘乃立冢土, 戎丑攸行’ means ‘In order to initiate a big event or to

mobilize the masses, the Wrst thing to do is to sacriWce before taking

action. This is called ‘‘appropriateness’’ ’.)

32. 振旅阗阗:出为治兵, 尚威武也;入为振旅,反尊卑也。

(振旅阗阗 means ‘when out, discipline the soldiers for a show of mighti-

ness; when in, heighten the spirit of the army in order to challenge the

social classiWcation’.)

And in Interpreting Livestock, there is a citation like:

33. 既差我马, 差,择也。

(In既差我马, 差 ‘to diVerentiate’ means择 ‘to pick out’.)

The other major citation sources in RG are Shi Zi, The Songs of Chu (<楚辞>), Zhuang Zi, Lie Zi (<列子>), The National Language, and Huai Nan

Zi (<淮南子>).

The major compiling practices in RG, such as arranging headwords on the

basis of their semantic categorization, deWning words in multiple ways, and

adopting illustrative citations from classic works, have come down all the way

to the present day and have become established in modern dictionary compil-

ation. In the history of lexicography in China, under the inXuence of RG, there

have been a series of no less than one hundred dictionaries with the character雅

in the title, e.g. <小尔雅> (The Pocket Ready Guide, compiled in the name of

Kong Fu (孔鲋) at the end of the Qin Dynasty), <广雅> (The Broad Ready

Guide, compiled by Zhang Yi (张揖) in the Three Kingdoms period), <埤雅>(The Augmented Ready Guide, compiled by Lu Dian (陆佃, 1042–1102) in the

Song Dynasty), <通雅> (The General Ready Guide, compiled by Fang Yizhi (方

以智) in the Ming Dynasty) and <比雅>(The Contrastive Ready Guide, compiled

by Hong Liangji (洪亮吉) in the Qing Dynasty). These dictionaries have inher-

ited and capitalized upon RG’s deWnition modes, and stylistic rules and layout.

They have made a timely supplementary record of newly coined words and

expressions and met the needs of their society and times. Speaking from the

perspective of language learning and dictionary standardization, The Contem-

porary Chinese Dictionary (<现代汉语词典>) compiled by the Language

Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, can be assumed

to be a continuation of RG in terms of its format and compilation style, its

function for standardization, and its role in instructing students to learn Chinese

characters.


5.4 the cultural and academicimplications of rg

As indicated above, RG was originally compiled as a teaching aid. But, in the time

of Emperor Wen’s reign, RG itself was considered as a textbook and, in the Tang

Dynasty, it was further elevated and ranked among the scriptures. From the

perspective of lexicography, it is the Wrst comprehensive dictionary in Chinese

civilization that is semantically oriented, that is, in order to diVerentiate the

meanings of commonly used characters in literary language. From a functional

perspective, it bears the distinctive features of a scholarly dictionary in the sense

that ‘the linguistic data of a scholarly dictionary usually come from literary

sources or documentary recordings in the development of a language’ (Yong

Heming, 2003:62).

Since RG was intended for teaching assistance, its chief function was Wrstly to

help solve children’s puzzles in learning Chinese characters. After the compilation

of RG, people formed a new habit – ‘in reading ancient books, keep an RG handy

so as to understand the diVerences between ancient words and expressions and

their contemporarycounterparts’ (TheBook of theHanDynasty).RGwas especially

beneWcial in helping children to appreciate meaning classiWcation and categor-

ization in the Chinese language, for instance, ‘to know more about the names of

birds, beasts, grasses, and trees’ (from Guo Pu’s Preface to The Annotated Ready

Guide).

The second function of RG was to help to interpret ancient scriptures. In other

words, it is ‘surely the ford to wade across the river and the keys to play musical

instruments’ (from Guo Pu’s Preface to The Annotated Ready Guide). It is in this

sense that Qian Daxin (钱大昕, 1728–1804) made the statement that ‘in order to

fully appreciate the essence of the Six Classics one must begin with RG ’.

From a linguistic perspective, RG should be regarded as the forerunner

of exegetic works in the philological history of China. The name of 训诂学

(exegesis) simply came from the subtitles of the chapters in RG, namely, 释诂

(Interpreting Exegesis) and 释训 (Interpreting Interpretation). The exegetic values

of RG lie in its interpretation of linguistic data from the classic works in the

Pre-Qin Dynasties and its preservation of the semantics of ancient characters and

their evolution. These linguistic data are priceless assets for scholars of later

generations to conduct further textual researches. For instance, 宫 bears the

meaning of ‘surround’ in the Pre-Qin times but this usage became extinct

after the Han Dynasty. Without such knowledge, it is highly likely there would

the ready guide 73

be a misunderstanding of the meaning of the character 霍 as in大山宫小山, 霍

(霍: big mountains surrounded by small mountains, from Interpreting Moun-

tains). For another instance, in Interpreting Relatives, there are entries like ‘妻之

父为外舅, 妻之母为外姑’ (The father of wife is uncle-in-law, and the mother

of wife is aunt-in-law) and ‘妇称夫之父曰舅, 称夫之母曰姑’ (The father of

husband is called uncle, and the mother of husband is called aunt). How could

we interpret these seeming misuses of the titles of ‘aunt- or uncle(-in-law)’? This

stems from a special Chinese marriage custom in ancient times, during which

period socialization was very limited and a young man could be permitted to

marry the daughter of his uncle or his aunt and a young girl could also gain

permission to marry the son of her uncle or her aunt. Considering such a

marriage arrangement, one would not be surprised to have ‘mixed’ uses of titles

for relatives.

The study of RG started in the Han Dynasty. During the reign of Emperor

Wen, the position of doctor was assigned to conduct RG studies and there were

scholars interested in adding explanatory notes to it. Great achievements were

made in the study of RG from the Jin Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty. The most

prominent accomplishment is Guo Pu’s The Annotated Ready Guide, whose

inXuence is profound and far-reaching. This landmark work has several features:

Wrstly, it contains a great number of citations; secondly, it serves as a bridge

between the contemporary and the ancient and describes the origins of words

and their evolutional changes; thirdly, it summarizes the modes of deWnition.

Xing Bing’s (邢昺) The RectiWcation of the Annotated Ready Guide (<尔雅注疏>)is notable for its abundant citations and its good use of the phonetics of

characters to interpret their meanings, which is a valuable addition to Guo Pu’s

The Annotated Ready Guide.

The study of RG reached an unprecedented peak in the Qing Dynasty. The

research of scholars of this period involve collation, recollection of lost literature,

addition, revision and correction, phonetic interpretation, semantic rectiWcation,

textual research, and deWnitional citation. The most outstanding attainments are

The RectiWed Exegesis of the Ready Guide (<尔雅正义>, compiled by Shao Jinhan

(邵晋涵,1785) and The Exegesis of the Ready Guide (<尔雅义疏>, compiled by

Hao Yixing (郝懿行, 1825). An inXuential contemporary work on RG is The

Contemporary Annotated Ready Guide (<尔雅今注>) compiled by Xu Zhaohua

(徐朝华, 1987), whose notes are written in contemporary Chinese. This work

embraces the achievements of scholars both of the past and present. Its utilization

of the newly unearthed Jiaguwen and Jin scriptures to seek the semantics of

ancient characters is especially impressive and is an advantage never enjoyed

before. In a sense, the philosophic ideas of conceptual categorization embedded


in the classiWcation of names and objects in RG have exerted direct inXuence

upon the politics and academic undertakings of ancient China. For instance, the

hierarchy of monarchs and the teacher-apprentice system in academia have also

been the dominant philosophic ideals prevailing in the Welds of politics and

academic research.

In deWning names and objects, RG adopted a policy of giving general portraits.

This aim of diVerentiating things on a level of generality and integrity has

inXuenced the development of art and medicine in the particular Chinese

tradition. Western arts are good at description and traditional Chinese arts are

good at capturing the image which lies between the likeness and the unlikeness.

Concrete descriptions are likely to neglect the expressiveness of the image, which

can only be appreciated by capturing the general eVects. Moreover, Chinese

medicine pays more attention to dialectical balance (like yin and yang),

the unity of the human system functioning as a whole, and diagnostic compre-

hensiveness, whereas Western medicine focuses on individual symptoms, the

analytical diagnosis of separate parts, and diagnostic empiricism.

Finally, the values embedded in RG have inXuenced the thinking and behav-

iour of the Chinese in later generations. For instance, Interpreting Exegesis

contains the citation ‘张仲孝友, 善父母为孝, 善兄弟为友’. In this quotation,

孝 is interpreted as ‘being Wlial to parents’ and友 interpreted as ‘being good to

brothers’. These moral implications of Wlial piety and brotherliness have always

been dominant in diVerent walks of social life in the history of China.

the ready guide 75

6

THE DICTIONARY OFDIALECTAL WORDS – THEBEGINNINGS OF DIALECTDICTIONARIES IN CHINA

SOCIOLINGUISTICS, as an interdisciplinary branch of learning, emerged in

the 1960s in America. Its principles and research methodology have been grad-

ually established over the past few decades. In terms of regional dialect studies,

however, there is still much virgin territory to be cultivated. The Dictionary of

Dialectal Words (hereinafter abbreviated to DDW) is the Wrst dialect dictionary

in the history of Chinese lexicography and is thought to be the Wrst of its kind in

the history of world lexicography. This dictionary will deWnitely provide new

insights into dialect studies, the compilation of dialect dictionaries and other

types of language dictionaries, and also the general study of sociolinguistics.

6.1 the historical background to ddw’s birth

China is one of the countries that has the richest resources of dialects and the

longest history in the study of dialects. In remote times, in the region of the

central plains, the Chinese people lived divided into tribes. They would basically

use the same language so that they could communicate without the help of

a translator. A good account of this situation is provided in the following

quotation from The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals: ‘In the nations where people

wear hats and belts and where carts and boats can reach, there would be no need

for interpreters. However, all around the central plains there lived people of

various nationalities. A glimpse of their life and living conditions could be had

from the following description: In the East lived the Yi (夷) people who had their

hair unbound, their bodies painted, and their food uncooked; in the South lived

theMan (蛮) people who had their foreheads inscribed, feet crossed in sleep, and

their food uncooked; in the West lived the Rong (戎) people who had their hair

unbound, body covered with hides, and no grains cooked as food; and in the

North lived theDi (狄) people whowore feathers, lived in caves, and had no grains

to eat’ (王文锦, Wang Wenjin, 2001:176). It would never be possible for the

Chinese tribes to communicate with those ‘exotic’, ‘foreign’, or indeed ‘barbarian’

people without the help of interpreters. In the Zhou Dynasty, there were special

departments and oYcials to take charge of foreign aVairs, including translation

and training of interpreters. The head of the department was called 象胥 (inter-

preting oYcial), whose duty was succinctly described in the following quotation

from The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty : ‘The interpreting oYcial is in charge of

foreign aVairs in the small kingdoms of Man, Yi, Min (闽), Hao (貉), Rong, and

Di. He is responsible for conveying the imperial edict issued by the Emperor to

these small neighbouring kingdoms and announcing it to them so that peaceful

relationships can be maintained. When messengers from these kingdoms arrive,

he will cooperate and negotiate with them before they meet the Emperor at an

appropriate ceremony; when they leave he will take charge of the gifts to be

presented to them and hold ceremonies to see them oV in accordance with certain

rites.’ The division of labour among the interpreters was speciWc and detailed. As

to the function of translation, it has been pointed out in the following description:

People from diVerent regions speak diVerent languages and have diVerent cus-

toms, likes and dislikes, and they cannot communicate with each other or

understand one another. To make what they think and what they want under-

standable, the indispensable means is interpretation, which is called ji (寄) in the

east, xiang (象) in the south, diti (狄鞮) in thewest, and yi (译) in the north (Wang

Wenjin, 2001:176). No later than the Zhou Dynasty, a common language, called

Standard Language (雅言) was gradually taking shape in the Yellow River basin

and formed something of a contrast to the dialects spoken at the time. The dialects

of the Chinese language, according to The Book of Songs, were already classiWed

into Wfteen regions. According to Ban Gu (1962:1640):

All people have the endowed nature of Wve constant virtues. They may instantiate as rigid

or gentle, quiet or tempered, which will further manifest as the diVerences in their

the dictionary of dialectal words 77

accents. This aspect is closely related to the water they drink and the land they farm and

live on. It is thus called feng (风, disposition). The other aspect is related to attitude: to

like or dislike, to take or discard, to move or wait. These things are closely related to the

mood of the Emperor or the nobles. It is thus called su (俗, customs, conventions).

One outstanding manifestation of language diVerences on the part of the people

from diVerent regions is their pronunciation – a major part of dialect study. In 221,

after the Wrst Emperor united China, ‘Writing Same Character’ was adopted as a

national language policy for the standardization of Chinese characters. Language

(inclusive of dialects) and characters were considered independent notions and

linguistic facts in language studies. As a result, only one of the variants of a character

was chosen as the standard form and allowed into oYcial use, while the other

variations were to be eliminated. The situation of dialects, however, had not been

visibly aVected until the Han Dynasty when the country became more powerful

politically and economically. Material exchange between diVerent regions increased

enormously and the communication between people in diVerent regions became

more popular and frequent. In addition, migration alsomade its contribution to the

trendintheformationanddevelopmentof theChinesenation.ThediVerencesamong

the diVerent dialects would hinder or even prevent eYcient and eVective communi-

cation. A new type of dictionary was called for in which the vocabulary of diVerent

dialects would be collected under one cover and explained in the standard language.

Every year in August throughout the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, the central

government would send ‘post-cart oYcials’ to make a survey of the dialects in

diVerent regions. ‘Post-cart’ refers to a kind of light cart especially designed for the

oYcial surveyors of dialects. The reason the central government conducted such a

dialect survey was that the (post-cart) oYcial had the duty to investigate popular

folk songs andcustoms indiVerent regions andacquainthimselfwith the similarities

and diVerences between them. He took charge of phonetic and musical inquiries

nationwide so that the Emperor would be well aware of customs without having to

leave the court (The Huayang National Annals, <华阳国志·卷十>). We can learn

from this that dialect survey had been a traditional practice of the government. Its

purposes were mainly to investigate language use in diVerent dialectal regions, to

learn social customs and conventions, and to keep the central government in close

touch with the local governments. The records of the Wndings of these surveys were

‘kept in the courts of the Zhou and Qin Dynasties’, but were abandoned with the

vanishing of the QinDynasty (Duan Yucai et al., 2001:1434). There are records in the

literature of theHanDynasty about peoplewhoonce hadaccess to these surveys. For

instance, as mentioned in one of Yang Xiong’s letters to Liu Xin, two scholars,

namely Yan Junping (严君平) in Chengdu and Linlu Wengru (林闾翁孺) in


Linqiong, had seen some of ‘the memorials from post-cart oYcials’. Unfortunately,

the materials they gained access to were limited. Yan Junping only had access to

material of approximately 1,000 characters, and Linlu Wengru only had the chance

to examine the styles and outlines of these memorials. In The Book of the Han

Dynasty, there are also records of oYcials being commissioned to travel around and

examine customs, including dialect investigations. Such missions were intended to

help the Emperor learn about the life of his subjects. Without doubt, language

investigation was part of their mission.

In the history of dialect studies in China, DDWwas the Wrst to put forward the

notion of dialectal region in a systematic way. To demarcate dialectal regions,

what must be done Wrst is to draw isogloss lines, and then dialectal regions can be

identiWed according to the distribution of these lines. DDW’s dialectal region

demarcation was done on a lexical basis and the methodology employed was the

so-called ‘central area induction’. As the central areas were normally capital cities

or economically important cities of ancient kingdoms, the delimiting lines of

dialectal regions would occasionally overlap. Generally speaking, the delimiting

lines of dialectal regions fall into three categories in DDW:

First, big dialectal regions are usually marked by关 (pass) (e.g. Han Gu Pass),

山 (mountain) (e.g. Mountain Xiao, Mountain Hua),河 and江(river) (e.g. the

Yellow River, the Yangtze River). DDW uses such expressions as 自关而东 (east

to the Pass), 自山而西 (west to the Mountain), 自河而北 (north to the Yellow

River), and 自江而北 (north to the Yangtze River) to designate big dialectal

regions.

Second, sub-dialectal regions are marked by the boundaries of small kingdoms

in the Zhou Dynasty or the boundaries of provinces and counties in the Han

Dynasty. The following is a list of the names of the kingdoms in the Zhou

Dynasty (1) and the names of provinces and counties in the Han Dynasty (2):

1. 秦、晋、赵、魏、韩、燕、郑、宋、齐、鲁、陈、楚、吴、越 (古国名)

(秦,晋,赵,魏,韩,燕,郑,宋,齐,鲁,陈,楚,吴, and越 are all the names of

ancient kingdoms.)

2. 冀、青、幽、徐、雍、梁、益、荆、扬、蜀 (州郡名) (冀, 青, 幽, 徐,

雍,梁,益,荆,扬, and蜀 are the names of ancient provinces and counties.)

Third, small dialectal regions are generally marked by river basin areas or

ancient place names. Here are some river names (3) and ancient place names (4):

3. 淮、泗、沅、澧、湘、瀑、汝、洌水(河名) (淮, 泗,沅, 澧, 湘, 瀑,汝,

and 洌水 are ancient river names.)

4. 周南、召南、郢、宛 (地名) (周南,召南,郢, and宛 are ancientplacenames.)


In the light of the above three dividing lines of regional dialects, DDWdivides

China’s Han Dynasty territories into fourteen dialectal regions (林语堂, Lin

Yutang, 1933:35–44): Qin and Jin Dialectal Region; Dialectal Region west of

Liang and Chu; Zhao and Wei Dialectal Region north of the Yellow River; Song,

Wei, and Wei Dialectal Region; Zheng, Han, and Zhou Dialectal Region; Qi and

Lu Dialectal Region; Yan and Dai Dialectal Region; North Bi and Korean Dialectal

Region; East Qi and Xu Dialectal Region; Chen, Ruyin, Jianghuai, and Chu

Dialectal Region; South Chu Dialectal Region; Wu, Yang, and Yue Dialectal

Region; West Qin Dialectal Region; Qin, Jin, and North Bi Dialectal Region. All

the dialectal words or expressions collected in DDW fall into the domains of these

fourteen dialectal regions. The conceptualization of dialectal regions and their

demarcation laid a sound theoretical foundation for the compilation of DDW.

6.2 the background and motivationfor ddw’s compilation

Yang Xiong (53 bc–ad 18, with Zi Yun as his alias), the compiler of DDW, was born

in Chengdu, Sichuan Province today. According to Yang Xiong’s biography in The

Book of the Han Dynasty, he loved reading when he was still a child. He had no great

interest in couplets or articles and his learning in exegetic studies was not very

remarkable, but his extensive reading was especially distinguished, with almost

nothing under the sun not being embraced by him. It was said that he was a

stutterer and was not good at communication but that he was often seen lost in

deep thought. He lived a quiet, easy, and simple life without any addiction to

materialism. He would never claim to do something to gain renown. His property

was nomore than ten liang (equal to 0.5 kg) of gold and the grain in the barnwas no

more than a hundred jin (equal to 50 kg). He did, however, lead a pleasant and

happy life. He was magnanimous to others. He was fastidious about reading and

was fond only of masterpieces. He did not like to make friends with people of high

social status if it was against his own inclination. In all his life, Yang Xiong remained

an oYcial of low rank. He had not been promoted throughout the reigns of three

Emperors until the rank of ‘senior oYcial (大夫)’ was conferred upon him, merely

because he was senior in oYce. He seldom involved himself in aVairs of state. He

was regarded as a man of letters, a philosopher, and a linguist in the Western

Han Dynasty. His major literary works include The Sweet Spring (<甘泉>), Eastof the River (<河东>), andThe FeatherHunting (<羽猎>) in the formof a fu-poem


(赋, a poetic style of essay). The Deepest Mystery (<太玄>), Standard Words

(<法言>), Collections of Cangjie Exegesis (<仓颉训纂>), and DDW are among

his best-known academic writings.

Yang Xiong was a master of the standard national language. He was in a good

position to diVerentiate the dialects in diVerent regions as he had convenient

access to the Wrst-handmaterials of dialectal surveys. In his early forties he moved

from his hometown to the capital city of Chang’an. From then on, he held an

oYce and lived there. This provided him with the opportunity to become

familiarized with the standard language andmake frequent contacts with oYcials,

soldiers, and ordinary people from all over the country. He would keep a writing

implement handy to note down the ‘foreign’ languages whenever he met people

from other regions. He sorted these materials, put them into diVerent classes, and

added necessary explanatory notes. As there had been no special symbols, he

employed characters to notate pronunciation, which demanded a good command

of a great many characters on the part of the investigator. Sometimes he was

required to create new characters for those dialects without a writing system.

Thus, he acquired a Xuent mastery of weird characters of ancient times, for

instance, the variants of characters of the Six States during the Warring States

Period.Moreover, he had the experience of writing a textbook for children to learn

characters – Collections of Cangjie Exegesis. His accomplishments in exegetic

studies and his experience in investigating dialects endowed him with almost all

the necessary qualiWcations to write the monumental DDW.

From the viewpoint of dialect investigation, DDW’s compilation is not acci-

dental but a continuation of traditional practice in the investigation of dialects in

the Zhou and Qin Dynasties. As far as Yang Xiong’s academic interest was con-

cerned, it is not surprising to Wnd that his fondness for imitation was a part of his

nature. As illustrated in The Book of the Han Dynasty, he was really interested in

the ancient classics and scriptures. He was determined to make himself known to

later generations by writing good articles. He regarded The Book of Changes as the

greatest scripture and thus wrote The Deepest Mystery; he considered The Analects

of Confucius as the greatest biography and wrote Standard Words; he took The

Cangjie Primer to be the best history book and wrote Collections of Cangjie

Exegesis; he took Yu Didactics (<虞箴>) to be the best of its type and wrote

State Didactics (<州箴>); as for the fu-poem, he considered Li Sao (<离骚>) themost profound, though its profundity made it less popular, and he believed that

the most beautiful wording of a fu-poem was to be found in Sima Xiangru’s

writing, so he wrote prose in such a genre. He started by fully appreciating the

essence of all these writings and wrote accordingly following his own inclination.

He paid more attention to internal things, often neglected by his contemporaries,


and less to external forms and superWcial features. When it came to dictionaries,

he believed that there was no better dictionary than The Ready Guide and so he

compiled DDW, which was only one of his series of imitational works. Let us

compare two entries from these two dictionaries:

5. <尔雅�释诂>:佥、咸、胥, 皆也。

(佥,咸 and胥 all mean 皆 ‘all, altogether’.) (from The Ready Guide)

6. <方言>: 佥、胥, 皆也。自山而东五国之郊曰佥, 东齐曰胥。(卷七) (佥

and 胥 mean 皆 ‘altogether’. The outskirts of the Wve states east of the

mountain use佥, and East Qi use胥.) (Volume 7)

From the above two entries, we can see that DDWdoes not completely follow the

same pattern asThe ReadyGuide in deWning皆. InThe ReadyGuide,皆 is deWned by

means of synonyms or near synonyms, which are put together and interpreted as a

whole;whereasDDWprovidesnotonly synonymsornear-synonymexplanationsbut

alsomore detailed information concerning dialectal use and other language varieties:

whichwords and expressions belong towhich regional dialects, which is the standard

expression in the common language, and which are archaic and which have under-

gone changes in the Western Han Dynasty. As early as the Wrst century, Yang Xiong

conducted such comprehensive and in-depth linguistic analyses of complicated

languagephenomena,which is a clear indicationof the sophisticationof his linguistic

observation, analysis, and reasoning. To conclude, DDWimitated and wasmodelled

onThe ReadyGuide. It was, however, notmerely a product of imitation but a creative

work with features that made it distinct fromThe Ready Guide.

Dialectal vocabulary occupies a prominent position in DDW. How did Yang

Xiong obtain the necessary data of regional dialects? In 11 bc, when he was an

oYcial in Chang’an, he implored Emperor Cheng for leave to concentrate on

academic research with ‘no salary for three years’. The Emperor not only granted

him permission but also gave an order to retain his normal salary, in addition to

granting ‘an award of sixty thousand qian for purchasing pens and ink and a

special passport to the stone houses to read books stored there.’ From that time

on, Yang Xiong began purposefully to collect dialectal vocabulary nationwide.

Carrying his writing brush and oil-soaked silk cloth with him, he inquired into

diVerent regional dialects and kept the Wndings of his survey on record. The

subjects of his investigation were people from diVerent dialectal regions, that is,

the oYcials who would report to the central government, students taking oYcial

tests, and soldiers relieving garrisons. A general picture of how he carried out his

survey can be seen from a letter he wrote as a reply to Liu Xin, which states, that

when the student candidates vying for oYcial positions came from various places

to the capital to take the oYcial examination and the soldiers to relieve garrisons,


he would call on themwith his three-inch brush and a four-foot-long piece of oil-

soaked silk cloth. He would ask them the ‘foreign’ words and expressions in their

native tongues. When he returned he would write what he had learned on the

wooden tablets. His investigation lasted for twenty-seven years. As is described

above, Yang Xiong’s investigations were diVerent from those oYcial surveys

carried out in the Zhou and Qin Dynasties. His investigations were mainly

face-to-face interviews with the subjects speaking dialects as their native tongues

and were all conducted by himself. His work procedures included collecting the

data and checking them, then sorting them and classifying them into diVerent

categories, and Wnally deWning them and Wnalizing the writing.

In sociolinguistic investigations of modern times, great emphasis is laid upon

collectingdata fromactual languageuse, followedbyquantitativedata analyses and

systematic and rigorous argumentation. The methodology developed by William

Labov, theAmerican sociolinguist, has attracted a lot of attention andhas gradually

gained popularity in today’s sociolinguistic survey. If a comparison is made

between Labov’s method and that of Yang Xiong’s, it is easy to see that they have

adopted basically the same methodology, but the time gap is almost 2,000 years.

Taking this time gap into account, one could not help marvelling at Yang Xiong’s

ingenuity and creativity – in spending twenty-seven years carrying out a nation-

wide dialectal investigation by scientiWc and rigorous means entirely by himself.

DDWwasoriginallydesigned inWfteenvolumes, butunfortunatelyonly thirteen

were completed. Ayear or two before Yang Xiong died, Liu Xinwas ordered by the

Emperor to compile a catalogue called Seven Strategies. He wanted to include Yang

Xiong’s DDW in his new book and asked Yang Xiong to show him his manuscript.

Yang Xiong declined his request and said: ‘Its wording may still include contra-

dictory expressions and needs to be reconsidered and revised. There aremore data

to be collected and sorted andmore doubtful questions to be clariWed.’ Obviously,

when Liu Xin asked for themanuscript of DDW, the book was not complete. So he

asked Liu Xin to wait and promised to send the book to himwhen it was Wnalized.

Unfortunately, he died shortly afterwards. Through careful examination ofDDW’s

contents, we would be inclined to accept Yang Xiong’s excuse for not lending his

book to Liu Xin. In terms of DDW’s compilation style, it is easy to see that the

contents of the last two volumes were rather poorly written and edited. Look at the

following citations from the last two volumes of DDW:

7. 赵、肖, 小也。(十二卷)

(赵 and肖 mean 小 ‘small’.) (Volume 12)

8. 吹、扇,助也。(十二卷)

(吹 and扇 mean助 ‘assist’.) (Volume 12)


9. 裔、歴、助也。裔、旅,末也。(十三卷)

(裔 and歴mean助 ‘assist’, whereas裔 and旅mean末 ‘end’) (Volume 13)

10. 惧,病, 惊也。(十三卷)

(惧 and病 mean 惊 ‘panic’) (Volume 13)

Quite contrary to DDW’s style in previous parts, there were only brief deWni-

tional explanations in each entry, without provision of further detailed informa-

tion, for example, which regional dialects those expressions belonged to. This

oversimpliWed way of explanation was inconsistent with what had been given in

the previous eleven volumes. In a sense, this conWrms what he said to Liu Xin.

DDW was in fact an unWnished or at the very least unWnalized lexicographical

work, though it had come very close to completion.

6.3 the format and style of ddw

DDWoriginally comprised Wfteen volumes and had a selection of roughly 9,000

characters. The version available today consists of thirteen volumes and brings

together over 11,900 characters, distributed in 658 entries. There seems to be no

rigorous standards to go by in dividing the volumes, and the division is roughly

based on semantic categorization. Like The Ready Guide, DDW’s Wrst three

volumes are devoted to the explanation of words and expressions. Volume 4

explains garment terms; Volume 5 hardware, furniture, and farming implements;

Volumes 6 and 7 words and expressions again; Volume 8 animal terms; Volume 9

terms for carts, boats, and weapons; Volume 10 words and expressions again;

Volume 11 names of insects; and Volumes 12 and 13 words and expressions again.

It is apparent that DDW took its semantic classiWcation from The Ready Guide.

Principles for character selection and coverageSpeaking from the perspective of time and location, there are three guidelines for

DDW’s selection of characters as headwords. First, the words and expressions of

the Pre-Qin Dynasty are to be selected and are divided into two subcategories:

those out of use and those still in use. Consider the following citations:

11. ‘追,随也。’ ‘即, 就也。’ ‘冲,动也。’ (卷十二)

(追 ‘chase’ means 随 ‘follow’; 即 ‘right away’ means 就 ‘at once’; 冲

‘charge’ means动 ‘motion’.) (Volume 12)


12. ‘爽,过也。’ ‘惧, 惊也。’ ‘捞,取也。’ (卷十三)

(爽 ‘complete’ means过 ‘Wnished’; 惧 ‘fright’ means 惊 ‘panic’; 捞 ‘grab’

means取 ‘take’.) (Volume 13)

Second, selection is made of the words and expressions in contemporary

speech which are supposed to originate from diVerent regions, especially the

dialects of the Chinese language. Words and expressions from the Qin and Jin

dialects, which appear 109 and 107 times respectively, occupy a signiWcant

position.

Third, the words and expressions of some minority languages are also

recorded, for instance, the words and expressions of Korean, Manchurian,

Mongolian, Miao, Tujia, Zhuang, and Dong nationalities.

The words and expressions treated in DDWare taken mainly from Wve sources.

The Wrst is General Language (通语), also called Ordinary Language (凡语), or

Ordinary General Language (凡通语). General language diVers from Standard

Language in that the latter refers to the common language used mainly by the Six

States to the east of Mountain Taihang during the periods of the Spring and

Autumn and the Warring States. General Language, however, refers to the

common language used in the Western Han Dynasty, which was based mainly

on the regional dialects of Qin and Jin and had Chang’an dialect as its standard

pronunciation. Look at the following citations:

13. ‘胶, 谲,诈也。诈,通语也。’ (卷三)

(胶 and 谲 mean诈 ‘deceit’.诈 is General Language.) (Volume 3)

14. ‘箭: 自关而东谓之矢,江淮之间谓之鍭,关西曰箭。’ (卷九)

(箭 ‘arrow’ is called 矢 in the regions east of the Pass, 鍭 between the

Yangtze River and the Huai River, and 箭 in the regions west of the Pass.)

(Volume 9)

Second, some words and expressions are taken from General Language in wide

use or from General Language used in a certain region. Look at the following

citations:

15. ‘庸、恣、比、侹、更、佚, 代也。齐曰佚, 江淮陈楚之间曰侹馀, 四

方之通语也。’ (卷三)

(庸, 恣, 比,侹,更 and佚 mean代 ‘replace, change’,佚 in Qi state, and

侹馀 in the Chen and Chu regions between the Yangtze River and the

Huai River. They are General Language in all locations.) (Volume 3)

16. ‘昲,晒,干物也。杨楚通语也。’ (卷十)

(昲 and 晒 mean干物 ‘dry’. They are General Language in the Yang and

Chu regions.) (Volume 10)


Third, the great majority of words and expressions in DDW are taken from

every single dialectal region. Consider the following citations:

17. ‘冯,齘、苛: 怒也。楚曰冯, 小怒曰齘,陈谓之苛。’ (卷二)

(冯, 齘 and苛 mean 怒 ‘anger’, which is冯 in Chu State, 齘 in the region

of Xiaonu, and苛 in Chen State.) (Volume 2)

18. ‘班,彻,列也。北燕曰班,东齐曰彻。’ (卷三)

(班 and彻 mean列, which is 班 in the northern part of Yan State and彻

in the region of Eastern Qi.) (Volume 3)

Fourth, DDW also lists ‘transferred words’ or ‘substitutive words’, that is,

dialectal words that have undergone phonetic changes resulting from tribal

migration and time change. For instance:

19. ‘庸谓之倯,转语也。’ (卷三)

(庸 means 倯, and they are interchangeable.) (Volume 3)

In some places,庸 is dubbed倯 since they were vowel-rhyming and shared the

same meaning – ‘laziness’. 嫞 and庸 were generally interchangeable, which can

be conWrmed by the following citation from The Jade Chapters:

20. <玉篇>: ‘嫞,嬾女也。’

(嫞 is deWned as嬾女 ‘sluggish or lazy girl’.)

In contemporary Chinese, 倯 is written as 悚. The following conWrmative

citation is found in The Dictionary of Rhymes:

21. <广韵•钟韵>: ‘倯, 倯恭, 怯貌。’

(倯 and 倯恭 mean 怯貌 ‘frightened appearance’.)

The Wnal group of DDW’s selected words and expressions are ancient words or

ancient dialectal words whose usage is highly restricted in contemporary Chinese

language, which is a typical imitation of the compilation style of The Ready

Guide. Look at the following citation:

22. ‘敦、丰、厖、幠、般、嘏、奕、戎、京、奘、将, 大也。凡物之大貌

曰丰;厖, 深之大也;东齐海岱之间曰,或曰幠;宋鲁陈卫之间谓之嘏,或

曰戎;秦晋之间凡物壮大谓之嘏,或曰夏;秦晋之间凡人之大谓之奘,或

谓之壮;燕之北鄙,齐楚之郊或曰京,或曰将,皆古今语也。初,别国不相

往来之言也,今或同,而旧书雅记故俗语,不失其方,而后人不知,故为之

作释也。’ (卷一)

(敦,丰,厖,幠,般,嘏,奕,戎,京,奘 and将 are all deWned as大 (big). The

bigness of an object is called丰 whereas厖means the bigness of being deep,


which is also called幠 in the area between Eastern Qi and Haidai. In the area

of States like Song, Lu, Chen, and Wei, it is called 嘏 or戎. In both Qin and

Jin, the bigness of objects is called嘏 or夏, and the bigness of a man is called

奘 or壮. On the northern boundary of Yan and the overlapping area between

Qi and Chu, it is called京 or 将. These words are all from ancient sources

but still in current use. They resulted from lack of communication between

states. They may be similar to current characters but were treated as being

colloquial in old books. They had their ownmeanings, whichwere not known

to later generations, hence the need to deWne and explain them.) (Volume 1)

In ancient times, communication between diVerent regions was extremely

diYcult. They each had their own dialects and later those dialects might become

identical. The ancient books kept a record of those dialectal words and expres-

sions, but they were unfortunately unknown to later generations, which made it

necessary to add interpretative notes to them.

The deWnition style of DDWGenerally speaking, regional dialects diVer in three aspects: pronunciation,

vocabulary, and grammar. What DDWaims to do is to ‘look into the diVerences

between names and objects, without commenting on whether it is the right or

wrong pronunciation’ (Yan Zhitui, 1980:473), a spirit of descriptivism coming

into form only in the twentieth century. Evidently, it inherited the interpretative

tradition from The Ready Guide. The basic mode of deWnition in DDW is to list a

set of synonyms, then to use a common word to explain, and, Wnally, to explain

the diVerent names in diVerent regional dialects. Three deWnition modes are used

in DDW:

First, a common word is given at the Wrst place and then the diVerent names

in diVerent dialectal regions are explained accordingly. Look at the following

citation:

23. ‘布谷, 自关东西梁楚之间谓之结诰, 周魏之间谓之击谷, 自关而西或

谓之布谷。’ (卷八)

(布谷 ‘cuckoo’ is called ‘结诰’ in the area from the west of Guandong to

Liang and Chu,击谷 in the area between Zhou and Wei, and occasionally

布谷 in the area to the west of the Pass.) (Volume 8)

Second, a set of synonyms is listed at the Wrst place; then, a common word is

used to explain; and, Wnally, the diVerent names in diVerent regional dialects are

explained accordingly. This is the principal mode of deWnition in DDW and


approximately nine out of ten entries are written in such a mode. Consider the

following citation:

24. ‘咺、唏、灼、怛:痛也。凡哀泣而不止曰咺,哀而不泣曰唏。于方:则

楚言哀曰唏, 燕之外鄙, 朝鲜洌水之间少儿泣而不止曰咺。自关而西

秦晋之间凡大人少儿泣而不止谓之唴, 器极音绝亦谓之唴, 平原谓啼

极无声谓之唴哴, 楚谓之噭咷, 齐宋之间谓之喑,或谓之惄。’ (卷一)

(咺,唏,灼 and怛 all mean ‘hurt’ (痛). For a sad person, if he is weeping and

cannot help himself, it is called咺. And if he is sad only and is not weeping,

then it is called唏. As for regional dialects,哀 (sad) is called唏 in Chu. And

in the remote area of Yan and in the area between Korea and Lieshui,咺 is

used to refer to children’s non-stop crying. In the area from the west of the

Pass and between Qin and Jin, 唴 refers to the non-stop weeping of adults

and the non-stop crying of children.唴 is also used for musical instruments

when their sounds are so high-pitched that they produce no sounds. In the

plain area, when someone cries in such a high-pitched voice as to produce no

sound, it is called唴哴, while in Chu it is called噭咷; in the area betweenQi

and Song it is called喑 or惄.) (Volume 1)

Third, common words are employed to explain uncommon words. This mode

of deWnition evidently follows the example of The Ready Guide. Look at the

following citations:

25. ‘箇,枚也。’ (卷十二)

(箇 means枚 ‘a unit noun’.) (Volume 12)

26. ‘帍裱谓之被巾。’ (卷四)

(帍裱 is called 被巾 ‘blanket, bedclothes’.) (Volume 4)

In these two citations, the words to be deWned are at the front, but in some

cases the deWning words are placed at the front.

Although DDW copies from The Ready Guide in several ways, it bears some

distinctive features of its own. While The Ready Guide aims to explicate the

similarities and diVerences between the ancient and the contemporary words,

DDW concentrates on those aspects of words displaying regional diVerences.

Consider the following citations to illustrate the contrast:

27. <尔雅�释言>: ‘逆,迎也。’

(逆 means迎 ‘against, towards’.) (from The Ready Guide)

28. <方言�卷一>: ‘逢、逆,迎也。自关而东曰逆,自关而西或曰迎,或曰逢。’


(逢 and逆mean迎 (against, towards), which is逆 in the region east of the

Pass, and is also迎 in the regionwest of thePass; itmay alsobe逢.) (fromThe

Dictionary of Dialectal Words, Volume 1)

In The Ready Guide the synonyms listed in a deWnition all fall into the

vocabulary of the same language source, while in DDW, the synonyms fall into

the vocabularies of diVerent regional dialects. Look at the following citations:

29. <尔雅�释诂>: ‘如、适、之、嫁、徂、逝,往也。’

(如,适,之, 嫁,徂 and逝 mean往 ‘to, from’.) (from The Ready Guide)

30. <方言�卷一>: ‘嫁逝徂适, 往也。自家而出谓之嫁, 由女而出为嫁

也。逝,秦晋语也。徂,齐语也。适,宋鲁语也。往,凡语也。’

(嫁,逝,徂 and适mean往 ‘to, from’. If one leaves home or if a girl ismarried

out of a family, it is called 嫁,逝 in the Qin and Jin dialects,徂 in the Qi

dialect, and适 in the Song and Lu dialects.往 is used inOrdinary Language.)

(from The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, Volume 1)

In the Wrst citation from The Ready Guide, all the deWned words, like如, 适,

之, 嫁,徂, and逝 are taken from the so-called Standard Language, while in the

second citation, except for嫁, which is from the Standard Language, all the other

words are taken from various dialectal sources, like the Qin and Jin dialects, from

which 逝 comes, the Qi dialect, from which 徂 comes, and the Song and Lu

dialects, from which 适 comes. The deWning word往 comes from the so-called

Ordinary Language.

Pronunciation notationIn DDW, some General Language characters were employed as phonetic symbols

to denote dialectal characters. These characters were referred to by later gener-

ation scholars as ‘odd characters’. As early as 2,000 years ago, Yang Xiong

employed General Language characters as phonetic symbols to denote the pro-

nunciation of dialectal words in his dialect investigations, which was highly

original and was a clear reXection of his creative thought in linguistic philosophy.

Look at the following citations from DDW:

31. ‘凡大人少儿泣而不止谓之唴’ (卷一)

(If adults weep and kids cry without stop, it is called 唴.) (Volume 1)

32. ‘釥、嫽,好也。青徐海岱之间曰釥,或曰嫽’ (卷二)

(釥 and嫽mean好 ‘Wne, lovely’. It is釥 between Qingxu and Haidai, and

it may also be 嫽.) (Volume 2)


33. ‘劋、蹶, 狯也。秦晋之间曰狯。楚谓之劋, 或曰蹶。楚郑曰蒍, 或曰姡’

(卷二)

(劋 and 蹶 mean 狯 (crafty, cunning). It is 狯 between Qin and Jin,劋 in

the state of Chu, and it may also be 蹶. It is 蒍 in the states of Chu and

Zheng, and it may also be姡.) (Volume 2)

In contemporary Chinese, 唴 in the Wrst citation is now written and pro-

nounced as呛,釥 in the second citation as俏, and姡 in the third citation as猾.

Illustrative citationsOne of the principles for DDW’s scope of coverage is to encompass words and

expressions popular in contemporary spoken Chinese in the Han Dynasty.

However, since the dominant target language in academic research was classical

Chinese, the colloquial and dialectal characters were not in keeping with the

fashionable trend of academic studies at that time. Naturally, illustrative ex-

amples for DDW’s deWnitions were taken mainly from those well-written classic

texts. No citations were collected and presented from dialectal speech. From the

perspective of modern linguistics, the principles of DDW’s compilation are

highly representative of descriptivism and the principles of illustrative citations

would have to be viewed as being prescriptive.

6.4 the academic value and culturalinfluence of ddw

The chief purpose of the compilation of DDW is ‘to investigate the words and

expressions all over the Chinese territories and recover archaic words as far back

as six dynasties’ (from Guo Pu’s Preface to The Annotated Dictionary of Dialectal

Words). In other words, DDW lists words and expressions on both diachronic

and synchronic bases. Viewed from a lexicographical perspective, DDW should

be classiWed as a decoding dictionary (Yong Heming, 2003:25).

The linguistic value of DDWSynchronically, the linguistic value of DDW lies, Wrst of all, in the recording of

General Language current in the Han Dynasty. According to the compilation

style of DDW, General Language was employed to interpret and deWne the


vocabulary of diVerent dialects. Occasionally, some vocabulary of General Lan-

guage was also deWned or interpreted.

Second, its value resides in its fairly precise description of the geographical

distribution of the diVerent dialectal words in the Han Dynasty. The function of

DDWas a lexicographical work for deWning diVerent dialectal words may be well

illustrated by the deWnition of ‘cicada’ and its various names and interpretations

in diVerent dialects: 蝉 (cicada) is referred to as 蜩 in Chu, as 螗蜩 in between

Song andWei, as蜋蜩 in between Chen and Zheng, as蝉 in between Qin and Jin,

as 蛴 in Haidai; the big cicada is called 蟧 or 蝒马, the small one is called 麦蚻,

the one with patterned stripes is called 蜻蜻, the female cicada is called 尐, the

big black one is called 蛅, and the black and red one is called 蜺.

Third, DDW implies in its description diVerences between dialectal regions

or sub-regions of the same dialect and their mutual inXuence. In DDW, when

Wei appeared ‘to the north of the Yellow River’ or ‘to the north of the basin area

of the Yellow River’, there would be no mention of Chu. In other words, the

inXuence of Chu on Wei went no further beyond the Yellow River. Owing to

the obstacle of the Yellow River, the northern part of Wei, that is, to the north of

the Yellow River, was never inXuenced by the Chu dialect, whereas the southern

part was exposed to the Chu dialect. As far as the Chu dialect is concerned, Chu

appears 133 times, among which it appears forty-Wve times individually; Southern

Chu is mentioned sixty-two times, among which it appears thirty-six times

individually. Chu and Southern Chu occur numerous times, and they occur

individually, also numerous times, but they never co-occur in DDW, which

indicates that they were separate dialectal regions. Diachronically, DDW’s lin-

guistic value lies in its description of lexical variations in diVerent dialectal

regions and over diVerent historical periods. Consider the following citation

from DDW:

34. ‘剑、薄,勉也。秦晋曰剑,或曰薄。故其鄙语曰薄努, 犹勉努也。南楚之

外曰薄努。自关而东周郑之间曰勔剑。齐鲁曰勖兹。’ (卷一 )

(剑 and薄 mean勉. It is剑 in the Qin and Jin regions, and it may also be

薄. So it is薄努 in substandard language, just like勉努. It is薄努 in regions

other than the southern part of Chu. It is勔剑 in the region east of the Pass

between Zhou and Zheng. It is勖兹 in the states of Qi and Lu.) (Volume 1)

In this citation,薄努, a word of Southern Chu, is identical with the slang word

in Qin and Jin regions. This might be attributed to the migration from Qin and

Jin to Southern Chu in previous times, which could be further supported by the

account from The Book of the Han Dynasty: After the Qin Dynasty uniWed China,

the South China region was also stabilized and Guilin, Nanhai, and Xiangjun


were established in order for the migrating people to live harmoniously with the

Cantonese people.

Through comparison, the regional distribution of some dialect lexical items

coming down from the Zhou Dynasty to the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties

or even to the Jin Dynasty can be described. Let us Wrst compare the vocabulary in

classic works with those in DDW.Here is a citation from Li Sao:路曼曼其修远兮,

吾将上下而求索 (The road ahead is long and arduous, but I will explore far and

wide). In DDW, a relevant deWnition can be found:

35. ‘修、骏、融、绎、寻、延, 长也。陈楚之间曰修。海岱大野之间曰寻。’

(卷一 )

(修,骏,融,绎,寻, and延mean长 ‘long’, which is修 between Chen andChu,

and is寻 betweenHaidai andDaye.) (Volume 1)

It can be seen from comparison that修 is a dialectal word in Chu during the

Warring States period, which started to permeate into the northern regions in the

Western Han Dynasty.

Second, let us compare DDW’s vocabulary with that used by Guo Pu in his

notes to DDW. Some dialectal words in the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties

developed into a part of the vocabulary of General Language in the Jin Dynasty.

Look at the following citations:

36. ‘娥,嬴,好也。赵燕魏代之间曰姝。’ (卷一 )

(娥 and嬴 mean好 (good), which is姝 in between Zhao, Yan Wei, and

Dai.) (Volume 1)

37. 郭璞注:姝‘亦四方通语。’

(姝 is common General Language.) (from Guo Pu’s Annotation)

It is clearly stated in the Wrst instance that姝 is a dialectal word in Zhao, Yan,

and Wei, whereas Guo Pu’s note indicates that it is a common word in General

Language. Even for some common words in Modern Chinese, their etymo-

logical information could be ascertained from DDW. Look at the following

citation:

38. ‘党、晓、哲: 知也。楚谓之党,或曰晓, 齐宋之间谓之哲。’ (卷一)

(党, 晓 and 哲 mean 知 ‘know, beware’, which is 党 in the state of Chu,

and it may also be晓; and it is哲 in between Qi and Song.) (Volume 1)

In this example, there is 党, clearly stated as a dialectal word in Chu, which

could be further identiWed as 懂 in Modern Chinese. Let us look at another

example from DDW: ‘茫、矜、奄, 遽也。吴扬曰茫’, in which 茫 is a dialectal


word in Wu (吴) and Yang (扬), which can be identiWed with 忙 in Modern

Chinese.

The exegetic value of DDWDDW provides insights into the meanings and connotations of numerous words

and expressions in Pre-Qin literary works. Consider the following citations:

39. <诗经•蓼莪>: ‘母兮鞠我。’

(It is mother who brings me up.) (from The Book of Songs)

40. <诗经•鸳鸯>: ‘富禄艾之。’

(Prosperity and fortune foster it.) (from The Book of Songs)

41. <方言>: ‘台、胎、陶、鞠,养也。陈楚韩郑之间曰鞠。汝颖梁宋之间曰

胎,或曰艾。’

(台, 胎, 陶 and 鞠 mean 养, which is 鞠 in between the states of Chen,

Chu, Han, and Zheng, and is 胎 in between Ru, Ying, Liang, and Song.

It may also be艾.) (from The Dictionary of Dialectal Words)

The 鞠 in (39) and艾 in (41) could be reasonably interpreted as养 (foster) in

(41) from the deWnition in DDW.

DDW also holds a unique position in the study of dialects worldwide. In

Europe, the systematic and comprehensive investigation into language and

dialects began at the end of the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth

century. Yang Xiong’s investigation into dialects predates that of modern linguists

by almost 2,000 years, with speciWc procedures and sophisticated techniques of

dialectal investigation formulated, except that no dialect maps were drawn. There

is every reason to believe that Yang Xiong’s DDW can be regarded as the earliest

dialectal work representing the highest academic level of dialectal studies and

studies in geographical distribution of dialects of its time. It will be highly

rewarding for a modern linguist to spend time probing into its methodology

and philosophy of linguistic thought.

DDW not only initiates the compilation of dialect dictionaries but also lays the

foundation for dialect inquiries. Quite a few works on dialect modelled upon

DDW were compiled. One category of such dialectal works is devoted to Wnding

more dialectal words and expressions to compensate for and augment what is

missing in DDW. Scholars of the Qing Dynasty are particularly outstanding

in this respect. Their major works include The Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal

Words (<续方言>) by Hang Shijun (杭世骏), The Manuscripts of the Augmented

Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<续方言稿>) by Dai Zhen, The RectiWcation

of the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<续方言疏证>) by Shen


Ling (沈龄), Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words

(<续方言补>) by Cheng Jisheng (程际盛), The Miscellaneous Record of Dialectal

Words (<方言别录>) and New Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented

Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<续方言新校补>) by Zhang Shenyi (张慎仪).

The other category of dialectal works is devoted to recording dialectal or collo-

quial words and expressions restricted to a certain region. The major works

include The RectiWcation and Standardization of Chinese Characters (<匡谬正

俗>, 4 volumes) by Yan Shigu (颜师古), a Tang Dynasty scholar, The Records

of Hard Learning (<困学记闻>) by Wang Yinglin (王应麟), a Song Dynasty

scholar, The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect (<蜀语>) by Li Shi (李实), a Ming

Dynasty scholar, The Dictionary of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect

(<吴下方言考>) by Hu Wenying (胡文英), a Qing Dynasty scholar, The New

Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<新方言>) by Zhang Binlin (章炳麟), a scholar of

modern times, and The Dictionary of Chao-shan Dialect (<潮汕方言>) by Weng

Donghui (翁东辉), again a scholar of modern times.

There have also been scholars who are interested in adding notes and making

amendments and augmentations to DDW since its publication. Guo Pu, a

philologist of the Jin Dynasty, was the Wrst to add notes to DDW. The best-

known works include The RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<方言疏证>) by Dai Zhen, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, whose work has made a

rare edition of DDWavailable to later scholars, Supplements to the RectiWcation of

the Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<方言疏证补>) byWang Niansun (1744–1832)

of the Qing Dynasty, and The Annotated Interpretation of the Dictionary of

Dialectal Words (<方言笺疏>) by Qian Yi (钱绎), also of the Qing Dynasty,

and The RectiWed Interpretation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<方言校

笺>) by Zhou Zumo (周祖谟), a scholar of modern times, whose work is a rare

collection of previous studies.

To conclude this chapter, one more point must be emphasized, that is, Yang

Xiong’s creation of research methodology, which attaches great importance to

Weld work for recording original speech. His methodology and the ideas of his

linguistic philosophy have enlightened and inspired his followers as well as

modern scholars. His theories have been leading dialect studies in Chinese

philology for almost 2,000 years. He is undoubtedly the pioneer of modern

empiricism in dialect investigation and research.


7

AN EXPLANATORYDICTIONARY OF CHINESE

CHARACTERS – THEORIGIN OF CHARACTERDICTIONARIES IN CHINA

CHINESE characters rank among the oldest writing systems in the world. In

modern times, people who are devoted to the study of Chinese characters

will have to seek help from Xu Shen and his An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters (hereinafter abbreviated to EDCC, also known as The Origins of

Chinese Characters). Without this monumental work, it would be impossible

to read and interpret the zhuan scripts in the Qin and Han Dynasties, to

say nothing of the Jiaguwen in the Shang Dynasty, the Jin inscriptions in the

Shang and Zhou Dynasties, or the ancient texts in the Warring States Period.

EDCC is a precious collection of ancient classic texts, scriptures and exegetic

studies, tracking the origin of Chinese characters, manifesting evolutional

changes of diVerent scripts, and encompassing words and expressions from all

walks of life. Subsequent generations hold its author in greatest esteem and

commend him as ‘the father of Chinese characters’, ‘the sage of Chinese charac-

ters’, and ‘the great master of culture’. EDCC is simply an inexhaustible gold mine

that has attracted numerous generations of explorers. The studies of EDCC

have become a relatively independent discipline of academic inquiry under the

bigger umbrella of ‘Shuowen Studies (说文学)’ or ‘Xu Studies (许学)’. EDCC is

generally accepted as the earliest character dictionary in the history of Chinese

lexicography.

7.1 the historical backgroundto edcc’s birth

During the Han Dynasty, there were two schools of thought that were very much

dedicated to studying Confucian Classics, namely the Neo-classic School and the

Classic School. The Classic School focused on those classic works written in the

pre-Qin style characters, whereas the Neo-classic School focused on those written

in the oYcial script popular in the Han Dynasty. It is the struggle between these

two schools of classic studies that had promoted philological studies in the Han

Dynasty. That is the general background against which EDCC was compiled.

Throughout the Western Han Dynasty, the Neo-classic School dominated

academic life in China. This school, which was represented by the studies in

Gong Yang (<公羊>) written by Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒), advocated the

pragmatics of studying classic works. Later, with more and more classic works

unearthed, especially those recovered from Confucius’ Mansion, people grad-

ually became aware of the great discrepancies between the Neo-classics and those

newly discovered written in pre-Qin characters. The newly discovered classics,

including The Book of Ancient Texts, The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty, The Analects of

Confucius, The Book of Filial Virtues, were diVerent from the Neo-classics not

only in character form but also in content. Since then, more and more scholars

have been passionate about studying and interpreting these more original Con-

fucian works and there gradually formed a new school of thought – the Classic

School. Scholars of this new school made every eVort to probe into the form and

structure, the phonetics, and the exegesis of Chinese characters; thus was laid the

foundation for this school of Confucian studies. In the reign of Emperor Ai in the

Western Han Dynasty, Liu Xin, a well-known scholar of the Classic School,

attempted to have it ranked among the oYcial branches of learning. This attempt

met Werce opposition from the Neo-classic School. Liu then fought back and

wrote a famous article which ushered in the chronic struggle between these two

schools of Confucian studies. The disputes between these two schools could be

summed up as the Neo-classic School laying emphasis on rational argumenta-

tions and being more philosophy-oriented and the Classic School focusing rather

on textual research and being more history-oriented.


In the Eastern Han Dynasty, however, the Classic School gradually gained the

dominant position and there were many well-known scholars identifying them-

selves as belonging to this group, such as Du Lin, Ban Gu, Jia Kui (贾逵), Xu

Shen, Ma Rong (马融), and Zheng Xuan. The Classic School followed the

tradition of The Ready Guide and Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs,

interpreting the classic works according to how the language was actually used

in everyday life and in the particular texts when they were created. It was in this

sense that An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters was said to be an

integral part of the academic research of its time.

Xu Shen’s Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters oVers a

clear picture of his wisdom in linguistic philosophy, his reXections on and

inquiries into the form and structure of Chinese characters, their evolution, and

their classiWcation – the theory of Six Categories. Xu Shen believed that human

cognition comes from people’s perception of the world and their interaction with

the environment around them. They observe the phenomena in the sky and seek

the laws on earth. They observe the activities of living things, such as animals and

birds, and study their appropriateness to their surroundings. They ponder upon

themselves and make analogies with things far away. To cope with social activities

they invent the method of tying knots to keep a record of important daily events.

Characters are created to construe experience through meaning.

The question of how Chinese characters came into being has been the object of

serious discussion and study since remote times. Xu Shen provided his answer. He

proposed that the creation of characters came from the need for social and cultural

development. In primitive society, the tribal chiefs needed rules as a means to

exercise control over the tribes. In the early history of Chinese civilization, Paoxi

(庖牺) created the Eight Trigrams (八卦) to help explain and regulate the phe-

nomena in the world. Shennong began the custom of tying knots to help keep a

record and manage his governing aVairs. When all this seemed insuYcient, other

means were to be found. It was not until the reign of Huangdi that a man called

Cang Jie was designated the responsibility of creating characters. The revelation for

creating characters came from the profession of hunting. When he caught sight of

the trails and marks left behind by animals and birds he knew whichwas which and

could discriminate between them by carefully examining, sorting, and diVerentiat-

ing.When initially creating characters, Cang Jiemade use of pictographs to stand for

various types of things and called these pictographs wen (文), which depicted the

essence of things designated and thus were not further analysable. Later, new ways of

creating characters were invented, for example, by combining two existing characters

to form a new character – one as the form element standing for themeaning, and one

as the sound form (element) standing for the pronunciation. This composite form of

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters 97

character was called zi (字), and was analysable. Zi was therefore productive and

could proliferate, according to Xu Shen.

In EDCC, every character is semantically analysable and given in a rather

standardized fashion.However, EDCC is designed to analyse the form and structure

of the Chinese characters and reveal their meanings through such analysis rather

than explaining the semantics of characters. Xu Shen endeavoured to answer why a

character should be spelled in such a way and what its original meaning was. He

intended to answer these questions within the theoretical framework of the Six

Categories. Before Xu Shen, some scholars such as Liu Xin, Zheng Zhong (郑众),

and Ban Gu had speciWed what ‘Six Categories’ meant. Xu Shen, however, was the

Wrst scholar to apply the theory to the systematic analysis of the form and structure

of the 9,353 Chinese characters and had identiWed most of the original meanings of

these characters in a more consistent and scientiWc fashion.

Of the six categories of characters, the Wrst is the self-explanatory category,

in which characters are easily recognizable only after examination, for instance,

上 (above) and 下 (below); the second is the pictographic category, in which

characters resemble what the things look like in the physical world, for instance,

日 (the sun) and月 (the moon); the third category is the pictophonetic category,

in which characters depict the things or events by analogy, for instance江 (river)

and 河 (river); the fourth is the ideographic category, which is appropriately a

combination of two characters, and what the combination refers to can be readily

comprehensible. 武 (power) and信 (faith) are two example characters; the Wfth

is the mutually explanatory category, which refers to things of the same type and

can be regarded as synonyms, such as老 (old age) and考 (long life, aged); and

the sixth is the category of phonetic loans, in which characters are originally non-

existent but the pronunciations of other characters are borrowed to refer to

diVerent things, such as令 (order) and 长 (older, elderly).

This was the Wrst time in the history of classic philology in China for the theory

of Six Categories to be expounded – having its name, deWnition, and illustrative

characters put together in one model, in one theoretical framework. According to

Zhu Junsheng (朱骏声), a Qing Dynasty scholar, Xu Shen classiWes the characters

in EDCC into four types: 364 characters are pictographic; 125 are self-explana-

tory; 1,167 are ideographic; and 7,697 are pictophonetic. One of the most im-

portant contributions Xu Shen made to the theory of Six Categories is its

application to the practice of analysing the meanings of characters in the forma-

tion of a more coherently incorporated theory.

Xu Shen approached the evolutional motivation of the form and structure of

characters from a diachronic perspective, that is, analysing evolutional causes

against the historical humanity background. That could be thought of as a rather


advanced and scientiWc method considering the period this method was proposed

and applied. As shown in archaeological research, regional variants of characters

had been in circulation among the feudal states since the mid Spring and Autumn

Period. The Qin State in the West was still using the standard style characters

established in the Zhou Dynasty, while six other states in the East were using a

diVerent variant type of Zhou characters – the style of character employed to write

the Six Scriptures by Confucius and The Spring and Autumn Exegesis (<春秋传>)by ZuoQiuming. During theWarring States Period, the princes and powerful dukes

all established their own kingdoms. They disliked the decrees and rituals of the

tradition and custom, and consequently wanted to abandon the classic works.

There gradually formed seven powerful States: they had diVerent measurement

systems for dividing farm lands, diVerent traYc systems, and diVerent stipulations

formaking vehicles, diVerent laws and decrees for administration, diVerent dressing

styles, diVerent ways of articulating and spelling characters.

As to Qin’s uniWcation of the character-writing system, its main work was the

simpliWcation of the writing style of Zhou characters – Wnally standardized as

xiaozhuan. The adoption of the writing style of the oYcial script was to meet the

need both for recording more things and for recording them more eYciently. In

the Qin Dynasty, the Scriptures were burned and the Codes destroyed. A great

number of slave soldiers were enrolled and sent to defend the frontiers. The

oYcials thus had countless documents and Wles to write and to deal with. It was

under such circumstances that the writing style of OYcial Script was created –

simply for ease of use. And consequently, the writing style of ancient characters

became extinct.

The Qin Dynasty and the early period of the Eastern Han Dynasty were two

important periods for the transformation of character writing from the ancient

to the contemporary style. The ancient writing style was characterized by its

complicated appearance and intricacy in internal structure. Xu Shen classiWed the

ancient writing fashions into ‘eight styles of Qin writing’, which are dazhuan,

xiaozhuan, seal script (刻符), worm script (虫书), imperial seal script (摹印),

inscribed board script (暑书), inscriptions on weapons (殳书), and the oYcial

script, and ‘six styles of Eastern Han writing’, which are ‘ancient character (古文)

script found in Confucius’ Mansion, odd character script (奇字, variation

of ancient characters), zhuan script (篆书, xiaozhuan, created by Cheng Miao

(程邈) under orders of the Wrst Emperor of the Qin Dynasty), zuo script (佐书,

the oYcial script in the Qin Dynasty), miuzhuan (缪篆, used for imperial

copying and imitating), and Wnally bird-worm script (鸟虫书, used for writing

on Xags and for letter writing). In fact, they stood for diVerent writing styles

developed from xiaozhuan and the oYcial script to meet practical purposes.


To sum up, it is the notions of Xu Shen’s linguistic philosophy that constitute

the theoretical basis for the formal analysis of Chinese characters and the

macrostructural design of EDCC.

7.2 the background and motivationfor edcc’s compilation

In the Western Han Dynasty, the Neo-classic School Xourished greatly. Most of

the scholars in this school went to such extremes as to believe in whatever was

said in the Confucian classics. Some even held that ‘every word of the Saint bears

some truth in it’. As everyone knows, however, language and its constituents have

their own laws and regulations governing their behaviour, which cannot be

interpreted arbitrarily. Unfortunately, this was just what some of the scholars

in the early Eastern Han Dynasty did. They interpreted the original meanings of

characters according to the form and structure of the prevailing style of writing

(i.e. the oYcial script) of that time. The judicial sentences of some legislative

cases were even inXuenced by this trend of character meaning interpretation. Xu

Shen showed strong dislike for this fashion for philological studies and was

motivated to write a book to change it. The motivations for compiling EDCC

are fairly well reXected in the remark that ‘it will help to clarify the classiWcation,

to correct the mistakes, to inform the scholars, and to reach the spiritual world of

the ancient Saints’. EDCC was compiled to serve this need.

All the explanations in EDCC focused on exploring the original meaning of

characters and on reasoning about the relationships between the structural form,

the phonetics, and the semantics of characters. In other words, ‘to relate charac-

ters according to the radicals they share, to seek how new senses extend and

proliferate, and to trace back to the origins’ (Xu Shen, 1963:319). The ultimate

goal for Xu Shen in compiling EDCC is to help interpret the scriptures, which Wts

well with his linguistic philosophy concerning the function of character stand-

ardization – ‘as far as character is concerned, it is the essence of the Scriptures

and Arts and the source of wise emperors’ administration. It is the means by

which the predecessor can pass on ideas and the successor can appreciate what

happened in the past.’

Xu Shen lived in the Eastern Han Dynasty. According to scholars in the Qing

Dynasty, he was born in 58 and died in 148. He was a disciple of Jia Kui, who was

not only a well-known master of the Classic School of Confucian studies but also


an expert in Neo-classic studies. Xu Shen’s scholarship was also highly praised by

Ma Rong, another well-known master of the Classic School. According to The

Book of Late Han Dynasty (<后汉书>), Xu Shen, also known as Shuzhong, was

born in Runan, Henan Province. He was a serious scholar and was highly

knowledgeable as a young man. There was a saying popular among the scholars

of his time that ‘no one has a better comprehension of the Confucian works than

Xu Shuzhong’. In his early academic years, he came to realize that there were

enormous discrepancies between various commentaries on Confucian works,

which led him to write the monologue The Interpretative Dictionary of the Five

Classics (<五经异义>) and later to compile EDCC. Both works were handed

down to later generations. It is evident that Xu Shen’s scholarly learning in

language and in Confucian studies was essential to his writing of EDCC.

According to the statistics of The Book of the Han Dynasty, prior to Xu Shen’s

compilation of EDCC, there were already ten scholars’ compilations of philo-

logical studies, namely Historian Zhou’s Primer, The Cangjie Primer, The Yuanli

Primer, The Scholarly Primer, The General Primer, The Instant Primer, The

Yuanshang Primer, The Exegetic Primer, The Character RectiWcation (<别字>),The Biography of Cang Jie, Collections of Cangjie Exegesis, Du Lin’s Collections of

Cangjie Exegesis, and The Exegesis of the Cang Jie Primer (<苍颉故>) (Ban Gu,

1962:1719–20). The character books and literatary sources provided essential

materials for Xu Shen to write his monumental EDCC.

In 114, Xu Shen was ordered by Emperor An to join in a group of over Wfty

scholars led by Ma Rong and Liu Zhen (刘珍) to check and annotate the

scriptures and the other great works written in the Spring and Autumn and

Warring States periods. This assignment gave him the opportunity to systemat-

ically read and study the classic works and to have access to the newly unearthed

literature. This experience in checking and annotating the classic works enabled

him to write The Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics and The Annotated

Huai Nan Zi (<淮南子注>), both of which were lost later, and the experience of

writing these two works and of rectifying and annotating classics prepared Xu

Shen well for his compilation of EDCC: he had acquainted himself with the

linguistic materials of the classic works, which paved the way for him to apply the

theory of Six Categories to analysing the form and structures of characters, to

deWne characters, and to select illustrative examples to match and supplement

deWnitions.

EDCC comprises Wfteen volumes, each of which consists of two parts. Volumes

I to XIV form its main part. Part I in Volume XV is the Preface and the list of

radicals, and Part II is the Epilogue. According to the Epilogue, EDCC includes

9,353 headwords of zhuan characters (in addition to 1,163 variants). These head


characters are arranged according to what radical sections the components of a

character belong to. There are 540 radical sections, the division of which is based

on semantic classiWcation. These sections are ‘semantically related on the basis of

the form and structure of the characters’ and are arranged from the simplest to

the most complex, that is, starting with一 and ending with亥. As far as the form

of the character is concerned, the dominant form for the entry character

is xiaozhuan, collocated with variants of ancient characters, like zhou characters,

xiaozhuan, or other styles of writing.

It is known from a memorial concerning EDCC to the Emperor by Xu Chong

(许冲, son of Xu Shen) that in 100 Xu Shen began ‘to write EDCC. He sought

consultation from various scholars and checked with his teacher, Jia Kui’. In 121,

shortly before leaving this world, he entrusted the EDCCmanuscript with his son

and asked him to present it to the royal court. It took him twenty-two years to

complete this monumental work.

7.3 the format and style of edcc

Radical arrangementPrior to EDCC, the organization of a glossary or a word book was to a great

extent random and even chaotic, little better than putting characters together to

form sentences and make them rhythmic, thus making character arrangement

rather disorderly and unsystematic. Xu Shen, however, worked his way out of this

diYcult situation by organizing headword characters according to the radicals

they share: the characters are classiWed into 540 radical types, commanding 9,353

characters. In the Epilogue to EDCC, the principles for identifying radicals and

establishing the sequence of the radicals in the dictionary are clariWed as follows:

From which to start? To start from 一 (one). Things are sorted and grouped together.

Vertically, to arrange them according to the families they belong to and the inherent

properties they share. Horizontally, the various properties will not be violated and the

semantic relationships will be explicated according to their structural forms and radical

components. The patterns for sense extension and proliferation will be sought out and

traced back to their origins. Where to end? To end at亥, which is the last of the twelve

Earthly Branches. This will help to understand the change and the profound relation-

ships behind it.

Thus, Xu Shen became the Wrst scholar to Wnd a reasonable way to arrange the

540 radicals, which also reXects the ideal ‘the grown child gives birth to another


child, which will start a new cycle of giving birth from one’. Since the majority of

Chinese characters are pictographic and their meanings are closely related to

their radical components, the principle of ‘relating characters according to their

radical components’ is of fundamental signiWcance to the compilation of the

Chinese character dictionary.

In each radical section of EDCC, the characters are sub-arranged on the basis of

the following principles. First, the characters used in the names of the emperors in

the Eastern Han Dynasty are always put at the beginning of each radical section.

For instance, characters like秀,荘,祜, and肈 are used in the names of Emperor

Guangwu, Emperor Ming, Emperor An, and Emperor He respectively, and are,

therefore, put at the beginning of each corresponding section. Second, characters

expressing something good are put in the Wrst place and characters for something

bad next; characters for something physical Wrst and characters for something

spiritual or abstract next. For instance, in the radical section for示, characters like

礼,禧,禄,祥,祉, and福, which share the semantic features of ‘lucky’ and ‘happy’,

are put in the front and characters like祲,祸, and祟, which share the semantic

features of ‘disastrous’, are put at the end. In the radical section for水, characters

designating proper names are put in the front and characters indicating the status

or physical properties of water are put at the end. Third, the characters which are a

repetition of the radical itself or in contrast to the radical itself are put at the end of

the section; for instance, characters like磊,聶,祘, and亍. Fourth, for characters

denoting plants, natural kinds are put in the front, followed by artiWcial ones, the

bigger things Wrst and the smaller ones next. For instance, the radical section for

木 puts the names for the species of plants in the Wrst place, like木,桔,橙柚,梨,

梅; the names for the structures of trees and wood next, like 枝, 条, 枚, 果;

and then come the names for wooden products, like 柱, 楹, 椽, 床, 椟. The

arrangement of radical sections and the characters in each section of EDCC reXect

the traditional culture and customs of the Chinese people at the time of its

compilation.

Principles for character selection and coverageIn terms of the formal structure and style of writing, the general principle for EDCC

for selecting headword characters is that, while zhuan characters are described, they

will be matched and conWrmed with ancient zhou characters. In other words, the

standard style for the headword is the xiaozhuan of the Qin Dynasty and other

character forms, such as ancient characters, zhou characters, are all taken as variants.

The sources for identifying writing styles, such as xiaozhuan, ancient charac-

ters, and zhou characters, are listed as follows: the main sources for xiaozhuan are


The Cangjie Primer, The General Primer, The Exegetic Primer, and inscriptions from

the carved stones of the Qin Dynasty; the main source of ancient characters is ‘the

books found in Confucius’ Mansion’ and the number of characters noted as

belonging to this type is 479 in EDCC; zhou characters are mainly those taken

from Historian Zhou’s Primer and its number is 213. If temporary style variants

(或体字) and odd and folk style characters are taken into account, there are 1,163

variants altogether in EDCC. These variant characters are a treasure for later

generations of scholars for studying the patterns of evolution and change of

character form and structure as well as the phonology of characters in ancient times.

Second, in terms of frequency of use, the characters included in EDCC are

mainly those in everyday circulation (黄侃, Huang Kan, 1980:50), in addition to

some rare and uncommon ones.

Third, in terms of the context of character use, the majority of the characters in

EDCC are taken from the classic works with a long period of circulation.

Occasionally, some dialect characters and folk characters are also included.

DeWnition theory in EDCCThe theory of Six Categories forms the basis for Xu Shen’s analysis of the form and

structure of Chinese characters. In the Preface to EDCC, examples are provided for

its users to illustrate how the theory of Six Categories is adopted to analyse the

formal structure of characters, like上,下,日,月,江,河,武,信,考,老,令, and长.

If sub-classiWed, that theory can also include such deWning devices as亦声 (same

pronunciation),省声 (pronunciation omission), and省形 (form omission). Look

at the following citations from EDCC:

1. 坪, 地平也。从土,从平,平亦声。

(坪means地平 ‘Xat land’; categorized into土 ‘soil’ and平 ‘Xat’ which also

indicates its pronunciation.)

2. 融, 炊气上出也。从鬲, 蟲省声。籀文融不省。

(融 means ‘ascending cooking steam’; categorized into 鬲 and pronounced

in the same way as 蟲 ‘with pronunciation omission’; in the form of zhou

character, pronounced in the samewayas融withoutpronunciationomission.)

3. 曐,万物之精,上为列星。从晶,生声。一曰: 象形。从口,古口復注中,故

与日同。曐,古文星。星,曐或省。

(曐means ‘the essence of the things in the world’ and the upper part of the

character means ‘a group of stars’; categorized into晶 and pronounced in

the same way as生. According to another interpretation it is a pictographic

character, categorized into 口 ‘mouth’ and in the ancient period it was a

double mouth (日) and so the same as日 ‘the sun’. In ancient texts,曐 was


星, which was possibly simpliWed from 曐, that is, with two components

(日日) omitted.)

DeWnition pattern in EDCCFor each character entry in EDCC, xiaozhuan is always put at the very beginning

as the head character, followed by its corresponding style of oYcial script, and

then comes the explanation of its meaning, its classiWcation into one of the six

categories of characters, and its variations if there are any. Generally speaking, in

analysing and explaining its formal structure, examples are always taken from

characters in the same radical section and then from other relevant sections.

Consider the following example from EDCC:

4. 旦,明也。从日见一上。一, 地也。

(旦 means ‘brightness’; categorized into 日 ‘the sun’ rising above ‘the

horizon (一)’. Note:一 means 地 ‘the horizon’. )

There are, however, exceptions. For instance, when the expression 从某某 is

used, it usually indicates that themeaning should be interpreted from the context in

which the character is used in collocationwith other characters. In this situation, the

character taken as an example to illustrate is not conWned to the characters in the

same radical section, which usually fall into the ‘ideographic’ category.

There have evolved from EDCC’s deWnition pattern two types of dictionaries: the

ordinary type which focuses on explicating the meaning of characters, such as The

Jade Chapters and The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi (<康熙字典>), and the ancientcharacter dictionary which focuses on collecting diVerent writing styles of characters

rather than explaining the meaning of characters, such as Collections of Jiaguwen

Characters (<甲骨文编>) and Collections of Jin Inscriptions (<金文编>).

The deWnition style in EDCCIn EDCC’s entry arrangement, the explanation of the meaning of the character

comes Wrst, followed by the analysis of its form and the indication of its

pronunciation, next its variants if there are any, and Wnally illustrative citations,

if necessary, from the literature or from the works of the contemporary scholars.

In deWning themeaning of the character, more emphasis is laid on explicating its

basic meaning. The explication of meaning is well grounded on the diachronic

analysis of the form and structure of the character so as to make clear how the

meaning of a character evolves. The major methods employed in EDCC for

deWnition are:


(a) direct interpretation, e.g. ‘干, 犯也’ (干 means 犯 ‘commit’);

(b) mutual interpretation, e.g. ‘走, 趋也。’ ‘趋, 走也’ (走 means 趋 ‘move

towards’;趋 means走 ‘go towards’);

(c) factorial interpretation, e.g. ‘论,议也。’ ‘议,语也。’ ‘语,论也’ (论 means

议 ‘discuss’;议 means语 ‘remark’, and语 means论 ‘comment’);

(d) identical interpretation, which means using the same word to explain the

meanings of several words which are synonyms or near synonyms, e.g. ‘把,

握也。’ ‘持, 握也’ (把 means 握 ‘grasp’; 持 means 握 ‘grasp’);

(e) phonetic interpretation, e.g. ‘户,护也’ (户 means护 ‘care’);

(f) delimiting interpretation, e.g. ‘枕,卧所荐首者’ (枕 means ‘pillow’, some-

thing used to rest one’s head on when sleeping);

(g) etymological explication, e.g. ‘婚, 妇家也。礼: 娶妇以昏时, 妇人阴也,

故曰婚’ (婚means ‘a woman is married to a man’;礼means the rites and

formalities one needs to go through when marrying a woman. As a woman

is female, so it is婚, a combination of the radical女 and the character昏);

(h) descriptive or analogical means, e.g. ‘狼, 似犬, 锐头, 白颊, 高前, 广后’

(狼 means ‘wolf ’, like a dog with a sharp head, a white neck, a protruding

forehead and a broad rear).

Among these eight methods of interpretation, the Wrst four are used to deWne

(near-)synonymous words. Phonetic interpretation and etymological explication

are employed to demonstrate how the senses of a character originate and evolve.

EDCC also employs two unique means of deWning characters. One makes use

of从某 ‘following the category of’ to label the properties of words and expressions

and to indicate the coordination of two characters. The other makes use of ‘direct

explanation’ or ‘analogical explanation’ to explicate the meaning of the character. In

addition, in the deWnitions of EDCC, there also appear expressions like一曰 ‘one

explanation being’,或曰 ‘or explained as’ or又曰 ‘also explained as’ which are used

to co-record diVerent interpretations, actually the primitive indications of sense

demarcation. Look at the following examples from EDCC: ‘祝, 祭主赞词者。从

示, 从人、口。一曰: 从兑省。<易>曰: ‘‘兑为口为巫’’ ’, which is an example of

co-recording the twodiVerent interpretations of thewriting style of祝; and ‘昌:美言

也。从日,从曰。一曰:日光也。<诗>曰: ‘‘东方昌矣’’ ’, which is an example of co-

recording the two diVerent interpretations of the meaning of昌.

The deWnitions in EDCC can be traced to two other sources: one is ‘to widely

collect data from the works of those generally-learned scholars. The validity

of the data collected is to be conWrmed or veriWed with more evidence. Only

after veriWcation and justiWcation can the data be used in writing EDCC’. By

‘generally-learned scholars’, Xu Shen meant ‘those scholars who are learned in


both ancient andmodern knowledge’, including those great masters of the past and

great scholars of the contemporary period as well. The former includes Confucius,

King Zhuang of Chu State (楚庄王), Han Fei (韩非), Sima Xiangru, Dong

Zhongshu, Liu Xin, and Yang Xiong, among others. The latter includes scholars

of the Eastern Han Dynasty, such as Du Lin, Ban Gu, Fu Yi (傅毅), Wei Hong (卫

宏), Zhang Lin (张林), Wang Yu (王育), Tan Zhang (谭长), Guan Pu (官溥), Jing

Fang (京房), and so on. The second source of deWnitions for EDCC is the

explanations of character meanings in other classic works, which involve The

Book of Changes, The Book of Ancient Texts, The Book of Rites, The Book of Songs,

The Spring and Autumn, and The Analects of Confucius, etc.

Illustrative citationsThe classic literature from which EDCC extracts its illustrative citations is mainly

the Five Confucian Scriptures, in addition to other classic works, such as The

Analects of Confucius,Meng Zi, Lao Zi, Mo Zi, The Book of Filial Virtues, The Book

of Rites, The Shanhai Scriptures, and Huai Nan Zi. So, EDCC’s illustrative

citations are either taken from the Pre-Qin Dynasty classic works or from over

forty kinds of dialectal materials as supplementary evidence.

Pronunciation notationThe pronunciation annotation in EDCC falls into two categories: one is to use

the ‘sound’ radical in the pictophonetic characters to show the pronunciation;

the other is to make use of markers such as 读若 ‘pronounced as’ – to use a

more familiar character bearing the same or similar pronunciation as the

indicator.

For more than 7,000 pictophonetic characters in EDCC, Xu Shen uses the

markers like某声,亦声, and 省声 to label their pronunciations in the course of

analysing their forms and structures. Note that the pronunciations annotated by

Xu Shen should be the original ones when they were initially created. In other

words, Xu Shen has preserved the original pronunciations by this unique method

of annotating the phonetics of Chinese characters in EDCC. Certainly, due to the

inevitable changes in the phonetics of language, there must exist diVerences

between the original pronunciations and those during the period of the Western

and Eastern Han Dynasty.

EDCC uses读若 to show the pronunciation of a rare or easy-to-mispronounce

character with a commonly used character sharing the same or similar pronun-

ciation, chieXy for the purpose of constructing the phonetic system of the


Chinese language during the Han Dynasty, which makes it diVerent from the

phonetic marker of某声 ‘sound like’.

读若 has manifested itself in several forms:

(a) 读若某,读若某同 or读与某同 ‘read in the same way as’, which directly

indicates the pronunciation of a certain character;

(b) 读若某之某 ‘read as . . . as in . . .’, which is used to speciWcally indicate

a certain pronunciation of a polyphonic character;

(c) 读若经典中某字 ‘read as . . . in a certain classic work’, which indicates a

speciWc character in a certain classic work;

(d) 读若某方言俗语 ‘read as . . . in a certain dialect’, which indicates

a speciWc character in a certain dialect and register.

Three practices initiated in the compilation of EDCC have had a profound

and far-reaching inXuence on lexicography in later times. First, Xu Shen has

classiWed the 9,353 Chinese characters into 540 radical sections to further

investigate their ‘formal and structural relationships’, which inspired him to

establish a retrieval system for EDCC, especially applicable to the Chinese

language. Second, he has standardized the Six Categories theory, applied it to

the analysis of the form and structure of Chinese characters, and established a

working procedure for deWning characters. Third, he has systematically cited

examples from widely circulated classic works to illustrate the deWnitions in

EDCC.

EDCC has established itself as a paradigm for later lexicographers to copy.

Its style was plain to see in and adequately inherited by such well-known

dictionaries as The Character Forest (<字林>) by Lu Chen (吕忱) in the Jin

Dynasty, The Jade Chapters in the Northern and Southern Dynasty, The ClassiWed

Chapters (<类篇>) in the Song Dynasty, The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chi-

nese Characters (<字汇>) by Mei Yingzuo (梅膺祚) in the Ming Dynasty, The

RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<正字通>) by Zhang Zilie (张自烈,

1564–1650) in the Ming Dynasty, and The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi by Zhang

Yushu (张玉书) and Chen Tingjing (陈廷敬) in the Qing Dynasty. These

dictionaries have all modelled their styles on EDCC, although they might have

made some changes in the number of radical sections and/or their order in

arranging them. Even in modern times, there are still quite a few Chinese

dictionaries that have borrowed the compilation style of EDCC: the Wrst infor-

mation item in a deWnition is the original meaning and the illustrative citations

are almost exclusively fromwritten works, in spite of the reduction in the number

of radical categories.


7.4 the academic value and culturalinfluence of edcc

The study of Chinese characters has established itself as an independent branch

of learning in China since the Eastern Han Dynasty, when Xu Shen Wnished his

compilation of EDCC. Xu Shen was among the Wrst in China to have fully

realized the signiWcance of character studies and conducted theoretical explor-

ations in this connection. His contributions lie especially in revealing the evolu-

tional nature of Chinese characters and the role they play in social development

and cultural life. Quite a few of the thought-provoking theories he advocated

have turned out to be innovative and scientiWc. The methodology Xu Shen had

established and applied to his investigation into Chinese characters was essential

to his accomplishment of EDCC, characterized by his perspective of develop-

ment, his coherent philological thinking on Chinese characters, his systematic

application of the ‘Six Categories’ theory to EDCC’s compilation, the promin-

ence given to data collection, and his unusual emphasis on reliable evidence for

veriWcation and justiWcation.

In compiling EDCC, Xu Shen made every eVort to integrate the knowledge of

‘generally-learned scholars’ from various branches of learning into his book. In

this sense, EDCC can be viewed as an encyclopaedia, under whose umbrella are

‘heaven and earth, ghosts and gods, mountains and rivers, grass and trees, birds

and animals, insects and worms, sundries, odd objects, king’s ruling systems,

etiquettes and rites. In a word, all things under the sun are recorded exclusively’

(Epilogue to EDCC).

EDCC lists xiaozhuan characters as its headwords, as many as 9,353, and it has

always been the most comprehensive dictionary with the widest coverage of and

the best preservation of xiaozhuan characters in the Qin Dynasty. This dictionary

serves as a bridge to help explore the original meanings of the Jiaguwen charac-

ters and the Jin Inscription characters and to help track down the evolutionary

path of oYcial and regular scripts that appeared after it. Let us look at the

following citation from EDCC:

5. 育,养子使作善也。从,肉声。<虞书>曰: ‘教育子’。育,或从每。(育means

raisingandcultivatingachild; categorized into, andpronouncedas肉.TheYu

Book (<虞书>) has the statement ‘to educate and foster the son’, and育was

possibly categorized into每.)


EDCC keeps the temporary style of the character育, which is 每. This is very

helpful for interpreting the character育 in Jiaguwen. The form of育 in Jiaguwen

looks like a woman giving birth to a baby. That is to say, its original meaning is ‘to

bear or to produce’ rather than ‘to educate’, which is an extended meaning.

EDCC diVers from the dictionaries of later times notably in that it gives only one

deWnition for each character. What Xu Shen pursues in making deWnitions is to

reveal the ‘essential purport’ of each character. In other words, he tries to Wnd out

the basic or original meaning of each character through analysing its form and

structure and its pronunciation so as to restore the situation under which it was

created. In comparisonwith its contemporaries, EDCC achieved a lot in this regard,

though there is still a great deal of room for improvement, or possibly evenmistakes

in the case of some characters. Look at the following citation from EDCC:

6. 自, 鼻也。象鼻形。

(自 means 鼻 ‘nose’, in the form similar to 鼻.)

There has been no literature available except for EDCC that provides such a

deWnition, which implies that the basic meaning of自must have been abandoned

a long time ago. However, in the Ruins of the Yin Dynasty, there are such

descriptions as 有疾自, 惟有它 (祸), which means ‘(asking a fortune-teller)

whether there will be a misfortune in the event of an illness on the nose’.

EDCC has provided two types of material sources for studying ancient phon-

etics, that is, data concerning the homophonic system of pictophonetic charac-

ters and materials concerning phonetic interpretations in deWnitions. A rhyming

book of the remote period could be compiled if only a systematic study could be

carried out of the homophonic system of pictophonetic characters in EDCC.

Similarly, phonetic interpretations in EDCC’s deWnitions could provide valid

evidence for conWrming what had been learned about the phonetics and rhymes

in early ancient times.

The birth of EDCC has brushed away some old ideas and practices in the

analysis of Chinese characters and in philological studies, and new trends and

thoughts have gradually surfaced in academic circles. EDCC has become an

essential reference work for reading and studying classic works. EDCC has been

frequently and enormously quoted by later works, such as The Exegetic Interpret-

ation of Classics (<经典释文>) by Lu Deming in the Tang Dynasty, The Anno-

tations of Selected Works (<文选注>) by Li Shan (李善) in the Tang Dynasty, and

Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures (also Sounds and Meanings

of the Whole Canon, <一切经音义>) by Xuan Ying (玄应) and Hui Lin (慧琳,

736–820) in the Tang Dynasty. The signiWcance of EDCC to later scholars lies in

(a), (b), and (c):

1 10 genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

(a) The diVerent writing styles listed in EDCC could be employed to interpret

the meanings of characters in other ancient books. Consider the following

citation:九月叔苴 (from The Book of Songs). What does叔 mean in this

quotation? In EDCC, we could Wnd the deWnition:叔,拾也,从又术声。汝

南名收芋为叔, from which we know that叔 should be interpreted as拾

(to pick up).

(b) From EDCC, the semantic evolution of ancient characters could be more

readily tracked down. For instance, in The Book of Secret Prescriptions

(<医经方>) (unearthed from King Ma’s Tomb in Hunan Province in

1973) can be found the following citation:

7. 日一洒, 傅药。

(It is to be washed every day, before ointment is applied.)

What does 洒 in the citation mean? EDCC provides the following deWnition:

8. 洒, 涤也。从水西声。古文为灑埽字。

(洒 means涤 ‘wash, cleanse’; categorized into水 and pronounced as西; it

was 灑埽 in ancient texts.)

Thus, 洒 in the above citation should be interpreted as ‘to wash’. Further

deWnitions could be found in EDCC for 灑 and汛:

9. 灑,汛也。从水麗声。

(灑 means汛 ‘Xood, tide’; categorized into水 and pronounced as 麗)

In early ancient times, when people washed their hands or when they cleaned

the Xoor, they ‘sprinkled water to remove dirt’. So, 洒, 灑, and 汛 all bear the

notion of ‘sprinkling water’. Later, with a change of utensil for washing hands

and the change in the mode of living, it is natural for the meanings of the

characters to have undergone corresponding alterations. In contemporary dic-

tionaries, 洒 [灑] is pronounced ‘/sa/’ and means ‘to sprinkle water’;汛 means

periodic Xooding; and 涤 means ‘to wash dirt oV ’.

(c) From EDCC, data can be obtained for studying phonetic loaning. Look at

the citation:顾问其诊及其病能。(<素问•风论>) (Consultation is made

to diagnose and inquire into his illness. From Simple Questioning). What

does能mean in this citation? From EDCC, we get能,熊属. How could病

能 be related to熊属? From EDCC, we can further Wnd態,意態也。从心

从能, 態, 或从人. According to Duan Yucai (2001:519), 能 could be

interpreted as 心所有能必见于外, which means that our state of mind

will always be manifested externally, i.e. 態 (bearing). To sum up,病能 is

the same as病态, which means ‘conditions of illness’ or ‘morbidity’.


According to The Book of the Sui Dynasty, the earliest research on EDCC comes

from The Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<演说文>,one volume) by Yu Yanmo (庾俨默) in the Northern and Southern Dynasty) and

The Phonetic Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文音隐>, four volumes) by an anonymous author, but, unfortunately, both books

were lost in later times. During the reign of Emperor Shu in the Tang Dynasty, Li

Yangning (李阳冰) rectiWed and republished EDCC (thirty volumes). Unfortu-

nately, this version is no longer in existence either. In the period of Southern

Tang, Xu Kai (徐铠) wrote The Comprehensive Studies in An Explanatory Dic-

tionary of Chinese Characters (<说文解字系传>, forty volumes), which has been

known as Junior Xu’s version. That book corrected the mistakes in Li Yangning’s

version. In the reign of Emperor Taizong in the Song Dynasty (986), Xu Xuan (徐

铉), Xu Kai’s elder brother, received an imperial order to check and revise EDCC,

which has been known as Senior Xu’s version. These two brothers have made an

indispensable contribution to studies on EDCC: their versions have popularized

the dictionary and ruled out the possibility of it being lost.

The Qing Dynasty reached a peak in the study of EDCC. According to

statistics, there are over three hundred pieces of research on EDCC. Such great

masters as Duan Yucai, Gui Fu (桂馥), Wang Yun (王筠), and Zhu Junsheng

were all involved in this Weld. Their studies on EDCC bear their own distinctive

features. Duan Yucai’s The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Charac-

ters (<说文解字注>, thirty-one volumes) focuses on revealing its style, correct-

ing its errors, marking the ancient rhyme of each character, and further sorting

and updating the explanations in EDCC based on new data from research in the

Welds of phonetic rhyming and exegetic analysis. Gui Fu’s The RectiWed Explana-

tory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文解字义证>, Wfty volumes) aims at

verifying and justifying the deWnitions in EDCC and it is a very valuable reference

book for studies on ancient characters.

The two representative masters of modern times are Zhang Binglin and Huang

Kan. In their studies, greater attention is paid to formal change and proliferation

in relation to meaning and pronunciation. It is during this period of investigation

that this branch of learning gained its independence from the study of Confucian

classics. In addition, there is another very inXuential reference book compiled at

this period – The Modern Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文解

字诂林>) by Ding Fubao (丁福保), an exhaustive collection of the photocopies

of the textual research and explanatory notes on EDCC from the Xu Brothers of

the early Song Dynasty up to the 1930s.

EDCC focuses on analysing the form and structure of Chinese characters, in

investigating their original and basic meanings, and identifying and diVerentiating


their pronunciation and phonetic features in ancient classic works. It holds a

signiWcant position in studying academics and ideology in ancient China. First, it

was considered a compulsory subject in the Royal Academy during the Tang

Dynasty, which means that it was of the same importance as that of the Confucian

classics. Second, it was the true forerunner of traditional philology in China. In

EDCC, what is emphasized in linguistic investigation is the notion of character

ontology – whose main ideas involve the origin of Chinese characters, their original

radical components, and the analysis of their form and structure, that is, the

Six Categories theory. Since EDCC, character ontology has enjoyed a dominant

position in the history of the linguistic investigation into the Chinese language.

Furthermore, owing to the academic position of EDCC, the philosophy of ‘charac-

ter thinking’ has been inXuencing the speech and behaviour of Chinese scholars

generation after generation.

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters 1 13

8

THE DICTIONARY OFCHINESE CHARACTERS

AND TERMS – THEINCEPTION OFETYMOLOGICAL

DICTIONARIES IN CHINA

IN the Western world, the practice of providing etymological information in a

dictionary started in the middle of the seventeenth century when Thomas

Blount published Glossographia in 1656. Blount is one of the earliest lexicog-

raphers who attempted to provide etymological information in a systematic

fashion. Bailey later observed the practice in making his dictionary – AUniversal

Etymological English Dictionary. Bailey’s dictionary paid enormous attention to

etymology and treated it consistently, purposefully, and strictly (Landau 1989:45,

99), though in the eyes of modern etymologists much of it might be wild

guesswork. Considering the fact that it was compiled a century before great

strides had been made in the study of Germanic philology, the value of this

dictionary should not be underestimated. The practice of providing etymology in

a dictionary reached its peak with the compilation and publication of The Oxford

English Dictionary.

Western lexicographers have every reason to be surprised to Wnd that the

Chinese compiled the Wrst etymological dictionary in China in 230 – The

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms (hereinafter abbreviated as DCCT).

Its contribution to etymological studies of the Chinese language and to lexico-

graphical studies in China and worldwide is highly commendable.

8.1 the historical background to dcct’s birth

Scripture studies held a dominant position in the academic research in theWestern

andEasternHanDynasties.The impactof Scripture studieson the feudal reignof the

HanDynasty was felt in almost every aspect of its administration: inmanaging state

and judicial aVairs, in bringing rivers under control, in selecting, awarding and

punishing oYcials, and in dealing with relationships between the emperor and

oYcials, father and son, and the central and local governments. Since Emperor

Wu’s adoptionof thepolicyof ‘dismissingahundredother schools but respecting the

Confucian school only’, Confucian studies had been elevated to an unprecedented

height, leading not only to its oYcial recognition but also to its wide circulation and

popularity. LiuXin’smemorial to the throne triggeredoV theWerceWght between the

Neo-classic and the Classic studies on Confucian Scriptures, which lasted for about

two centuries, extending into the EasternHanDynasty. In the fourth year (i.e. 79) of

Emperor Zhang’s reign, some well-known scholars were summoned to the court.

The Emperor discussedwith them the Five Scriptures in theWhite Tiger Temple. ‘Li

Yu (李育), representing theNeo-classic School, questioned JiaKui aboutGongYang.

They argued back and forth with reasoning, evidence, and justiWcation, showing

their full understanding and appreciation of the Confucian classics’ (范晔, Fan Ye,

1965:2582). After these arguments, the two conXicting schools began to merge into

one and thismade it possible to foster an atmosphere for scholars to incorporate the

achievements of both camps. ZhengXuanwas one of their representatives. He based

his research mainly on the works of the Classic studies. He ‘collected exhaustively

diVerent opinions; he deleted the wrong ones and corrected the mistakes; he added

new Wndings and further edited the works systematically. Since that time, scholars

have begun tounderstand the essential principles andmethodsof this study’ (FanYe,

1965:1213), and Confucian study, as a school, Wnally achieved unity and became one.

The thorough and comprehensive interpretation of the Confucian Classic works by

Zheng Xuan formally ended the Werce struggle between the Neo-classic and Classic

studies of Confucian classic works.

In themiddle of theEasternHanDynasty,when theNeo-classic andClassic studies

were still in the process of merging there came the representative accomplishment of

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms 1 15

the Classic study – An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. Its author, Xu

Shen, was a disciple of Jia Kui, ‘from whom he learned ancient studies’. Then he

‘broadly consulted the generally learned scholars and wrote Presenting a Memorial

for An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters’ (Xu Cong,许冲 <上<说文解

字>表>). The Wnalized version of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters

was published in 121. About one hundred years later, the representative achieve-

ment of the Neo-classic study appeared – DCCT. As far as the research approach

was concerned, the Classic scholars were good at exegetic interpretation, focusing on

character analysis and empirical evidence; whereas the Neo-classic scholars were

good at sentential and textual research, focusing on meaning and reasoning. Li Yu,

in contrast to JiaKui, was especially expert at semantic analysis and reasoning.DCCT

adopted this research path in carrying out its inquiry and investigation. What

its author ‘intended to discuss and point out’ is ‘what the general public frequently

refer to but have little idea of their inherentmeanings.’ The ‘meanings’ are embedded

in ‘what thenamesdesignateandwhat semanticcategorizationsarebasedon’ (Preface

to DCCT). ‘Semantic categorization’ simply means meaning and reasoning. Thus,

it can be concluded that DCCT was a representative work of Neo-classic study

when the two conXicting groups of Confucian scholars were still in the process of

merging into one united school in themiddle of the EasternHanDynasty.

DCCT is designed to make use of phonetic interpretation so as ‘to discuss and

point out the reference’, ‘to answer diYcult questions and explain easily confus-

able words’, and ‘to explore the source and origin of expressions’. Phonetic

interpretation originated in the Pre-Qin Dynasty. At that time scholars had

already subconsciously made use of the means of phonetic interpretation, al-

though its objective was to make truths explicit rather than to interpret their

linguistic meanings. Look at the following examples:

1. <论语�颜渊>:政者, 正也。子帅以正,孰敢不正?

(政 means正 ‘to be just’. If you play a leading role in doing justice, is there

anyone who dares to commit injustice?)

2. <礼记�中庸>: ‘仁者,人也,亲亲为大 ;义者,宜也, 尊贤为大。’

(仁 means 人 ‘humane’, and to love the family member is the most

important thing;义 ‘loyal’ means宜 ‘appropriate’, and to respect virtuous

people is the most important thing.)

3. <庄子�齐物论>: ‘庸也者,用也;用也者,通也 ;通也者,得也。’

(庸 means用 ‘useful’; and用 means通 (useful for general purpose); and

通 means得 ‘suitable’.)

Thus, phonetic interpretation during the Pre-Qin Dynasty bears the noticeable

features of being spontaneous and subordinate.


Dong Zhongshu, the initiator of Neo-classic study in the Western Han Dyn-

asty, was the Wrst to examine phonetic interpretation and make theoretical

inquiries from the perspective of the relationship between name and essence

and between heaven and humankind. Most certainly, Dong Zhongshu’s theory

was established to advocate his political ideals and feudal ideology. He stated:

Names are born from truths. If it is untrue, then it cannot live up to its name. Names are

what sages recognize as the true things. When names are used in speech, they become

concrete. . . . For the saints in ancient times, if they tell and follow what the heaven and

earthmanifest to them, this is called ordering. If they have it announced and executed, this

is called naming. To name it in words is to announce and execute; to order it in words is to

tell and follow. To tell and follow the heaven and earth’s manifestation is to order. And to

announce and command is to name. Name and order have diVerent pronunciations but

the essence is the same. And they are all to advocate the will of heaven. The heaven cannot

speak and it enables human beings to tell it; it cannot do by itself and it enables human

beings to act in it. Names are the revelations of heaven through the mouths of the saints

and they need to be observed profoundly and thought in depth. (苏舆, Su Yu, 1992:285)

By ‘names are born from truths’ is meant that ‘name’ is determined by ‘truth’.

‘Truth’ is what the saints ‘announce and execute’ in that the saints could ‘understand

the will of heaven’ and the heaven makes the saints ‘express its will’. In essence,

‘name’ is the explicit expression of ‘heaven’s will’ and ‘heaven’ is the ‘ruler’. Under

the inXuence of Dong Zhongshu’s theory, scholars were inclined to use phonetics to

interpret semantics in the Han Dynasty. Consider the following citation:

4. 女者,如也;子者,孳也。女子者, 言如男子之教,而长其义理者也。故谓

之妇人。妇人者,伏于人也。(<大戴礼�本命>)(女 ‘woman’ means如 (obeying); and子 (child) means孳 (producing). By

woman ismeant followingwhat is told to thembyman and their faithfulness

and reasoning would thus be increased. So they are called woman. Woman

just refers to those yielding to man.) (from The Dadai Book of Etiquette)

The use of ‘obeying’ to explain the naming of ‘woman’ is to base the explor-

ation of etymology on the implication of the feudal political system, which easily

led to indeWniteness of deWnition in using phonetics to interpret meanings of

words or even worse to invoke the interpreter’s arbitrariness. In the Han Dynasty,

the theory and practice of phonetic interpretation reached its peak and it

embodied well the convergence of linguistic theory, political governing, public

circulation, and the arbitrariness in application.

By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the data of phonetic interpretation,

through several centuries’ accumulation, had become abundant enough for

works of phonetic interpretation to appear. DCCT, an integration of the major


achievements in this Weld, emerged as its time had come. The principal diVerence

between the theory of phonetic interpretation in DCCT and the principles of its

predecessors lies in its transformation from doctrines for political governance

into the Weld of linguistic inquiry. It is held in DCCT that ‘meanings’ are

embedded in ‘what the names designate and what semantic categorizations are

based on’, and ‘even the implements and utensils that the peasants use bear their

meanings’. DCCTmakes use of linguistic investigations to explore the sources of

the names of the objects. In other words, it aims ‘to discuss and point out the real

reference of the names’ (Preface to DCCT).

If DCCT’s interpretations are to be compared with those in the works of its

contemporaries, the diVerence is discernable. Let us have a look at the citations of

the diVerent interpretations of天:

5. <春秋说题辞>: ‘天之为言镇也。’

(What is meant by天 is 镇 ‘suppression’.)

6. <说文解字>: ‘天, 颠也, 至高无上。从一大。’

(天 means 颠 ‘summit, supreme’; categorized into大 ‘grand’.)

7. <释名�释天>: ‘天, 豫、司、兖、冀以舌腹言之。天, 显也, 在上高显也;

青、徐以舌头言之。天, 坦也, 坦然高而远也。’

(The characters天,豫,司,兖, and冀 are all pronounced with the back of the

tongue.天 means显 ‘apparent, supreme, and lofty’ and is pronounced with

the tip of the tongue in Qing and Xu.天means坦 ‘Xat, high, and far away’.)

In (5), 天 ‘heaven’ is interpreted as 镇, which means ‘suppression’. From this

interpretation, we could see that it is interpreted from the viewpoint of the ruler. In

(6), it is interpreted as颠, meaning ‘summit’, that is, ‘extremely high, with nothing

above it’, which clearly shows the interpreter’s adoration for the Emperor’s power.

And in (7), it is interpreted as ‘(a) distinguished; noticeable because of its high

position; (b) Xat and broad; Xat and broad because it is high and further away’. For

the third interpretation, that is, the interpretation in DCCT, it clearly falls into the

category of linguistic study, though you may not agree with how it is interpreted.

8.2 the background and motivationfor dcct’s compilation

The Book of the Sui Dynasty states that ‘DCCT has eight volumes and it is written

by Liu Xi’. The identity of the author of DCCT is therefore Liu Xi, known as


Chengguo. He was born in Beihai, today’s Shandong Province. He lived between

the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Wei Kingdom. It was recorded that he once

made lecture tours to Jiaozhou (in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces today). At

the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the struggles between diVerent political

factions were Werce and warfare was frequent in the drainage areas of the Yellow

River. Jiaozhou, however, enjoyed a relatively long period of peace and stability

since it was far away from the vortex of political struggle geographically. In

addition, the governor of Jiaozhou was Shi Xie (士燮), who had a very good

reputation for being generous and showing respect to scholars. Many scholars

swarmed to Jiaozhou to escape from warfare. Liu Xi Xed there probably at least

partly for the same reason and he took this opportunity to popularize his

academic ideas and exchange information with others. In the Kingdom of Wu,

there were some well-known Confucian scholars, such as Cheng Bing (程秉) and

Xue Zong (薛综). Liu Xi enjoyed a very high reputation among these scholars

and Xue Zong was actually a disciple of his. His great academic accomplishments

were the basic requirements for writing DCCT.

Liu Xi not only had an admirable degree of learning himself but also cultivated

very close relationships with high-ranking oYcials. For instance, Cheng Bing was

the teacher of the prince, Xue Zong was a grade-four oYcial and later promoted

to the position of governor of Hepu and Jiaozhi (交趾), and Wei Yao (韦曜) was

an oYcial in the court, in charge of document management. Liu Xi, however, did

not hold any oYcial positions in the Kingdom of Wu. It seemed that he was a

hermit but he might actually have his own agenda, possibly getting ready for

writing DCCT. According to The Annals of the Three Kingdoms (<三国志�吴书�韦曜传>), Liu Xi was reportedly said to

be writing DCCT. I [Wei Yao] believe that there are many good articles in it but owing to

its broad scope there are still many things to be further looked into and much room for

improvement and revision. He declined the invitation to hold oYce so as not to get

involved in too many activities.

Judging from the cycle of academic research, his rejection of an oYcial

position would give him suYcient time to collect data and maintain the con-

tinuity of planning and writing the voluminous DCCT. DCCT’s Preface provides

clues to Liu Xi’s motivation for writing the dictionary. In the Preface, he writes:

since the Creator made implements and established the laws, objects and artefacts have

become numerous. Until the present time, things have been made either according to

codes and rituals or by the hand of the general public and they are given either formal

titles or folk names, resulting in enormous diVerences between diVerent regions.


As for ‘the implements used by the general public’, ‘people use these names

without much knowledge of what they actually designate, that is, their meanings’.

Liu Xi wrote DCCT in twenty-seven chapters altogether with intent ‘to discuss

reference and designate origin’ and ‘to provide answers to diYcult questions and

diVerentiate between confusable words’, which is probably his principal motiv-

ation for writing DCCT.

The time of writing DCCT is usually identiWed as around the establishment of

the Wei Kingdom (220). According to The Annals of the Three Kingdoms, Xu Ci

(许慈)

is a disciple of Liu Xi. He has done scholarly research in The Book of Changes, The Book of

Ancient Texts, The Book of Three Rites (<三礼>),Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs,

and The Analects of Confucius. During the period of Jian’an, he, together with Xu Jing

(许靖), went to the Kingdom of Shu.

The time of Xu Ci’s coming to Shu, according to the historical record, was

prior to the Wfteenth year of Jian’an (196) and, presumably, the time of Liu Xi’s

teaching at Jiaozhou would be around the Wrst year of Jian’an. Considering the

average time it takes for a scholar to accumulate knowledge in order to be well

qualiWed in philology, Liu Xi would be around thirty when he began his teaching

career. In 273, Wei Yao reported to Sun Hao (孙皓), the king of Wu, that he saw

Liu Xi’s DCCT when he himself was ‘writing the chapter Interpreting OYcial

Titles and the chapter On DiVerentiating Terms, and he intended to submit to the

Emperor for royal examination’ (The Annals of the Three Kingdoms). In the light

of the above three points, the time for Liu Xi’s writing of DCCT could be more

reliably identiWed as around 210 (the Wfteenth year of Jian’an) and the book was

Wnalized in 230 when Liu Xi was roughly in his sixties.

8.3 the format and style of dcct

DCCT comprises eight volumes, twenty-seven chapters altogether, covering 1,502

entries. The volumes are arranged in the following sequence:

Volume 1: Interpreting the Heavens (释天), Interpreting Earth (释地), Inter-

preting Mountains (释山), Interpreting Water (释水), Interpreting Mounds

(释丘), and Interpreting Roads (释道);

Volume 2: Interpreting States and Provinces (释州国), Interpreting Physical

Shapes (释形体);


Volume 3: Interpreting Postures and Appearances (释姿容), Interpreting

Seniority (释长幼), Interpreting Kinship Terms (释亲属);

Volume 4: Interpreting Language (释言语), Interpreting Food and Drink

(释饮食), Interpreting Silk (释采帛), Interpreting Ornaments (释首饰);

Volume 5: Interpreting Garments (释衣服), Interpreting Court and Palace

(释宫室);

Volume 6: Interpreting Beds and Curtains (释床帐), Interpreting Letters and

Contracts (释书契), Interpreting Classics and Arts (释典艺);

Volume 7: Interpreting Implements (释器用), Interpreting Weapons (释兵

器), Interpreting Army (释兵), Interpreting Vehicle (释车), Interpreting Ves-

sels (释船);

Volume 8: Interpreting Diseases (释疾病), Interpreting Funeral Systems (释

丧制).

The mode of classiWcation adopted by DCCT is diVerent from that in previous

dictionaries and is rarely encountered in the dictionaries subsequent to it. The

chapter entitled ‘Interpreting Language’ in Volume 4 is equivalent to the language

dictionary today and the remaining chapters are what are treated in encyclopedic

dictionaries of our times. In fact, the original texts in DCCTwould be more than

twenty-seven chapters. According toThe Annals of the Three Kingdoms, ‘the ranks of

nobility’ was discussed in DCCT. Unfortunately, there is no such interpretation of

the ranks of nobility in the book available today. There is, however, solid evidence

that the original version of DCCT contained a chapter whose title was ‘interpreting

the ranks of nobility’, which was quoted by the Tang and Song scholars.

Criteria for word coverage and rangeThe target words of DCCT are the common words that ‘common people use for

reference in everyday life’. This could be justiWed bywhat LiuXi says in the preface to

DCCT. Names and their referents in the physical world all fall into diVerent

semantic categories. The common people, however, do not know what meanings

the names convey when they are used in everyday life. DCCT is compiled to discuss

the reference and origins of names, involving heaven and earth, lunar and solar, the

four seasons, states and their regions, cities and counties, vessels, funeral cere-

monies, and even the implements and utensils that the peasants use. While An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters lists single characters from the literary

works in written form, DCCT, however, is oriented towards the language that

common people use in everyday communication. The chief unit for an entry in

DCCT is the word – bi-syllabic words and words of dialect and folk speech.

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms 121

The bi-syllabic characters in DCCT account for approximately 20% of the

total. In terms of word structure, they fall into four main types: (a) coordinates,

e.g. <释宫室>:宗庙 (‘ancestor’þ ‘temple’, ancestral temple); (b) subject–predi-

cates, e.g. <释丧制>: 寿终 (‘life’þ ‘end’); (c) subordinates, e.g. <释天>: 彗星(‘broom’þ‘star’: comet); and (d) predicate–objects, e.g. <释丧制>:弃市 (‘aban-

don (to)’þ ‘market’). Among the four types, the subordinate type holds the

dominant position. In addition, there are also quite a few alliterative and

rhyming compounds, like 摩挲 ‘stroke’, 匍匐 ‘crawl’ (<释姿容>) and 箜篌

‘konghou, plucked stringed music instrument’,枇杷 ‘loquat’ (<释乐器>).In terms of word meaning, the bi-character compound words also involve two

types: synonyms and antonyms. Take Interpreting Language as an example. There

are 172 entries in which synonyms and antonyms are deliberately put together to

form contrasts. There are twenty-eight groups of synonymous two-character com-

pounds, such as 言语 ‘language and speech’, 翱翔 ‘hover’, 委曲 ‘grievance’, 踪迹

‘trace’,扶将 ‘foster’,覆盖 ‘cover’,威严 ‘awe-inspiring’,艰难 ‘diYcult’,断绝 ‘sever’,

骂詈 ‘curse’,佐助 ‘assist’,祝诅 ‘pray’,名号 ‘name and alias’,盟誓 ‘oath’,念思 ‘miss’;

and forty-three groups of antonymous compounds, such as是非 ‘right and wrong’,

善恶 ‘good vs. evil’,好丑 ‘good vs. bad’,缓急 ‘unhurried vs. urgent’,巧拙 ‘deft vs.

cumbersome’, 燥湿 ‘dry vs. humid’,厚薄 ‘thick vs. thin’,逆顺 ‘adversity vs. tran-

quility’,贵贱 ‘noble vs. humble’,进退 ‘forward vs. backward’,出入 ‘entry vs. exit’,

贪廉 ‘corrupt vs. honest’,往来 ‘back vs. forth’, 粗细 ‘thickness vs. thinness’,吉凶

‘auspicious vs. ominous’,安危 ‘safe vs. dangerous’,甘苦 ‘sweetness vs. bitterness’.

Dialectal words and folk expressions are also included in DCCT. Look at the

following citation:

8. <释衣服>: ‘齐人谓草屦曰屝, 屝, 皮也,以皮作之。’

(草屦 is called 屝 by people in the state of Qi, which means leather and is

made of leather.)

To sum up, main entries in DCCT are taken from various sources and cover a

wide range of word formations. What is particularly worth mentioning is that the

majority of headwords belong to the everyday use of language.

Features of DCCT’s layoutThe inXuence of The Ready Guide on DCCT in layout is clearly discernable from

its text arrangements. They both adopt the technique of semantic categorization

and classiWcation, that is, grouping words on a semantic basis. Certainly, DCCT

diVers from The Ready Guide in its layout in several ways. First, DCCT has

further classiWed some categories in The Ready Guide into sub-categories. For


instance, the section on Interpreting Hardware in The Ready Guide was sub-

classiWed into smaller groups, such as Interpreting Silk, Interpreting Ornaments,

Interpreting Beds and Curtains, Interpreting Implements, Interpreting Army, Inter-

preting Vehicle, Interpreting Vessels.

Second, new categories were added, such as Interpreting Physical Shape, Inter-

preting Postures and Appearances, Interpreting Language, Interpreting Food and

Beverage, Interpreting Garments, Interpreting Letters and Contracts, Interpreting

Classics and Arts, Interpreting Diseases, Interpreting Funeral Systems.

Third, some categories in The Ready Guide were deleted, such as Interpreting

Exegesis, Interpreting Words, Interpreting Rhetoric, Interpreting Grasses, Interpret-

ing Woods, Interpreting Birds, Interpreting Creatures, Interpreting Fishes, Interpret-

ing Beasts, and Interpreting Livestock.

It is clear from the above that the range of coverage was greatly reduced in DCCT

but that the classiWcation became Wner and more reasoned, though further alter-

ations and adjustments could be made by the modern lexicographer. For instance,

in Interpreting Physical Shape, in addition to the Wner classiWcation, more detailed

information was provided in its explanations. The words in this category involved

人 ‘human’, 体 ‘body’, 躯 ‘stature’, 形 ‘form’, 身 ‘Wgure’, 毛 ‘feather’, 发 ‘hair’, 皮

‘skin’,肌 ‘muscle’,肉 ‘Xesh’,筋 ‘tendon’,骨 ‘bone’,血 ‘blood’,汗 ‘sweat’,头 ‘head’,面

‘face’,额 ‘forehead’,眼 ‘eye’,鼻 ‘nose’,口 ‘mouth’,颊 ‘cheek’,舌 ‘tongue’,齿 ‘tooth’,

耳 ‘ear’,唇 ‘lip’,髭 ‘moustache’,须 ‘beard’,颈 ‘neck’,胸 ‘chest’,腹 ‘belly’,心 ‘heart’,

肺 ‘lung’,肾 ‘kidney’,胃 ‘stomach’,肠 ‘intestine’,脐 ‘navel’,肋 ‘rib’,膈 ‘diaphragm’,

腋 ‘armpit’, 肩 ‘shoulder’, 背 ‘back’, 臂 ‘arm’, 肘 ‘elbow’, 腕 ‘wrist’, 掌 ‘palm’, 脊

‘spine’,臀 ‘buttock’,股 ‘thigh’,膝 ‘knee’,脚 ‘foot’, etc. Names were basically matched

to the anatomic terms of the human body and organs. Consistency could be found

in other texts, characterized by a gradual transition from macro-level terms to

micro-level ones and from more general terms to more subtle ones.

The theoretical underpinnings of deWnition in DCCTAs to ‘naming things with words’, there are two diVerent schools of thought in the

history of language study in China. One school holds that there exist no natural

relationships between the names and the objects in the physical world and that it

is through social convention that a word is used to designate an object. Xun Zi is

the representative of this school of thought, as can be seen:

A name is given to a thing by order rather than natural endowment; its appropriateness

comes from how well it has been conventionalized. If it is well conventionalized then it is

appropriate and if it deviates from the convention then it becomes inappropriate.

A name has no constant essence but it is agreed upon to designate the essence of


something. A name well established through conventionalization is a real name. (from

Xun Zi, <荀子>)

The other school holds that a word and the thing it designates have a certain

natural relationship – ‘A name originates from truth’ in Dong Zhongshu’s words.

And the representative of this school in the Eastern Han Dynasty is Liu Xi, who

does not think that naming is arbitrary but that there exists a causal relationship

between the name and its designator – ‘A name and the essence it designates fall

into their own semantic categories’ (from Preface to DCCT). The ‘semantic

categories’ of the ‘name’ and the ‘essence’ are what a name of an object is

based on. He also points out that the inherent relationship of semantic category

is substantiated by phonetics, which makes it possible for phonetic interpretation

to be employed in the exploration of ‘the meaning on which a name is estab-

lished’ (from Preface to DCCT). Look at the following citation from Interpreting

Ornaments in DCCT:

9. 梳, 言其齿疏也,数言比。比於梳,其齿差数也。比,言细相比也。

(梳 ‘comb’ is pronounced in the same way as 疏, indicating its teeth are

loose, in contrast to the number of teeth on 比, a Wne-toothed comb. 比

forms a contrast when it comes to the tight teeth on it.)

In Liu Xi’s interpretation, 梳 (comb) has the same pronunciation of /shu:/ as 疏

(loose),which indicates that the teethon the combare loose, in contrast to thenumber

of teeth on a比[篦] (aWne-toothed comb).比 refers to the type of combonwhich the

teeth are ‘tightly collocated’. Thus, Liu Xi argues that there exists a common semantic

category, that is, ‘being loose’, between梳 and疏.When梳was named, it was natural

forpeople to associate itwith疏, thanks to the samepronunciation they share – /shu:/.

Likewise,比[篦] was so named because its teeth bore the semantic feature of ‘tight vs.

loose’, and 比 and 篦 fell into the semantic category of ‘tight’, hence the same

pronunciation. This well illustrates the guiding principle for phonetic interpretation

adopted inDCCT. Liu Xi was the Wrst scholar to have applied phonetic interpretation

systematically in deWning words in the ancient history of Chinese philology.

DeWning features in DCCTThe Ready Guide adopted the semantic interpretation as its fundamental prin-

ciple for deWning characters – explaining the meaning of ancient words in

standard formal language. Its work of deWnition centres around ‘deWning

names and objects’. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters adopted

the formal and structural interpretation as its principal methodology to seek the

source meaning of the original character. DCCT, however, deviated noticeably


from these two dictionaries in adopting phonetic interpretation as the chief

means to explore the etymology of words. The deWnitions in these three diction-

aries do indeed share some common features, but their dissimilarities are im-

portant and noticeable in the sense that the authors are diVerently motivated and

their methodologies fundamentally diVerent. Consider the following citations

that illustrate how跽 has been deWned diVerently in the three dictionaries:

10. <尔雅�释言>: ‘启 (跽),跪也。’ [晋]郭璞注云: ‘小跽。’

(启, also 跽 ‘kneeling’, means 跪 ‘kneel’. According to the annotation by

Guo Pu, it means ‘short kneeling’.) (from The Ready Guide)

11. <说文解字>: ‘跽, 长跪也。从足,忌声。’

(跽means ‘long kneeling’, categorized into足 ‘foot’ and pronounced as忌

/ji/.) (from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters)

12. <释名�释姿容>: ‘跽,忌也。见所敬忌不敢自安也。’

(跽 is interpreted as忌, meaning ‘feeling uneasy when seeing somebody or

somebody respectful or awesome’.) (from DCCT)

It can be seen from the interpretation in DCCT that Liu Xi takes it that the

meaning of跽 is from忌, designating the psychology towards an elder – ‘feeling

uneasy’. Let us see how Duan Yucai analysed the diVerent interpretations from

the three dictionaries above:

13. ‘长跽乃古语。人安坐则形驰,敬则小跪耸体,若加长焉’故曰长跽。’ (Duan

Yucai, 1981:81)

(长跽 is an archaic expression. When someone sits quietly, he looks

relaxed. To show respect, he would have to keep straight and kneel slightly,

which looks as if he ‘grows taller’ and thus is 长跽 ‘long kneeling’. (from

Duan Yucai, 1981:81)

Thus,The Ready Guide andAn Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters both

interpreted 跽 from the perspective of the conWguration of an action; DCCT,

however, interpreted it from a psychological perspective. It is apparent that The

Ready Guide laid more emphasis on ‘diVerentiating the essence of names’. Xu Shen

based his interpretation mainly on the analysis of the character form and the

external physical properties of objects. Liu Xi paid greater attention to pronunci-

ation, throughwhich the naming of an object could be explained etymologically. To

conclude, the discrepancies between the three dictionaries were a result of the

diVerent perspectives they adopted in observing things and the diVerent modes

they established and employed in interpreting and explaining themeaning ofwords.

The second feature of deWnition in DCCT is the simultaneous use of semantic

interpretation and phonetic interpretation. A name is interpreted not only with a


character sharing identical or similar pronunciations but also semantically or by

means of explaining why it is phonetically interpreted. The interpretations in

DCCTare usually arranged in either of the sequences of ‘phonetic interpretation

before semantic interpretation’ (see 14) or of ‘semantic interpretation before

phonetic interpretation’ (see 15).

14. ‘月,阙也, 满则阙也。’

(月 ‘moon’ is pronounced in the same way as阙 ‘lacking’ /que/; when the

moon is full it begins to wane. )

15. ‘山顶曰冢。冢,肿也, 言肿起也。’

(The top or summit of the mountain is called冢.冢 is pronounced in the

same way as肿, meaning ‘swell up’.)

The third feature of deWnitions in DCCT is to use semantic interpretation

directly. This might be the last choice that the author had to resort to when no

appropriate phonetic interpretation could be worked out, as in (16) and (17) in

the following citations:

16. ‘日月亏曰食, 稍稍侵亏如虫食草木叶也。’

(The wane of the sun or the moon is called 食 ‘eclipse’, meaning the slow

disappearance of the sun’s or the moon’s light when the earth passes

between the sun and the moon, just like an insect eating up blades of

grass or the leaves of the tree.)

17. ‘流星,星转行如流水也。’

(流星 ‘meteor, shooting star’ means the stars travel through outer space

like Xowing water.)

The deWnitions of such a mode amount to approximately 15% of the total in

DCCT.

Phonetic interpretation rules in DCCTThere are three phonetic interpretation rules observed in DCCT. The Wrst rule is

the identical character interpretation in which the interpreter and the interpreted

are the same character. This rule applies to the cases where the character in

question is polysemous. In other words, the diVerent senses of a single character

could sometimes be used for mutual explanation. Look at the following two

citations:

18. ‘布,布也。布列众缕为经,以维横成之也。’

(布 means 布 ‘cloth’, which is made of the vertical texture 经 ‘longitude’

and the horizontal texture 维 ‘latitude’.)


19. ‘寝,寝也。所寝息也。’

(寝 is寝, which means ‘a place to sleep’.)

In (18), the ‘cloth’ sense of 布 is used to interpret its ‘distribution’ sense,

followed by a more detailed description of how a piece of cloth is made in

weaving and what its texture looks like. In (19), the noun of 寝 (bedroom) is

interpreted with its verb form ‘to sleep’. One obvious disadvantage of this mode

of identical character interpretation lies in its ambiguous meaning description,

which makes it impossible to become a major mode of interpretation.

The second rule is the use of a homophone to interpret, applying to the cases

where the interpreter and the interpreted share the same initial consonant and

vowel. The tone could be the same or diVerent. Consider the following citations:

20. ‘水草交曰湄。湄, 眉也。临水如眉临目也,水经、川归之处也。’

(湄 means the place where water and grass meet, ‘river bank’. 湄 has the

same pronunciation as 眉, meaning the river bank overlooking water like

the eyebrows overlooking the eyes. It is the place where water passes and

rivers meet.)

21. ‘径, 经也,人所经由也。’

(径 has the same pronunciation as 经, meaning the path man walks on.)

In (20),湄 and眉 share the same initial consonant, vowel, and tone. In (21),径

and 经 share the same initial consonant and vowel but the tone is diVerent.

The third rule is to interpret with a character sharing a similar pronunciation,

which applies to the cases where the interpreter and the interpreted do not

necessarily share the same initial consonant and vowel. The initial consonants

and vowels may be similar or very close.

Phonetic notation in DCCTThe scholars before Liu Xi generally adopted the methods of 直音 (direct

phonetic notation) and labels like 读若 (pronounced as). In DCCT, however,

Liu Xi began to make tentative use of the position and the manner of pronun-

ciation to describe the pronunciation of a character. His method is very close to

the descriptive phonetics today. Look at the citations from DCCT:

22. ‘天, 豫、司、兖、冀以舌腹言之。天, 显也, 在上高显也。青、徐舌头言

之。天, 坦也, 坦然高而远也。’

(天,豫,司,兖, and冀arepronouncedwith thebodyof the tongue.天 isdeWned

as显 ‘apparent andhighup’ and is pronouncedwith the tipof the tongue in the

regions of Qing and Xu, where天means坦 ‘Xat, high up, and distant’.)


23. ‘风, 兖、豫、司、冀横口合唇言之。风, 汜也, 其气博汜而动物也。青、

徐言风, 踧口开唇推气言之。风,放也,气放散也。’

(风,兖,豫,司, and冀 are pronounced by expanding the mouth and closing

the lips.风 is deWned as汜, meaning the air Xows and disturbs things.风 is

pronounced by contracting the mouth, opening the lips, and blowing air out

in the regions of Qing and Xu, where风means放 ‘releasing the air’.)

The terms used to describe the pronunciations in the above citations involve

舌腹 (the body of the tongue), 舌头 (tongue blade), 横口 (expansion of

mouth),合唇 (close lips), 踧口 (contraction of mouth), and开唇 (open lips).

All these terms are employed to describe the process of the articulation of a

character from the perspective of position andmanner of articulation. Owing to

the substantial drawbacks of science and technology of his time, Liu Xi’s

exploration in phonetic notation of Chinese characters was destined to be

primitive and pre-scientiWc, as he failed to accurately portray the sound values

of Chinese characters. His insights into phonetic description, however, are of

great signiWcance to scholars of later generations, especially to those compiling

character and word dictionaries.

8.4 the academic value and culturalinfluence of dcct

DCCT has it as its guiding principle and major objective to cover common

words and expressions that ordinary people use in everyday communication but

whose meaning and reference they fail to appreciate. It aims to deWne them and

‘make explicit their essence and reference’, and to fulWl the function of ‘under-

standing diYcult words and dissipating confusion’ (Preface to DCCT). It fol-

lows that DCCT embodies an adequate exposition of the three features of an

instructional dictionary. First, ‘a pedagogical dictionary usually adopts the

synchronic principle, for it is oriented to teach how to use the language, to

help solve the problems of speciWc words in use, and to facilitate linguistic

competence and performance.’ Second, the language materials in a pedagogical

dictionary are ‘mainly about the basic vocabulary of a language’. Third, the

corpus used in a pedagogical dictionary is ‘mainly contemporary, keeping a

good balance between the written and the spoken language’ (Yong Heming,

2003:63). Thus, DCCT falls into the category of a pedagogical dictionary.


Academic Value of DCCTThe value of DCCTmay be considered from diVerent perspectives, that is, from

the angle of its function as a dictionary, from a linguistic dimension, and from a

sociological dimension.

First, from a user’s perspective, it fulWls the function of making explicit the

confusions surrounding the naming of many things and facilitating the analysis

of the regularities in naming objects. Look at the following citation:

24. ‘简, 间也。编之篇篇有间也。’

(简 is deWned as 间 ‘space, interval’, that is, between chapters.)

From Liu Xi’s description we can glean knowledge about how ‘books’ were

made during his time, corroborated by the discovery of bamboo slips from the

Han Dynasty. Here is another citation: 薜荔拍兮蕙绸 (from The Songs of Chu,

<楚辞�九歌>). According to the annotation byWang Yi (王逸), ‘拍means搏壁,

and 绸 means 束缚 ‘‘bind’’ ’. What does 搏壁 mean? This question puzzled

scholars for centuries. Then DCCT provided the answer:

25. ‘搏壁,以席搏著壁也。’

(搏壁 means ‘using matting to cover and decorate walls’.)

From the interpretation of 搏壁 in DCCT, the citation from The Songs of Chu

can be appropriately interpreted as ‘the bedroom is decorated with matting made

of climbing Wgs, which is bound up with Faber cymbidium’.

Secondly, scholars today can take advantage of the materials used in DCCT for

phonetic interpretation to study the phonetics of Chinese characters in the

Eastern Han Dynasty. A large number of illustrative examples represent how

the phonetic system actually functioned during Liu Xi’s time. Moreover, these

examples are also valuable data for the studies of ancient speech sounds. Look at

the following citation:

26. ‘车,古者曰车,声如居,言行所以居人也。今曰车,声近舍。车,舍也,行

者所处若居舍也。’

(In ancient times,车 ‘cart’ was pronounced as 居 /ju/, indicating ‘a place

to live in while travelling’. Today, it is pronounced as舍 /she/, indicating ‘a

place that seems to the traveller to be a house’.)

Liu Xi was a resident in Qing Province and it could be inferred that at that time

车 and舍 shared roughly the same pronunciation.

Thanks to DCCT’s preservation of intact phonetic interpretation materials,

several important Wndings have been achieved in the area of Chinese phonology:


(a) There were no light labials in ancient times according to Qian Daxin. Look

at the following citations:

27. ‘邦, 封也。’ (邦 is pronounced 封, meaning ‘seal’.)

28. ‘负,背也。’ (负 is pronounced背, meaning ‘back’.)

29. ‘法,逼也。’ (法 is pronounced逼, meaning ‘force’.)

In the above citations, the interpretative characters and the interpreted ones share

the same or similar pronunciation, which justiWes the statement that there had been

no diVerentiation of light and heavy labials by the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

(b) In ancient Chinese phonology, 娘, 泥, 二 and 纽 were classiWed into the

category of泥, according to Zhang Binglin. Consider the following citations:

30. ‘男,任也。’ (男 is pronounced like任 ‘appointment’.)

31. ‘入,内也。’ (入 is pronounced like内 ‘inside’.)

In the above citations,任 and入 fell into the category of泥 in ancient times,

but falls into the category of日 in modern times.

(c) In ancient times, there was no diVerentiation between apical and dorsal,

according to Qian Daxin. Have a look at the following citations:

32. ‘达,彻也。’ (达 means彻 ‘completely’.)

33. ‘幢, 童也。’ (幢 means 童 ‘childhood’.)

In the above citations,彻 and幢 are ‘dorsal’ while达 and 童 are ‘apical’. These

two types had not been diVerentiated by that time.

Third, DCCT can serve as a tool showing in eVect how civilization developed

throughout the time itwascompiled.ThedeWnitionsofnamesandobjects, inessence,

area summaryofhumanknowledgeandwisdomaccumulatedatacertain stage in the

processofcivilization. In theEasternHanDynasty, themostoutstandingscientists are

ZhangHeng (张衡), Cai Lun (蔡伦), Zhang Zhongjing (张仲景), andHua Tuo (华

佗), whose achievements are marked by scientiWc sophistication. DCCT contains a

rich collectionof human thought andknowledgeof its time,which generally includes

(a)historicalknowledgeabout scienceandtechnology; (b)clothing, food, shelter, and

means of transport; (c) implements; (d) social customs; and (e) values.

Here are some citations from DCCT:

34. ‘脚,却也。以其坐时却在后也。’

(脚 means 却 ‘foot’, indicating the posture of sitting on the shanks with

feet remaining behind.)

When DCCT interprets脚 (foot), the posture of sitting is described, from which

it can be inferred that the same way of sitting as previously, that is, kneeling down


on the ground, had remained unchanged, but a fuller description of the posture

is provided.

35. ‘法,逼也。人莫不欲从其志,逼正使有所限也。’

(法 ‘law’ is pronounced as逼, meaning ‘force’. All people want to follow

their own inclination, but laws set limits on their conduct.)

36. ‘律, 累也。累人心,使不得放肆也。’

(律 ‘law, regulation’ is pronounced累 ‘fatigue’. Laws and regulations make

people feel fatigued at heart, eventually without becoming wanton and

unbridled.)

37. ‘口上曰髭。髭,姿也。为姿容之美也。’

(The hair on the upper part of the mouth is called 髭 ‘moustache’. 髭

means姿 ‘looks, appearance’, indicating the beauty of one’s looks.)

38. ‘颐下曰须。须,秀也。物成乃秀,人成而须生也。’

(The hair on the lower part of the mouth, the jaw, is called 须 ‘beard’. 须

means秀 ‘handsome’. When things grow bigger they look elegant. When

men grow the beard will appear.)

Examples (35) and (36) denote interpretations of ‘law’ and ‘regulations’, from

which it is clearly seen that the core meanings lie in execution by force – ‘make

someone not dare to be unbridled’. In the last two instances, the meanings of

‘beard’ and ‘moustache’ are explained and their aesthetic role for the people in

the Eastern Han Dynasty can be well appreciated.

Cultural InXuence of DCCTThe inXuences of DCCT can be seen mainly in annotative studies on DCCT, in

its implications for the ‘right radical theory’ (右文说) and etymological studies,

and in its indispensable role in the history of academic studies.

First, as far as annotative studies on DCCT are concerned, the Qing Dynasty

scholars have made the greatest contributions. The most inXuential work is Supple-

ments to the RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms (<释名疏证补>)by Wang Xianqian (王先谦). This work bears two distinctive features: one is its

exhaustive collection of generations of studies on DCCT. The main resources of

Wang Xianqian’s work come fromThe RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and

Terms (<释名疏证>) by Bi Yuan (毕沅). It also includes supplementary annota-

tions by Cheng Rongjing (成蓉镜) and Sun Yirang (孙诒让) and materials from

other works that were scrupulously selected. The other distinctive feature is the direct

expression of the author’s analytical thoughts, which served as revision to those of

other scholars.


Second, from the linguistic perspective, DCCT initiated eVorts in etymological

studies. The linguistic philosophy in DCCT is of great signiWcance to scholars of

later generations, especially in the formation of the investigation mode – ‘to seek

meaning from the sound’. Liu Xi interprets a character with its sound symbol that

is a character by itself, as in ‘趾, 止也’, ‘颊, 夹也’, and ‘智, 知也’, interprets the

character of sound symbol with one of its proliferations, as in ‘阴, 荫也’, ‘皮, 被

也’, and ‘委, 萎也’, and interprets a character with a character having the same

sound symbol, as in ‘帐, 张也’, ‘慢, 漫也’, and ‘根, 跟也’. All these modes of

phonetic interpretation were original and exemplary and furnished the basis for

the development of the ‘right radical theory’.

Let us turn once again to the ‘right radical theory’. YangQuan (杨泉), a scholar of

the Jin Dynasty, says in hisOn Physics (<物理论>) that坚 (hard) applies to metal;

紧 (tight) applies to grass and wood; and贤 (virtuous) applies to human beings.

The three characters share roughly the same pronunciation and the same essence –

‘rigid, solid, and tight’. Wang Zishao (王子韶), a scholar of the Song Dynasty,

specialized in studying Chinese characters. His explanation of the ‘right radical

theory’ goes as follows: The classiWcation of characters is represented by the left part

of a character and the meaning by the right part, as in the case of the category of木

(woods, trees). The left part of the characters in this category is always木. The so-

called ‘right character’ stands for its meaning, as in the case of 戋, which means

‘little, small’. ‘Little water’ is thus浅 (shallow); ‘a small piece of money’ is钱 (cent);

‘little badness (歹)’ is残 (incomplete); and small shell (贝, used asmoney in ancient

times) is 贱 (cheap). All such words share the meaning of 戋 (‘small’ or ‘little’)

(from The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues, Volume 14, <梦溪笔谈>).Etymological studies advanced by leaps and bounds in the mode established by

Liu Xi in the Qing Dynasty. Duan Yucai, in his The Annotated Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, put forth the notion of ‘seeking semantics

from phonetics’. In the evolution of language, as he views it, the phonetic form

would come Wrst and the characters in written form, used to record the spoken

form, would come later. Thus, he concludes that when An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters states that a pronunciation comes from a certain character,

then the character that stands for the pronunciation should have the same

meaning as the character that is denoted, which is illustrated by the following

citation from Duan Yucai (1981:731):

39. ‘力者, 筋也。筋有脉络可寻, 故凡有理之字皆从力。阞者, 地理也; 朸

者,木理也;泐者,水理也。’

(力means筋 ‘veins’. Veins can be traced by their textures. Thus, all charac-

ters designating things with a texture will always have a component – 力


(force). Likewise,阞 designates the structure of landform;朸 designates the

texture of wood; and泐 designates the structure of a river system.)

Subsequent to DCCTemerged another signiWcant work exploring the etymol-

ogy of Chinese characters – Interpreting Bigness (<释大>) by Wang Niansun. His

contribution to the theory of ‘seeking semantics from phonetics’ is well em-

bodied in the following quotation from The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide (<广雅疏证>): ‘In seeking the ancient meaning from ancient pronunciation, attention

should be given to how meaning is extended by analogy, not to be conWned by

form and structure’.

Etymology had not become a relatively serious and systematic branch of learning

until Zhang Taiyan (章太炎) published The Beginnings of Chinese Characters (<文始>) andWang Li published The Cognate Dictionary of Characters (<同源字典>).All this progress in etymological study can be traced to the basic framework laid

down by Liu Xi in his DCCTand can be thought of as extensions of his etymological

endeavours.

Finally, from the perspective of academic history, DCCT, as a pedagogical

dictionary, embodies, to some extent, a summary of the scientiWc investigations

of its time in its explanations, marking the knowledge level the people in the

Eastern Han Dynasty had reached. At the same time, it also functions as a bridge

to facilitate the passing on of civilization from one generation to another.


9

THEORETICAL INQUIRIESINTO LEXICOGRAPHICAL

ISSUES IN ANCIENTCHINA: A SURVEY

THE earliest dictionaries in the world originated about 4,000 years ago in the

Middle East. They were mainly bilingual glossaries. About one thousand

years later in ancient India dictionaries were also compiled in the form of bilingual

glossaries for explaining the diYcult words in Veda. The earliest dictionary in

China can be traced back to The Ready Guide, a monolingual dictionary compiled

2,200 years ago. Lexicography, a branch of learning with such a long history, has

made brilliant and indispensable contributions to world civilization and at the

same time has formed a culture of its own. Viewed from a diVerent perspective,

lexicography can also be considered a newly emerging discipline whose theoretical

generalization and methodological formulation are still in the process of being

matured and perfected, with the deepening of lexicographical investigations and

the constant interaction between dictionary compilation and language studies.

The Chinese character dictionary is a unique product of lexicographical

culture in China. The term 字典 (character dictionary) was coined before the

Tang Dynasty, which can be justiWed by the fact that it occurred nine times in

Sounds andMeanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures (<大藏音义>) by Hui Lin (seeQian Jianfu, 1989). After the publication of The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi the

term ‘character dictionary’ began to become popular. The term 辞典 (literally

‘diction dictionary’ or ‘word dictionary’) is said to have been introduced at the

end of the Qing Dynasty into Chinese from English via Japanese, which also uses

Chinese characters to translate Western words. Lexicography was rendered into

Chinese as 词典 (or 辞典 or 辞书) 编纂法 before 1978, relying heavily on its

deWnition in English and strongly suggesting an over-emphasis on the practical

side of lexicography. As lexicography progresses in modern times, theoretical

inquiries are beginning to gain more and more prominence. Since 1978 the term

词典学 has been established as the standard translation for its English equivalent

‘lexicography’, for it has attained gradual recognition as a relatively independent

discipline, embracing whatever aspects are concerned with dictionary making

and related theoretical research.

9.1 the origin of lexicography

The lexicographical culture in China evolved from the compilation of character-

learning textbooks and wordbooks. In remote times, all the work relating to

textbook or wordbook compilation would have to be started from scratch –

specifying the purpose, establishing principles and methods, delimiting the

coverage, choosing the most appropriate mode and procedure for deWning

word senses, and designing the scientiWc and standard criteria for regulating

compilation. As far as compilation is concerned, all the above aspects need to be

considered systematically before a wordbook or dictionary project can be initi-

ated. It must have taken a great deal of time and wisdom for the style of

wordbooks and dictionaries in ancient times to be transformed into the scientiWc

and standardized style of modern lexicography, during which process ancient

lexicography in China started to take shape, gradually growing and maturing as

these crucial questions were taken into consideration.

Chinese characters started to emerge and evolve about 6,000 years ago and the

literature of Chinese characters began to appear and develop from the Xia Dynasty.

According to The Book of the Han Dynasty, even after the Burning Book Event in

the Qin Dynasty, there were still over 140 categories of Pre-Qin works that survived

to the Western Han Dynasty, including immortal works like Zuo’s Spring and

Autumn Annals, The National Language, and The Spring and Autumn. These re-

sources provided not only valuable data for compiling wordbooks and dictionaries

but also an inspiration for creating new stylistic prototypes.

Chinese lexicography can be traced back to the earliest textbooks compiled for

children to learn characters. In the Zhou Dynasty, the oYcial historian was in

charge of education and the earliest textbook of such a kind available today is

theoretical inquiries in ancient china 135

Historian Zhou’s Primer. In the Qin Dynasty, Li Si, the Premier in the Wrst

Emperor’s reign, wrote The Cangjie Primer, and there were two other textbooks,

namely The Yuanli Primer and The Scholarly Primer. In the Han Dynasty, there

appeared some other well-known textbooks, such as The General Primer, The

Instant Primer, The Yuanshang Primer, The Exegetic Primer, and The Pangxi

Primer. Based on these textbooks and the achievements in textual research and

exegetic interpretations of ancient classics, dictionaries of various types came

into being, the thematic dictionary such as The Ready Guide by scholars in the

early Han Dynasty, the philological dictionary such as An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters, the dialectal dictionary such as The Dictionary of Dialectal

Words, and the phonetically interpretive dictionary such as The Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and Terms. The characters in these textbooks, wordbooks, and

dictionaries underwent great changes in their forms and structures – from

dazhuan to xiaozhuan, the standardized style of writing in the Qin Dynasty,

and to the oYcial script, the standardized style of writing in the Han Dynasty. The

coverage of those books was ever-increasing. There is a strong heritage link among

these books, such as the style of compilation, the scope of coverage and entry

selection, the style of deWningwords, citation and phonetic notation, format setting,

and so on. A successive and consistent inheritance is clearly detectable from one to

the other among these textbooks, wordbooks, and dictionaries.

The evolution from Historian Zhou’s Primer to The Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and Terms implies something more important than simply the passing

on and development of compilation styles. The theoretical generalization and

progression of lexicography gained from dictionary making in ancient China and

the establishment of prototype dictionaries – the thesaurus dictionary, the

dialectal dictionary, the etymological dictionary, and the Chinese character

dictionary have laid a solid foundation and paved the way for the fundamental

development of future dictionary research and compilation.

9.2 the advent of lexicography

Lexicography is an endeavour in which practice usually precedes theory. Dic-

tionary making can be traced back about 4,000 years from a worldwide perspec-

tive and over 2,000 years in China, but the systematic theoretical investigations of

dictionary making did not start until the twentieth century, though fragmentary

probes started almost simultaneously with the emergence of the Wrst stream of


dictionaries in the history of Chinese lexicography. The relatively short history of

modern lexicography does mean that the basic notions, principles, and method-

ologies of lexicography have been formed and developed in quite recent times,

though some fundamental notions and concepts can be traced back to when

dictionary or wordbook making started in ancient times. These important

notions and concepts were mainly pre-theoretical ideas which had not under-

gone systematic generalization, due to time limitation or other conceivable

factors. They were mainly embodied in the dictionaries or wordbooks them-

selves, in their organization and treatment of each entry word. Only when the

compilers felt it necessary would they discuss these lexicographic issues collect-

ively in the front or back matter, such as the preface, foreword, introduction, or

epilogue. In the Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, a

rather systematic and comprehensive discussion was conducted of the guidelines,

nature, function, structure, and methodology of dictionary making. It could be

viewed as the earliest literature on lexicography dealing with the theoretical

questions concerning the macrostructure of a dictionary. In the Preface to The

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms, the name-essence theories of the pre-

Qin scholars, especially the rectiWcation theory by Xun Zi, were employed in

dictionary making for the Wrst time to seek the nature of naming object words

and their origins. Certainly, it could be viewed as the Wrst literature on lexicog-

raphy dealing with the exegetic interpretation of words from the perspective of

etymology. These two important monologues mark the birth of lexicographic

ideas, the inception of theoretical formulation in ancient Chinese lexicography.

Dictionary function is a fundamental issue in lexicographical theorization, and

it is also a practical question for the compilers before they start their dictionary

projects. Lexicographers usually adopt a much broader vision than practical

compilers do, for they have to take the dictionary as a whole to investigate its

macro-level functions and to investigate its socio-cultural values against an even

broader socio-cultural background. Dictionary compilers, on the other hand,

will mainly concern themselves with practical issues concerning dictionary mak-

ing and concrete values of individual dictionaries.

The traditional research on dictionary function has long been under the

inXuence of the ideology of language ontology. Thus, a dictionary is taken merely

as a tool for people to retrieve and consult information. This view of the

dictionary as a tool has dominated the research on dictionary function for

many centuries. It is undeniable that retrieval and consultation should be the

most primitive and practical function of a dictionary. However, the function of a

dictionary cannot be limited to providing linguistic information only no matter

how complicated the information is, especially for the well-educated (see Bejoint,


1994:115). Many scholars (see Zgusta, 1971; Bejoint, 1994) have conducted a great

deal of research into the practical use of the dictionary. In the light of their

studies, dictionary functions can be summarized into three categories: descrip-

tive, didactic, and ideological. A dictionary can aim at describing all or part of the

words of a language, and, consequently, the lexicon of a dictionary may be the

vocabulary of one speciWc language, the terms of one speciWc branch of learning,

or the concordance of a speciWc writer or even a speciWc work of a writer. The

dictionary can also have a pedagogical purpose, that is, to provide information

concerning the semantics and usage of words so that the user can beneWt by

improving their intra-cultural and intercultural communication. The dictionary

can perform ideological functions as well, as ideological weapons for defending

‘social morals and values’ (Bejoint, 1994) so as to enhance the unity and integrity

of a linguistic community. In a word, retrieval and consultation are the principal

functions of the dictionary but this represents only part of the dictionary

function. No description of dictionary function can be said to be complete

without the incorporation of the three categories mentioned above.

It is a long evolutionary process for the dictionary to formulate the three

general functions above. For instance, the descriptive function of a dictionary has

been realized in modern times. At an early stage, the function of wordbooks and

dictionaries was mainly pedagogical, with a strong Xavour of standardization or

prescriptivism. Later, with the development of the social function of a dictionary,

the ideological function was strengthened. In the periods of the Spring Autumn

and the Warring States, China possessed vast territories and was enjoying an

ever-increasing economic prosperity. Consequently, social communication be-

came more frequent and the drawback of having numerous dialects was acutely

felt both by the general public and the educated. Wordbooks and glossaries,

because of their own limitations, could no longer bear the burden of enlighten-

ment, pedagogy, and standardization, hence The Ready Guide came into being.

The didactic and standardization functions are still dominant in many dic-

tionaries today. To realize such functions through dictionaries is by no means a

novelty but an important contribution to Chinese lexicographic culture made by

scholars of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties. The dictionaries of the Han Dynasty

also played an ideological role in helping ‘to interpret the classic works, to

advocate Confucian ideas, to maintain the sovereign, and to consolidate the

foundation of the government’, in addition to ‘interpretative’ and ‘corrective’

functions of ‘rectifying misinterpretations and facilitating understanding of the

Classics’. The ideological function has its roots in a naıve and embryonic under-

standing of the roles and characters of language in the social community of

ancient times. Characters are ‘the foundation of scripts and arts’ and ‘the source


of His Majesty’s sovereign’. Only when the ‘source’ is inexhaustible can the

‘streams’ have enough water for navigation. Similarly, characters and writing

are the prerequisites for ‘enlightenment, education, and civilization’. Speech

‘makes direct communication possible for people in the same linguistic commu-

nity’ and ‘the invention of characters promotes the transmission of civilization in

a more stable and accurate fashion’. Dictionaries record the characters and their

behaviour and keep them as standards for later generations. Thus, they will, from

a historical point of view, function as ‘a mirror to the past’ and as ‘a milestone for

guiding later generations’.

Dictionaries in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties were the product of scholars’

investigation into and reXection upon dictionary typology, functions, and their

interactive relationships. Actually, dictionary making in the Han Dynasty man-

ifested an apparent evolutionary process – from simple character lists to charac-

ter lists with interpretative notes, and then to wordbooks and dictionaries. With

regard to the pioneering primers and glossaries of the pre-Qin period, the

progress was steady, the number of characters listed was constantly on the

increase, and the expansion of interpretative notes was conspicuous. There was,

however, no apparent diVerentiation in dictionary types. The purpose of those

early primers was simple: to solve the problems of learning characters and

reading classic works. The progression from The Ready Guide to The Dictionary

of Chinese Characters and Terms portrays a picture of the major dictionary

prototypes of modern times. In terms of its arrangement of entries, The Ready

Guide can be classiWed as a thesaurus because its entries are arranged according to

the semantic relations of the characters rather than their spelling. But in terms of

its scope of coverage, it can be considered an encyclopedic dictionary. This binary

feature is a universal attribute of the dictionary in the early stage of dictionary

making worldwide. The entry arrangement characterized by semantic categor-

ization is the most convenient when there is no other more appropriate method

available. As to its encyclopedic nature, this would be the simplest means of entry

selection when the dictionary makers had not yet formulated a clear picture of

what to cover, what function to perform, and what principles to follow.

Purposes for which dictionaries are compiled to serve will inevitably change

with the development of the society. Dictionary functions become more and

more speciWc, and the types of dictionary become reasonably diversiWed. For

instance, there appeared The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, a dialect dictionary

for interpreting a great variety of characters used in diVerent regional dialects,

The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms, an etymological dictionary for

‘discussing and pointing out’ the reference of expressions and for ‘exploring the

source and origin of expressions’, and An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese


Characters, designed to seek the meanings of characters, analyse their form and

structure, and inquire into their origins. The diVerent purposes of dictionary

making are to be instantiated as diVerent functions, which are bound to bring

about a stream of new types of dictionary.

Some important ideas on dictionary making in the Zhou, Qin, and Han

dynasties were also embedded in the discussions on the theory of Six Categories.

The Six Categories refers to the six ways of analysing the form and structure of

Chinese characters. As early as in the Western Zhou Dynasty, it was oYcially

recognized as one of the six subjects in formal education. In The Rites of the

Zhou Dynasty, it was only a general term and was not speciWed. From the Zhou

to the Eastern Han Dynasty, relevant discussions and explorations into the

Six Categories had formed a sound basis for ancient studies of Chinese characters

and philology.

It was Zheng Zhong, a scholar of the Han Dynasty, who gave a speciWcation

of the terms for Six Categories in his notes on The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty:

‘pictographic (象形), ideographic (会意), mutually explanatory (转注), event-

denoting (处事), loaning (假借), and sound-matching (谐声)’. In The Book of

the Han Dynasty, Six Categories refers to pictographic (象形), event descriptive

(象事), meaning descriptive (象意), sound descriptive (象声), mutually ex-

planatory (转注), and loaning (假借), which are taken as ‘the fundamental

ways of creating Chinese characters’. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters not only oVers a further explication of the theory of Six Categories

but also takes it as the theoretical framework for investigating and interpreting

ancient characters, exploring their origins, and analysing the changes in the

form and structure of characters from ancient times to the investigator’s time,

or analysing the patterns in the form and structure of those newly invented

characters. This explains why its Wndings are more reliable, more consistent,

and more coherent.

In his Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, Xu Shen

puts forward a systematic explication and discussion of the theory of Six Cat-

egories. His discussion of the Six Categories theory has some distinct features. For

instance, the sequence of the Six Categories is diVerent: in Ban Gu and Zheng

Xuan’s sequence, ‘pictographic’ goes before ‘event-denoting’, whereas, in Xu

Shen’s sequence, ‘event-denoting’ is put at the front, which is not a simple

theoretical dispute but represents their diVerent aesthetic notions about Chinese

characters. It is also a manifestation of Xu Shen’s more thorough and profound

thinking on Chinese characters and philology, and his theoretical probe into

some basic lexicographical issues. Such a sequence has, at least in theory, paved

the way for constructing a stylistic manual and for establishing the principles


of deWnition. In other words, Xu Shen introduced the theory of Six Categories into

the semantic interpretation of Chinese characters in dictionary making, and for

the Wrst time turned the principles of character analysis into a speciWc compilation

style, that is, interpreting the (basic) meaning of a character from analysing its

form and structure, and, to a certain extent, having strengthened themethodology

of character interpretation.

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters attempted to analyse diachron-

ically the form and structure of one type of Chinese character, i.e. xiaozhuan, and

trace the origins of Chinese character creation. It is the Wrst successful attempt

to design and establish the megastructure of a Chinese character dictionary on

the basis of the theory of Six Categories. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters has become a monumental landmark for its comprehensive and com-

plete classiWcation of Chinese characters from the time the First Emperor of the

Qin Dynasty united China. The Six Categories theory has become a theoretical

foundation stone for making dictionaries of the Chinese language ever since.

9.3 the formation of macro-level stylesfor dictionary making

The main body of the dictionary is where lexicographical information resides,

thus the core of a dictionary. As for the general structure of modern dictionaries,

two main interconnecting threads can be found linking entries together and

weaving them into a coherent whole. These two threads are the vertical paradig-

matic structure, i.e. the macrostructure, and the horizontal syntagmatic struc-

ture, i.e. the microstructure. The former forms the backbone of a dictionary and

the latter constitutes the basic unit of a dictionary – the entry. In modern

dictionary making, the backbone falls into two main types: the alphabetical or

radical arrangement and the thematic arrangement. The alphabetical or radical

arrangement emphasizes the formal features of the language or its writing

system, while the thematic arrangement is based on the semantic relations

between lexical items. It takes about 1,000 years for the alphabetical arrangement

to evolve and mature, for example, in English lexicography, from The Leiden

Glossary to Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language. For the radical

arrangement to mature, it takes about 1,500 years, for example, in China, from An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters to The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi.

For the thematic arrangement, it also takes about 1,000 years to mature in English


lexicography, for example from The Leiden Glossary to Thesaurus of English Words

and Phrases (1852) and in China about 2,300 years, for example from The Ready

Guide to The Thesaurus of Chinese Words and Expressions (<同义词词林>, 1983)compiled by Mei Jiaju (梅家驹) et al. and published by the Shanghai Lexicograph-

ical Publishing House.

Thematic arrangementThematic or thesaurus arrangement, which appears earlier than alphabetical or

radical arrangement, is very common for the macrostructure of a dictionary. The

main feature of thematic layout is the classiWcation or grouping of words

according to their semantic relations. The method of thematic layout is estab-

lished on the theory of semantic Weld but is not derived from this theory. It had

been practised for several hundred years before serious theoretical investigation

was carried out. Based on the literature currently available, Chinese lexicog-

raphers are the pioneers who Wrst applied the thematic method of entry arrange-

ment to dictionary making, preceding their Western counterparts by over 2,000

years in Romanic alphabetic arrangement and by at least several hundred years in

radical arrangement.

Thematic arrangement can be traced back to the glossaries compiled during

the Qin and Han Dynasties but its actual beginning is in The Ready Guide. The

Ready Guide is the initiator of the arrangement of entries on the basis of semantic

categorization, though its categorization and thematic conceptualization are

rudimentary. A look at the arrangement of entries in The Dictionary of Dialectal

Words will reveal the same characteristics of semantic division and grouping. This

dictionary has thirteen chapters. Apart from the Wrst three chapters and the last

two, each of the remaining chapters deals with one class of words and characters.

For instance, Chapter 4 deals mainly with garments and Chapter 5 with utensils

for everyday use. Therefore, the style of layout in The Dictionary of Dialectal

Words is a reXection of the idea of ‘seeking dialectal words according to their

categories’, though the dialectal words and expressions are extensively drawn

from diVerent dialectal regions.

The practice of thematic ordering in both The Ready Guide and The Dictionary

of Dialectal Words is the basis for the Wnal formation of the compilation style of

‘seeking dialectal words according to their categories’. This partly explains why

The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms looks much more mature than

The Ready Guide in entry arrangement. The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and

Terms comprises twenty-seven major categories in total, but there are still ‘things

not included’. To compensate for this defect, Liu Xi proposes this principle for


entry arrangement: ‘for those items not included, wisdom has to be resorted to in

order to seek according to the classes they belong to’. The Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and Terms has set a very good example for later Chinese dictionaries

to follow in semantic categorization and grouping. Its contribution to the theory

and compilation of thematic dictionaries is unique and permanent. If The Ready

Guide is taken as a pioneer in thematic dictionary making, The Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and Termswill be the landmark in the theoretical formation of

thematic arrangement in the sense that its thematic arrangement is more sys-

tematic, the principle of ‘seeking according to the classes they belong to’ is

adequately expressed and practised. The coherent and systematic summarization

and reXections concerning the development of thematic ordering from The

Ready Guide to The Dictionary of Dialectal Words is a good illustration of

the emergence of the theoretical conceptualization of thematic arrangement

in the history of Chinese lexicography.

In the history of English lexicography, thematic arrangement was Wrst found in

the earliest four bilingual glossaries, and The Leiden Glossarywas among them. This

practice was further developed in the Latin–Old English glossaries of around the

tenth century. In the eleventh century, the practice gained yet further development

and this could be seen in a Latin–Anglo-Saxon glossary. This glossary consists of

eighteen parts and their titles are as follows: (1) God, heaven, angels, archangels, sun,

moon, earth, sea; (2) man, woman, the parts of the body; (3) terms of consanguin-

ity, professional and trades people, artisans; (4) diseases; (5) abstract terms, e.g.

impious, just, prudent, etc.; (6) terms for parts of the year, days of theweek, seasons,

weather; (7) colours; (8) birds; (9) Wshes; (10) beasts; (11) herbs; (12) trees; (13) house

furnishings; (14) kitchen and cooking utensils; (15) weapons; (16) parts of the city;

(17) metals and precious stones; (18) general – both abstract and concrete terms

(Starnes 1946). A comparison betweenThe Ready Guide and the Latin-Anglo-Saxon

glossary will display surprisingly similar items in semantic categorization. In both

books some of the themes (or subtitles), such as trees, birds, beasts, Wshes, herbs,

kitchen and cooking utensils, are exactly the same; some with a little variation; and

the rest are completely diVerent due to diVerences in the authors’ socio-cultural

background and in their preferences. The semantic categorization in this bilingual

glossary, which appeared 1,300 years later than The Ready Guide, is generally not as

comprehensive or well-focused as that of The Ready Guide, to say nothing of The

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms.

Thematic arrangement is based on semantic categorization and meaning

grouping. Before adopting the methodology of thematic ordering, the compilers

must carefully examine the data collected and classify them into diVerent cat-

egories. These classiWcations need to be further divided into sub-categories.


Due to insuYcient theoretical and technological support at the time of compil-

ation, there remains a great deal of room for improvement in semantic categor-

ization and lexical grouping in The Ready Guide and The Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and Terms.

Classifying characters into diVerent sectionsThe Han Dynasty experienced the transition of Chinese dictionary making from

wordlists and glossaries to character dictionaries and word dictionaries. The

macro-level stylistic format of the Chinese dictionary undoubtedly originated

from and was inspired by the arrangement of entries in wordlists and glossaries.

The earliest discussion of entry layout in Chinese literature is found in Shi You’s

The Instant Primer:

Quickly learn the rarely seen drinking vessels and many diVerent things: enumerate the

names of objects, people, and families; classify them into diVerent sections and they will

not be easily mixed up. Occasional consultation will deWnitely be a pleasure – for it is

quick to retrieve, and if enormous time and energy is put into it, there will surely be

surprising rewards.

The practice of classifying into diVerent sections without confusion can be

traced back to The General Primer, compiled 500 years earlier than The Instant

Primer, but the latter generalized the practice into a compilation principle that

guided the making of early wordbooks and glossaries. Shi You claimed that it is a

text for enlightenment and that the words collected are all-embracing; they are

sensibly classiWed into diVerent sections; there is no redundancy or repetition;

therefore, it will be time-saving and much beneWt will accrue if the heart and soul

is put into it.

Classifying into diVerent sections without confusion becomes a principle rigidly observed

by later dictionary compilers whether they follow radical arrangement, thematic arrange-

ment, or rhyming arrangement. This principle and the criteria andmethods derived from

it are still dominant in Chinese dictionary making today. (Qian Jianfu, 1989)

In The Ready Guide, the words are semantically classiWed into nineteen cat-

egories, such as Interpreting Exegesis, Interpreting Words, Interpreting Rhetoric,

and Interpreting Relatives. These speciWc classiWcations are not found in the

wordbooks or wordlists compiled earlier and should be regarded as a creation

of The Ready Guide. The entry arrangement in The Ready Guide bears at its root

the idea of ‘classifying into diVerent sections without confusion’, which becomes

an important thread running through the evolution of the macro-level dictionary

layout in Chinese lexicography.


Relating characters by the radicals sharedIt took centuries for the entry layout to evolve from ‘classifying characters into

diVerent sections’ to ‘relating characters by the radicals they share’. In the case of

early character lists, glossaries, and even The Ready Guide, consultation was

extremely cumbersome, though a good deal of work had been done in semantic

categorization and lexical grouping. Lexicographers had to Wnd a new way.

‘Classifying characters into diVerent sections without confusion’ considerably

helped to facilitate the process of looking up the target character but with low

eYciency. Xu Shen invented a new system for retrieval and consultation through

analysing the form and structure of Chinese characters, which started from 一

and ended end at 亥 and arranged characters according to the families they

belonged to and the inherent properties they shared. That helped users to get to

know the change and the profound underlying relationships.

‘Relating characters by the radicals they share’ was an innovation in entry

arrangement. In essence, it was to arrange the entry characters according to the

radical components they share, that is, to start from the simplest radical 一 to

the last radical 亥. There are 540 radicals altogether, each governing a set of

characters sharing the same radical component. About 10,000 Chinese characters

could thus be ‘classiWed into diVerent sections without confusion’. The guiding

principle of such a classiWcation is that ‘things are to be sorted and grouped

together’ and the basis for classiWcation is ‘to relate characters by the radicals they

share’. The radicals identiWed by Xu Shen have some deWciencies, or even defects,

which have undergone constant improvement from The Jade Chapters to The

Imperial Dictionary of Kang Xi. It is undeniable that the radical ordering, char-

acterized by ‘relating characters according to the radicals they share’, marks an

important breakthrough in the exploration of entry layout in the lexicographical

history of China. It was an innovation that had, generally speaking, captured the

characteristics and patterns of the form and structure of Chinese characters. Even

today, it is still popular and remains an indispensable way for systematically

arranging entry characters and eYciently retrieving character information in the

Chinese dictionary.

Note that ‘relating characters according to the radicals they share’ is a very

general principle adopted by Xu Shen to guide his arrangement of entries. ‘Form’

is the dominant thread linking entries and at the same time the semantic relations

are taken into consideration – the entries are arranged in a similar way to the

structure of a tree: the trunk having branches and the branches having leaves. In

such an arrangement, the relationships are clearly sorted and presented in a

coherent mode. To sum up, the macrostructure of Xu Shen’s arrangement of


character entries bears some distinctive features: the form is dominant and the

meaning subordinate, characters are related according to the radicals they share,

and the meanings are obtained by analysing the forms and structures of the

corresponding characters.

‘Meaning-categorized arrangement’, ‘classifying characters into diVerent sec-

tions’, and ‘relating characters according to the radicals they share’ are the key

notions of entry arrangement developed in the Han Dynasty, representing the

important stages of serious theoretical research in this regard in the early period

of Chinese lexicography. These notions indicate the advent of serious theoretical

investigations into dictionaries and dictionary making in ancient China.

9.4 the formation of micro-levelformat for dictionary making

The macrostructure of a dictionary represents how the entries are linked together

vertically, while the microstructure of a dictionary represent the way individual

entries are organized and diVerent information about the entry is arranged

horizontally. Basically, microstructure consists of two parts: the ‘formal descrip-

tion’ (the left core structure) and the ‘semantic interpretation’ (the right core

structure). These two parts can be regarded as the ‘comments’ on the ‘topic’

introduced by the headword. In the left core structure, the ‘formal description’

involves types of information, such as spelling, morphology, syntax, and phonetics.

In the right core structure, the ‘semantic interpretation’ involves types of informa-

tion, such as deWnition, usage, and etymology. So the head character represents the

topic to be discussed and developed. Normally, an entry starts with the head

character, followed by diVerent kinds of information arranged in such a sequence

as spelling, phonetics, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and semantics. The entry

ends with etymological information, especially in large-size dictionaries. In the

microstructure of a dictionary, semantic information is usually core information,

thus the most essential part of an entry. In an entry, the semantic information is

likely to be accompanied by illustrative citations; this aims to show the context for

its appropriate or typical use or to help the user to understand the deWnition. This

is a general summary of the structural features and informational contents of the

modern dictionary, which is the result of evolution over twenty or thirty centuries.

What follows is a survey of the evolution of the microstructure of ancient Chinese

dictionaries, involving coverage, deWnition, citation, and phonetic notation.


CoverageFor wordbooks, glossaries, or dictionaries of ancient times, either monolingual

or bilingual, either in Chinese or other languages, there exists an inevitable

tradition, that is, the diYcult word tradition, which still exists today. One

possible reason is that the grammar and vocabulary of a language are mainly

imparted orally, through the teacher’s voice, from generation to generation

(Murray, 1900). For the early dictionary makers, the words and expressions

used in everyday life seldom posed any diYculties to people but it is the diYcult

words of the classics, which are hard to remember and use that deserve special

attention and treatment. For instance, what are recorded in The Ready Guide as

headwords are mainly characters from ancient classics whose meanings are

obsolete or ancient characters whose meanings are still in everyday use. As

pointed out by Zheng Xuan, ‘The Ready Guide . . . is aimed at interpreting the

Six Arts’ (The RectiWcation of the Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics,

<驳五经异义>). It is a common feature of early wordbooks and dictionaries to

pay special attention to diYcult words and overlook the words and expressions

used in everyday communication.

As far as the unit of the entry is concerned, it is generally believed that what are

included in ancient wordbooks and glossaries are monosyllabic words as all the

words in ancient books are monosyllabic. It follows that dictionaries are all in fact

character dictionaries. This is not what it was for dictionary making in ancient

times in China. Judging from the character lists and workbooks compiled during

the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties, what are included as headwords involve not

only monosyllabic words but also a certain number of bi- or multi-syllabic

compound and complex words. The Cangjie Primer is a good case in point (see

Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters). In The Ready Guide,

The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, and An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, the majority of the entries are headed by monosyllabic words, but

compound and complex words also occasionally appear in the macrostructure.

Names of objects are mostly compound and complex words. In addition to

monosyllabic words, The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms, by its

nature, deals mainly with compound and complex words. To sum up, the

headword unit of the entry in ancient dictionaries in China is in most cases the

monosyllabic word, but the occurrence of bi- or even multi-syllabic words is by

no means rare and is a necessary complementary part of the macrostructure.

In terms of the attributes of the entry word, there has been a long-lasting

tradition of embracing both general names (general linguistic words) and proper

names (encyclopedic terms) in wordbooks and dictionaries in ancient China.


This tradition had its roots in ancient character textbooks or reading primers.

The Ready Guide and the dictionaries subsequent to it not only followed suit but

also carried it further. In his Preface to The Annotated Dictionary of Dialectal

Words, Guo Pu states:

It is heard that in compiling The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, [its author] travelled

to numerous states and made an extensive collection of dialectal words from diVerent

speeches. Where the carts converge and where people ever set their feet on, [its author]

would reach there and make a record of their speech and have them described in

his book.

The Dictionary of Dialectal Words lists words and expressions in diVerent

places, and naturally general terms and proper names should also be included

in its coverage. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Charactersmust also ‘record

all the names of the objects ever seen by human beings’ and its extensive coverage

requires that both general and proper names be embraced.

The inclusion of both ancient and contemporary words, standard, colloquial

and/or slang words in dictionaries compiled in the Han Dynasty was an import-

ant feature of entry coverage. It is pointed out in the Preface to The Ready Guide

that the objective of Interpreting Exegesis and Interpreting Words is ‘to bridge

ancient characters with modern ones’, and naturally it records those ‘words that

are diVerent in ancient and contemporary times’. The Dictionary of Dialectal

Words regards it as one of its main aims to interpret dialectal words in the Qin

and Han Dynasties that are unintelligible to later generations.

To summarize, scholars in the Qin and Han Dynasties established a multidi-

mensional and multilevel entry setting system characterized by ‘vertical and

horizontal crosscutting, embracing ancient and contemporary, with spatial and

temporal relationships also considered’. Based on this system, they also developed

a model for entry layout and entry coverage. This model is highly functional and

is followed by later dictionary makers.

Word/character meaning interpretationThe theories of semantic interpretations of words and characters developed in

the Han Dynasty are based mainly on philosophic epistemology – language is the

expression of thought. As early as in the Pre-Qin period, it was acknowledged

that ‘what should be treasured in speech is the meaning it entails’ and that ‘only

when the meaning is conceived can the word be popularized’ (Zhuang Zi), a

proposition successively discussed by many scholars, such as Yang Xiong, Xu

Shen, and Liu Xi. They all believe that words with meaning are ‘the sound of


thinking’, ‘the inner ideas beyond the word form’, and the result of ‘the outward

expression of inner thought’. When this philosophical epistemology was applied

to meaning interpretation in dictionary making by the Han Dynasty scholars, the

principles for meaning interpretation in dictionary compilation were beginning

to take shape in the minds of lexicographers:

investigating the meaning of characters from a diachronic perspective, using citations to

justify the meanings of characters interpreted, making a rational interpretation and

diVerentiation of meanings of characters, with a view to matching the words (the

name) and their contents (the essence). (邹酆, Zou Feng, 2001:231)

The establishment of the principles for interpretation of meaning in lexicog-

raphy is an important achievement in theoretical inquiries into deWnitions in the

Qin and Han Dynasties.

Lexical semantics and word deWnition in the Chinese language did not origin-

ate from the practice of compiling wordbooks and dictionaries but, in more

remote times, from textbook compilation for children to learn Chinese charac-

ters. The great majority of works classiWed as being of a philological nature in The

Book of the Han Dynasty contain explanatory notes explicating the meaning of

some characters and expressions. For instance, the notes in Historian Zhou’s

Primer are frequently quoted by Xu Shen in writing An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters. Supplement to Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist

Scriptures (<正续一切经音义>) contains some restored materials of The Cang-

jie Primer, fromwhich it can be inferred that there are not only interpretations on

the content of words and expressions but also the extensive use of some methods,

which come to be recognized as phonetic interpretation (声训), formal inter-

pretation (形训), and semantic interpretation (义训) in traditional Chinese

philology. Moreover, interpretations on extended meanings or multiple mean-

ings of the same word or character are also found in The Cangjie Primer, for

instance:

1. ‘剧:病笃也,又云增甚也。’

(剧 means病笃 ‘serious illness’, also 增甚 ‘aggravate’.)

2. ‘措: 置也,又安也,亦施也。’

(措 means 置 ‘handle’, also安 ‘arrange’, and also施 ‘implement’.)

‘Phonetic interpretation’, ‘formal interpretation’ and ‘semantic interpretation’

are methods established in traditional exegetic studies in China. These methods

have been in continuous use since the Qin and Han Dynasties and a notational

system for ‘formal interpretation’ has come into existence. The Ready Guide and

The Dictionary of Dialectal Words mainly employ ‘semantic interpretation’. The


Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms makes extensive use of ‘phonetic

interpretation’, but the inventor of this method is not ascribable to Liu Xi.

Citations can be found in some works much earlier than The Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and Terms, for example:

3. ‘政者, 正也。’ (<论语�颜渊>)(政 means 正 ‘correct, rule’.)

4. ‘洚水者, 洪水也。’(<孟子�滕文公下>).(洚水 means 洪水 ‘Xood’.)

In addition to adopting the methods of ‘phonetic interpretation’ and ‘semantic

interpretation’, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters is more frequent

in its use of semantic interpretation that ‘starts from analysing the form but ends

with meaning interpretation’. The notational system of ‘formal interpretation’

is for the Wrst time established by Xu Shen for Chinese dictionaries. In this

system, pictographic and self-explanatory characters are annotated as 象 . . .

之形 or 指事 directly; ideographic characters are annotated as 从 . . . 从 . . . ;

and pictophonetic characters as 从 . . . , . . . 声. He also designed a common

notational marker, i.e. 凡 . . . 之属皆从 . . . for pictographic, self-explanatory,

and ideographic characters (Zou Feng, 2001:232). Notational markers of this kind

can relate the form of the character to its meanings, refer the character to its

antecedents, and clarify the hierarchical relationships. Moreover, these innov-

ations serve as precedents and incentives for lexicographers, exercising a pro-

found impact on notation marking and co-reference in compiling wordbooks

and dictionaries. Xu Shen’s exploration in interpreting the form and meaning of

Chinese characters is enlightening and shows great initiative, and his experience

accumulated through long-time lexicographical practice is an extremely rich

repertoire with highly theoretical and academic implications and signiWcance.

Zou Feng (2001:233), on the basis of the number of characters employed in

deWning characters in dictionaries compiled in the Han Dynasty, identiWed three

deWning modes: Wrst, one character is used to deWne another character, in which

case two synonyms are used to deWne each other. This is not an ‘exegetic

interpretation’ in the strict sense and it is ‘frequently used to relate ancient

characters to current ones or to relate standard characters to slang or colloquial

ones’. Secondly, one character is employed to deWne a set of characters. This

mode originated from the Pre-Qin period, as found in Shi Zi, and was Wrst

established in The Ready Guide. It is ‘usually used to interpret the meaning of a

set of synonyms, highlighting the common semantic components of these syn-

onyms’. Thirdly, one character is deWned with several characters. This mode was


Wrst employed in The Ready Guide to explain the meaning of object names and

was extensively adopted by dictionary makers in later times.

DeWnition is based on sense demarcation and identiWcation of word meanings.

Sense diVerentiation of polysemous words is complicated. Dictionary makers of

earlier periods usually relied on their intuition in deciding how many senses to

divide. Their analysis of word meanings, in most cases, lacked a scientiWc basis,

and, as a result, their sense division implied a great deal of arbitrariness. But the

division of words into diVerent semantic segments marks an important break-

through in both the practice and theory of dictionary making. In the history of

lexicography in China, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Charactersmade the

Wrst attempt to demarcate word meanings and arrange the demarcated senses in a

regular fashion – generally, the original or basic sense goes Wrst, followed by

indications of its changed meaning and/or extended meaning, and thus listing all

the senses demarcated. The notational marker for sense demarcation is usually

一曰 (interpreted as), 或曰 (or interpreted as), and 又曰 (and also interpreted

as). In usual cases, two or three senses are listed, such as:

5. ‘场,祭神道也。一曰:田不耕。一曰:治谷田[地]也。从土,易声(土部)’.

In some cases, four or Wve senses may be listed, such as:

6. ‘妍, 技也。一曰: 不省录事。一曰: 难侵也。一曰: 惠也。一曰: 安也。从女,

扦声。读若研 (<女部>)’.

Before computer technology was applied to establish a large-scale language

corpus, the data collected for dictionary making were usually obtained manually.

Therefore, the manually compiled corpus was inevitably highly restricted. Sense

demarcation built upon such a corpus was certainly more reliable and objective

than that made according to mere subjective judgement, but its deWciencies were

apparent and inevitable due to gaps in data collection, and a complete and

scientiWc analysis of the semantic conWguration of polysemous words was almost

beyond anticipation. These kinds of deWciencies can also be found in An Ex-

planatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. However, it is surprising that Xu

Shen’s sense division two millennia ago could reach such a high standard of

theoretical sophistication. Unfortunately, his pioneering work and his lexico-

graphical accomplishments are not known to the Western world even today.

Phonetic notationIn ancient Chinese dictionaries, such as The Ready Guide and The Dictionary of

Dialectal Words, no phonetic notation is provided because direct phonetic


notation is almost impossible without the creation of fanqie. Phonetic inter-

pretation is employed throughout The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and

Terms, using concurrent phonetic notation, that is, alliteration or vowel rhym-

ing, with the latter being most prevalent. The underlying assumption is that

‘similar pronunciation is likely to indicate identical or similar meaning’. The

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms went to extremes in this aspect.

In An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, phonetic notation became

an important part of its stylistic format. There are four modes of phonetic

notation used:

(a) Using pictophonetic characters as the notational symbol to indicate how

the headword was pronounced at the time of its creation. The pictopho-

netic characters take a lion’s share in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and they are all notated in this fashion;

(b) Using读若 (pronounced as) or读与某同 (pronounced in the same way

as) as notational symbols;

(c) Using亦声 (also pronounced as) or省声 (omitting its pronunciation to)

as notational symbols;

(d) Using other special devices to indicate the pronunciation of the character.

As for the position of phonetic notation, it usually appears at the end of the

deWnition in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, but it is put

between the headword and the deWnition in dictionaries subsequent to The

Jade Chapters and has remained so ever since.

CitationsEither no citations or very few are found in ancient wordbooks, glossaries, or

dictionaries. There was no change until the appearance of An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. There is no citation in The Dictionary of

Dialectal Words and The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms. What is

found in The Ready Guide can hardly be considered illustrative citations, and

their number is very limited. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters,

however, goes against the tradition of using few or no citations by quoting

extensively from classic works and their relevant interpretive notes, though its

citations contain errors. These errors are ascribable to those people who copied

the book rather than to the author himself. Considering that the work is of such

an enormous size and that the whole work had to be done by hand, errors should

be taken as inevitable, even though some could also be identiWed as its author’s.


p a r t i i i

THE EXPLORATION

AND CULTIVATION

OF LEXICOGRAPHY

IN CHINA

(from the Wei Dynasty, 220–265 tothe Yuan Dynasty, 1206–1368)


10

AN OVERVIEW OF CHINESELEXICOGRAPHICAL

CULTURE DURING THEPERIOD OF EXPLORATION

AND CULTIVATION

THE period from theWei Dynasty (220–265) to the Yuan Dynasty (1206–1368)

is a period of exploration and construction for Chinese lexicography. Prior

to the Western Han Dynasty, the prototype of lexicographical culture had already

taken its form – major types of dictionary had appeared and the general styles

and formats of dictionary compilation had begun to take shape and established.

It is over the next span of about one millennium, that is, from the Wei to the

Yuan Dynasty, that dictionary making in China came into its own in almost all its

major respects, particularly in style and format, methodology, theorization and

practice, and technological development; the preliminary foundations were laid

for the formation and evolution of Chinese lexicographical culture with a strong

Eastern Xavour.

10.1 the historical background

From the Wei Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, China experienced dramatic changes

in social, political, economical, and cultural life. There occurred many important

events whose impacts upon the history of the Chinese nation were profound and

far-reaching. In this section, we will mainly focus on those directly relevant to the

evolution of Chinese lexicographical culture, hoping to pave the way for later

discussion.

Invention of the engraving technology in printing and its preliminaryapplicationBuddhism is a widespread Asian religion founded in India in the Wfth century bc,

and it was not until the beginning of the Tang Dynasty that the newly introduced

Buddhism started to Xourish, attracting a great number of followers in China. In

neighbouring countries, such as Korea and Japan, Buddhismwas also popular and

many adherents came to China to study Buddhist scriptures. The need for

scriptures was enormous and manual copying could not suYce. After the revela-

tion of seal cutting and inscription rubbing, some wiser monks engraved charac-

ters on wooden boards. Imitating the way of cutting seals and the procedure of

rubbing inscriptions, they achieved what was necessary in a more eYcient way to

meet the needs of the believers of Buddhism. This technology of printing was later

dubbed ‘engraved printing’. Thanks to this invention, the pictures of Buddha and

the scriptures became available more readily in great quantities. The pictures and

scriptures could also be printed page by page and bound up into volumes. The

earliest printings in China were almost all about matters of Buddhism, such as

scriptures, prayer, and Wgures of Buddha. Subsequent to the reign of Changqing

(821–824) in the Tang Dynasty, objects for popular use, such as calendars, had also

been printed in addition to material for religious use. With the prosperity of the

non-governmental printing industry, the number of objects printed grew tremen-

dously, to include ‘essays on Yin and Yang, divine interpretation of dreams,

physiognomy . . . , in addition to wordbooks and philology. There are numerous

things printed since the invention of paper-making and the engraving technology’

(Liu Pin,柳玭: Preface to The Teachings of the Liu Family<柳氏家训>). With the

passage of time, the Sichuan and regions south of the Yangtze River gradually

became the main centres of the rising industry of printing.

Imperial examination system of the Sui and Tang DynastiesThe imperial examination system in China started in the Sui Dynasty and fully

developed in the Tang Dynasty. It is a system for training and selecting elite

scholars and oYcials through strict examinations at diVerent levels carried out by

the government. It is the longest and the most inXuential one of its kind in the

history of China. In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, elite selection relied mainly on

156 exploration and cultivation of lexicography

the examination results rather than on a person’s morality as recommended by

others in the Han Dynasty or on a person’s family rank as prevalent in the Wei

and Jin Dynasties. Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, elites were selected mainly

through recommendation, assisted by testing, whereas the reverse was true

afterwards, that is, testing took priority over recommendation. The subjects

were examined at diVerent levels, by the county, province, state, and Wnally, the

Emperor himself, and the contents of examinations would cover the scriptures,

legislation, character, calculation, etc. The examination methods mainly included

an oral test, scripture interpretation, policy questioning, and poetry compos-

ition. DiVerent examination methods were adopted to test diVerent kinds of

abilities and qualities of the aspiring oYcials and how well they had mastered the

knowledge required. Before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the elite selection system

and the school education system were mainly disjointed. With the introduction

of the imperial examination system, both systems became integrated. As a result,

teaching activities in school were oriented toward the examinations in the

new elite selection system and school education naturally became a prerequisite

for elite selection. In a sense, the new system greatly motivated people’s enthu-

siasm for the pursuit of knowledge and promoted the development of school

education. Meanwhile, a favourable environment for academic research and

exchange of thought was created and further guaranteed oYcially.

Copying books popular in the Tang DynastyAlthough engraving technology was invented for printing, its signiWcance was

not fully appreciated by those in power. Themajormeans for passing on culture in

the Tang Dynasty was still copying, which became a very popular practice. First,

book copying was an oYcial activity. From the early to middle Tang Dynasty,

there were Wve oYcially organized large-scale copying events, among which

the fourth used the greatest amount of manpower and Wnancial resources –

‘when the books are Wnished, the oYcials from all the diVerent ministries are

summoned to have a look, and they are all amazed at the broadness of their

coverage.’ Second, copying books became a non-governmental activity. The

Emperor’s zeal in book-copying enhanced its popularity among the general

public. Even adolescents became experts in the subject. For instance, Zheng’s

Annotated Analects of Confucius (<论语郑氏注>), which was unearthed in Xin-

jiang Province in 1969, turned out to have been the work of a twelve-year-old boy

named Bu Tianshou in the Tang Dynasty. At that time, there were also bookstores

whose major business was to copy books for other people. Third, it became a

fascinating activity in the world of Buddhism. When Buddhism became more

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan 157

popular in the TangDynasty, the number of its followers increased dramatically and

more scriptures needed to be translated and copied for them. For instance, among

the books discovered inDunhuang (敦煌), except for a small proportion of printed

books, themajority of the scriptures of the Tang and Five Dynasties (907–960) were

copied by hand. The fascinationwith copying books was certainly the reason for the

wide circulation of copied books in society. It was in the Tang Dynasty that the

number of books, both in private and public collections, reached a new high. In the

period of Kaiyuan (713–741) in the Tang Dynasty, the number of books in oYcial

collections amounted to over 70,000 volumes.

Academies of classic learning in the Song and Yuan DynastiesThe name 书院 (academies of classic learning) appeared in the Tang Dynasty.

Academies of classic learning were established in various localities from the time

of the Tang Dynasty for study and for lectures. They were initially used as a

branch of governmental institution whose major function was to store, collate,

and classify books or as places where people could get together to read, study, and

exchange ideas. In the Song Dynasty, academies became important educational

institutions, and some well-known academies were established, such as White

Deer Cave Academy (白鹿洞书院), Yuelu Academy (岳麓书院), Yingtianfu

Academy (应天府书院), Songyang Academy (嵩阳书院), Stone Drum Academy

(石鼓书院), and Maoshan Academy (茅山书院). These academies had some

remarkable features. First, they were established as educational institutions. For

instance, White Deer Cave Academy had already established its own educational

aims and principles of teaching. Second, they promoted the development of the

Confucian school of idealist philosophy in the Southern Song Dynasty and

fostered the growth of academic activities. For instance, well-known scholars,

such as Zhu Xi (朱熹), Lu Jiuyuan (陆九渊), Zhang Shi (张栻), and Lu Zuqian

(吕祖谦), frequented these academies and advocated their thoughts through

lecturing to their followers and the public. And, consequently, these academies

became indispensable places for diVerent schools to meet, discuss, and debate.

Third, they were beginning to be oYcially institutionalized. In the Yuan Dynasty,

the governmental control over the academies was strengthened. Policies were

formulated to protect them, promote their development, and regulate their ways.

The government’s control over the academies involved nominating their staV,

restricting recruitment, deciding examinations, guiding the assignment of gradu-

ate students, and demarcating the land that an academy could own and manage.

Despite all this, these academies played an indispensable role in general educa-

tion, talent training, and academic study and exchange of thought.


Printing in the Song DynastySince the invention of engraving technology in printing, book printing had enjoyed

prosperity in the Song Dynasty. Many places in the Song Dynasty established their

own printing houses and formed book centres, such as Hangzhou in Zhejiang

Province, Jian’an in Fujian Province, and Chengdu in Sichuan Province. Book

printing in the Song Dynasty fell into two categories: governmental and non-

governmental. The books printed by the central and local government were dubbed

‘oYcially printed’. For the central government, the Imperial Academy was in charge

of the business of printing books, whose range included Classics, histories, phil-

osophy, and anthology, in addition to the scriptures of Taoism and Buddhism. The

books printed by the Imperial Academy had absolute authority. The Emperor

ordained that for the books printed by the Imperial Academy the non-governmen-

tal printing houses may have the right to rectify the misspellings in them but have

no right to duplicate them. Non-governmental books could be further classiWed

into two subtypes: those printed by big bookstores or printing houses and those

printed by individuals, such as Zhao Qi (赵淇), Han Chun (韩醇), Yue Ke (岳珂),

Liao Yingzhong (廖莹中), and Wang Gang (王纲). Some printing houses in the

Song Dynasty had already been aware of ‘copyright’ – for instance, in Brief Stories in

Eastern Capital (<东都事略>) there was a rectangular seal with thewords ‘Printingby Cheng from Mountain Mei. OYcially permitted and reproduction prohibited.’

Thanks to the popularization of the engraved printing industry, a great number of

books began to circulate in the community and scholars and general readers alike

could have easier access to books. Book printing in the Song Dynasty played a key

role in the transmission of culture and in creating a favourable environment for

academic research and exchange of thought.

10.2 the academic background

From the Wei Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, China experienced a frequent

alternation between war and peace, and prosperity and depression in the econ-

omy. Academic studies, however, progressed at this time.

Academic studies from the Wei to the Northern and Southern DynastiesThe time between the Wei Dynasty (220–265) and the Northern and Southern

Dynasties (420–589) in Chinese history is a period of upheaval, full of misery,


suVering, and distress. But it is also a period of academic progression, a period

active in intellectual thought and in which theoretical exploration and inquiry

Xourished. As is well known, literature and the classics preserved and created in a

period are the most direct and reliable data by which to examine the state of

academic inquiry. Apart from the works and literature of Taoism and Buddhism,

The Book of the Sui Dynasty collected 36,708 volumes in 3,127 categories. The

majority of these works were written by the scholars of the period. There are a

number of special reasons for the prosperity of academics in this period of

upheaval, which started with the collapse in a central imperialist government

of absolutism, and the barrier built to defend Confucian ideals was also broken

down. As a result, the political conditions and academic environments became

relatively more credible, self-awareness more fully realized, and individuality

could Wnd more outlets in society at large. During this period, it became more

diYcult for intellectuals to take the normal route to becoming a ‘scholar oYcial’,

and many scholars gave up their Confucian studies and turned to Buddhism and

Taoism. Moreover, some big families with political inXuence and economic clout

fostered academic research with their own ‘family’ styles. This turned out to be

one of the important means of promoting and passing on the heritage of

traditional academics. Another result of the political upheaval was the drift of

intellectual brains from the capital city to other places, helping to establish new

regional centres of academic research and exchange, which greatly facilitated the

writings on the natural conditions and social customs of diVerent places, chor-

ography, geography and geology, and other works of natural sciences.

Every historical period has its own mainstream academics. In the period of the

Wei (220–265) and Jin (265–420) Dynasties, academic circles focused on ‘metaphys-

ics’ (玄学), a branch of learning based on the studies of Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and The

Book of Changes. The basic feature of this philosophical study is its emphasis on and

adoration of ‘profundity’. Its manifestation in speech is its ‘profound words’ and

‘profound talks’; in writings, its ‘profound argumentation’ and ‘profound notes’;

and in thinking, its ‘clear consciousness’ and ‘essential interpretations’. In essence,

the basic academic theme of this school is the diVerentiation of artiWcial naming

from natural being, to provide an ultimate solution to theoretically reinterpreting

and settling the controversy over the relationship between naming and objects in

nature. In addition, the transmission of Buddhism, which started from the Han

Dynasty, came naturally into conXict with Confucianism and Taoism. With the

passage of time, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucian came to absorb each other’s

ideas and became partially integrated in some respects. This unique academic

atmosphere exerted a far-reaching impact upon the formulation of new ideological

concepts and academic achievements of that time and in subsequent periods.


Lexicographical works are one of the signs of the academic achievements of an

epoch in human civilization. Over the period from the Wei to the Southern and

Northern Dynasties, there came into being a new form of lexicographical work,

i.e. the rhyming dictionary. Thanks to the great progress in translating Buddhist

classics, the invention of fanqie, and the diVerentiation of the four tones in the

Chinese language, the Wrst rhyming dictionary was compiled. According to the

historical records available, the earliest rhyming dictionaries include The Dic-

tionary of Initial Consonants by Li Deng of theWei Kingdom and The Collection of

Rhymes by Lu Jing. Pan Hui (潘徽), a scholar of the Sui Dynasty, states:

Previous works like Three Cang Primer and The Instant Primer have merely retained some

texts and quotations; those like An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and The

Character Forest only focus on diVerentiating the form and structure of characters. As for

the study of speech sounds and rhymes, there is much doubt and confusion. Either

through speculation on ancient characters or interpretation of contemporary ones, the

investigations have mostly missed the target. It is in The Dictionary of Initial Consonants

and The Collection of Rhymes that the voiceless is diVerentiated from the voiced and the

tones are demarcated in Wve scales. (from The Book of the Sui Dynasty, <隋书·潘徽传>)

It was on the basis of rhyme books produced between the Wei and Southern and

Northern Dynasties that Lu Fayan (陆法言) was able to compile The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes (<切韵>), an epoch-making dictionary of rhymes.

The academic conXuence of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoismin the Sui and Tang DynastiesThe reuniWcation in the Tang Dynasty put an end to the independent develop-

ment of academic studies in the northern and southern regions of China and

merged them into the study on Classics – how to understand and interpret the

Classics. In the period of the Wei to the Northern and Southern Dynasties the

ritual ceremonies were mostly abandoned. Metaphysics Xourished and the dom-

inant position of Confucian studies was undermined. With the entry of Chinese

history into the Tang Dynasty, the conXuence of Confucianism, Buddhism, and

Taoism in the Sui Dynasty was inherited and Confucianism regained its domin-

ance, which became the foundation of China’s national policies. Under the elite

selection system in the TangDynasty, the Confucian Classics were the textbooks in

schools and what were tested in the imperial examinations. It was against such a

background that Yan Shigu et al. were summoned and authorized by the Emperor

to rectify and revise The Standard Five Classics (<五经定本>) and Kong Yingda

et al. to compile The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics, and Lu Deming

compiled The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics at this time. Moreover, The


RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics, symbolizing the reuniWcation of academic

studies and the study of the classics, is regarded as a standard in both public and

private schools in the Tang Dynasty. Unfortunately, it gradually degenerated and

eventually became the shackles conWning the thinking of intellectuals.

Speaking of the ancient academic history of China, it is customary to mention

four schools of thought in the same breath – studies on Confucian Classics in the

Han Dynasties, Metaphysics in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Buddhism in the Sui

and Tang Dynasties, and the Confucian school of idealist philosophy in the Song

and Ming Dynasties. Thus, Buddhism was the gem of academic studies in the

Tang Dynasty. With the introduction of Buddhism into China, the classic works

of Buddhism needed to be translated, interpreted, and expounded. There grad-

ually formed the enormous volumes of Buddhist Classics. DiVerent interpret-

ations of the basic doctrines of Buddhism were responsible for the formation of

diVerent Buddhist factions, such as the Tiantai or Tendai sect (天台宗), the Fa-

hsiang (法相宗) sect, the Huayan (or Kegon) school (华严宗), Zen Buddhism

(禅宗), and the Esoteric or ‘True Word’ sect (密宗). For each faction, there was

an important team of dignitaries to advocate their academic ideas through

adding notes to the Buddhist classics or by means of writing their own books.

In the Tang Dynasty, it was very popular to compile classiWed dictionaries

(类书), that is, reference books with entries arranged in the form of a dictionary

according to classiWed or categorized subjects, with materials taken from various

sources as the basis for compilation. Functionally speaking, classiWed dictionaries

resemble encyclopaedic dictionaries because they combine to some extent the

characteristics of encyclopaedias and concordances, embracing the whole Weld of

literature and bearing an inherent relationship with encyclopaedic dictionaries of

modern times. There are some important classiWed dictionaries passed on to the

present time, such as The Beitang Collection of Copied Books (<北堂书钞>), TheClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works (<艺文类聚>), and The ClassiWed

Dictionary for Beginners (<初学记>). The compilation of books of classiWcation

and the appearance of such valuable works well illustrate the academic environ-

ment and the level of academic research in the Tang Dynasty.

Starting from the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (武则天) in the Tang Dynasty,

Esotericism (密教) became popular and more and more people began to learn

and practice Siddham (悉昙). Siddham is a textbook for learning Sanskrit. From

the enlightenment of the spelling system of Sanskrit, Chinese scholars came to

work out the initial consonant system of the Chinese language and invented the

thirty-letter alphabet for the initial consonants. From The ClassiWcation of the

Thirty-letter Alphabet (<归三十字母例>), unearthed in Dunhuang, the thirty-

letter alphabet is known as follows:


端透定泥、审穿禅日、心邪照、精清从喻、见溪群疑、晓匣影、知彻澄来、不芳并明。

ShouWen (守温), a scholar monk in the late Tang Dynasty, further studied the

thirty-letter alphabet and rearranged the letters according to their position of

articulation into Wve categories: labial, lingual, front dental, back dental, and

laryngeal. The invention of alphabets for notating speech sounds of the Chinese

language laid the scientiWc foundation for phonetic notation, macro-structuring,

and format-setting in future dictionary making.

The exploration of truth and meaning in the academics of the Song andYuan DynastiesStrictly speaking, Song Studies (宋学) refers mainly to working out ways of

interpreting the Classics. This school of learning was initiated by Hu Yuan (胡

瑗) and Sun Fu (孙复), earnestly advocated and practised by Fan Zhongyan (范

仲淹), Ouyang Xiu (欧阳修), Wang Anshi (王安石), and Sima Guang (司马

光), and consequently Wrmly established as a serious branch of learning. The

methodology of Song Studies is characterized in two ways. First, seeking the

truth and meaning of the classics. Getting rid of the strictures of sentential and

textual research in the Han Dynasties, the scholars of Song Studies began to

interpret and expound the argumentation andmeaning of the classics according

to their own understanding and interpretation. This is the most outstanding

feature of Song Studies. Second, enhancing the practicality of the classics. In

other words, the objectives of Song Studies are essentially practical. Thus, the

pursuit of truth and meaning as well as that of practical objectives are the two

basic features of Song Studies and they form the essential spirit of academic

research in the Song Dynasty.

Song Studies is also considered by some scholars to be a Confucian school of

idealist philosophy, inquiring into the origin of the universe and the laws

regulating the development of human societies. This school of idealist philoso-

phy owed its formation to the Song Dynasty and its progress in seeking ‘truth’

could be roughly divided into three phases. In the period of the Northern Song

Dynasty, diVerent parties proposed the initial interpretations of what ‘truth’ is.

Cheng Yi (程颐), for the Wrst time, proposed the argument that ‘The Heaven is

the Law’, that is, the Heaven is the truth and the Supreme Entity. This is well

illustrated by his own words: ‘I have been studying hard and I have learned

something but the heavenly truth can only be approached through intuitively

perceiving and reXecting by oneself ’. In the period of the Southern Song Dynasty,

Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan had diVerent understandings of ‘truth’. They diVer in

two respects. First, where does ‘truth’ reside? Zhu Xi believes that it is Heavenly


truth and that it is in the Heavens; whereas Lu Jiuyuan believes that it is

‘Psychological truth’ and it resides in the ‘mind’ of each individual. Second,

how can one seek and grasp ‘truth’? Zhu Xi holds that ‘truthmust be inquired into

through physical things’, that is, through studying physics; whereas, Lu Jiuyuan

holds that it should be sought, Wrst by ‘simple means’, in order to get to know the

essence and the mind, and second by reXection to grasp the profound meaning of

‘truth’. Scholars at the end of the Song Dynasty and in the period of the Yuan

Dynasty had been making great eVorts to reconcile the theories proposed by Zhu

Xi and Lu Jiuyuan. The majority of the idealist philosophers in the Yuan Dynasty

no longer focused on either of the two schools but tried to ‘concoct’ (i.e. produce

something unusual by combining things in a new way). And consequently ‘con-

coction’ becomes a distinctive feature of the idealist philosophical study in the

Yuan Dynasty, represented by Xu Heng (许衡), Wu Cheng (吴澄), and Zheng

Yuwu (郑玉吴). It is noteworthy from the developmental stages of the idealist

philosophy in the Song and YuanDynasties that the reason for disputes are mostly

based on establishing ‘who is the orthodox school’. Actually, there is only one

orthodox school – the school of Cheng and Zhu, though there were numerous

schools of academic studies in the Song and Yuan Dynasties.

Scholars of the Song and Yuan Dynasties had to resort to the language itself

and use it as a tool when they tried to explain and argue about the meanings

and truths that had been interpreted and expounded from the classics, which,

to a certain extent, motivated the study of language and its basic unit –

characters, and further facilitated the compilation of dictionaries. Moreover,

great emphasis had also been laid upon rectiWcation and diVerentiation, and

their Wndings far surpassed those of their predecessors in attainment, advance-

ment, and scope. As for the methodology adopted in the research, the pursuit of

meaning and truth and the practice of rectiWcation and diVerentiation formed

the ‘two wings’ of academic approaches in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. For

instance, The Collection of Ancient Records (<集古录>) by Ouyang Xiu, repre-

sentative of epigraphy in the Song Dynasty, is not only a product of rectiWcation

and diVerentiation but also an indication of the advent of archaeological

studies in modern times. Viewed from the diachronic perspective of lexicog-

raphy, the four most prominent books of classiWcation in the Song Dynasty,

namely The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign (<太平御览>, The Imperial

Records of the Taiping Reign (<太平广记>), The Academic Elites (<文苑英华>), and The Historical Records of Cefu (<册府元龟>), along with local

chronicles and clan pedigrees, are all the fruits of academic endeavours with

respect to Song Studies.


10.3 an overall view between thewei and yuan dynasties

The period between theWei and the YuanDynasty, characterized by exploration and

cultivation in the history of Chinese lexicography, is noteworthy for the following

four highlights. First, the invention of fanqie solved the problem of phonetic

notation in dictionary making and enabled lexicographers to formulate and stand-

ardize dictionary formats and styles; second, on the basis of dictionaries of the Han

Dynasty, dictionary families began to take shape and continued to Xourish, notably

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and its derivatives, and The Ready

Guide and its derivatives; third, new dictionary types had come into being and were

added to these dictionaries; and Wnally, new retrieval systems were created, that is,

referring to dictionary information by means of phonetic sequence.

Basic features of lexicographical theories during this periodAs the practice of dictionary making went further, scholars between the Wei and

Yuan Dynasties began to make serious eVorts to theoretically generalize about

lexicographical issues. These theoretical generalizations were mostly given in the

front matter, such as the preface, explanatory notes, pronunciation guide, etc., of

various wordbooks and dictionaries. This research into dictionaries and diction-

ary making involved the nature and function of the dictionary, the principles of

compilation, styles and formats, among many other things. Dictionary making

was speciWcally targeted in some lexicographical theories. For instance, in the

Northern Wei (386–534) period, Presenting a Memorial for Ancient and Contem-

porary Characters by Jiang Shi (江式) is one of the most important monologues

dealing with lexicographical issues, subsequent to the Preface to An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and remains one of the landmark theoretical

generalizations of the history of Chinese lexicography. In the Tang Dynasty, the

Preface to The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics by Lu Deming is the Wrst

monologue discussing ways to deal with words and expressions gleaned from

the classics in dictionary compilation. In the Song Dynasty, ‘Nine Cases’ in The

ClassiWed Chapters by Sima Guang set a precedent for lexicographers to work out

ways to establish and standardize dictionary formats and styles. No dictionaries

prior to the Wei Dynasty included explanations concerning dictionary formats

and styles in the front matter, but things started to change when the history

of Chinese lexicography entered the period of exploration and cultivation.


It became customary for dictionaries of this period to include discussions

regarding formats and styles, though these discussions were still rather elemen-

tary, and no consistent and standardized systems had yet come into being.

Almost all relevant discussions were hardly touched upon in the preface or

constituted a small separate section of it. No independent sections concerning

dictionary formats and styles were found in The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics,

The Collection of Rhymes, or The ClassiWed Chapters, but their prefaces contained

discussions or explanations concerning dictionary formats and/or styles and

were more speciWc, comprehensive, and to the point than previous ones. The

Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters included only a

simpliWed exposition of its macro-structural arrangement:

From which to start? To start from 一 (one). Things are sorted and grouped together.

Vertically, to arrange them according to the families they belong to and the inherent

properties they share. Horizontally, the various properties will not be violated and the

semantic relationships will be explicated according to their structural forms and radical

components. The patterns for sense extension and proliferation will be sought and traced

back to their origins. At which to end? To end at亥, which is the last of the twelve Earthly

Branches. This will help to get to know the change and the profound underlying

relationships.

In The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics, however, its preface included an

independent section dealing with the principles and methodology of its compil-

ation. The whole section is as long as 1,500 Chinese characters, much more

detailed than its predecessors. The Preface to The ClassiWed Chapters also in-

cluded a separate part explaining issues relating to its compilation.

Dictionary compilation in the Song and Yuan period underwent a transition

from form-meaning combination to phonetic-meaning combination. Conse-

quently, the issue of how to relate speech sounds to word meaning became an

important focus in dictionary research during this period. This issue also had a

great deal to do with the studies in the Welds of phonology and phonetic

semantics. The great achievements in phonological studies over this period

mostly resulted from further in-depth explorations in how to scientiWcally add

phonetic notations in dictionary compilation. The Wrst evidence of progress was

embodied in the revision and augmentation of The Dictionary of Rhymes and the

improvement of The Collection of Rhymes upon The Dictionary of Rhymes in

phonetic notation. The second piece of evidence was embodied in the attempt to

achieve breakthroughs in the paradigm set by The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes

and to establish the phonology of Northern speech based on the dialects of

Kaifeng and Luoyang, the then capitals of the Northern Song Dynasty, when


Zhou Deqing (周德清) compiled The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and

Rhymes (<中原音韵>) in the Yuan Dynasty.

Moreover, there appeared for the Wrst time in the history of Chinese lexicog-

raphy a number of academic articles that were attached as appendices to the

dictionary, e.g. the seven appendices in Xi Zhuan (<系传>) by Xu Kai and The

General Interpretation of Six-category Chinese Characters (<六书通释>) by Dai

Tong (戴侗). They all aimed to intensify dictionary functions and promote the

quality of the appendices and the academic values of the dictionary. Among these

appendix essays, A Systematic Account in Xi Zhuan (<系传�系述>) is the Wrst

academic article studying appendixes in the dictionary. The academic implica-

tions of appendix essays and their correspondence with the body of the diction-

ary gave rise to the practice of writing appendix essays to match the body of the

dictionary, hence the megastructural conWguration of the dictionary representing

the unity of the main part with its appendixes.

Major achievements in styles and formats of dictionary makingGenerally speaking, the megastructural conWguration of the dictionary consists

of two aspects – macrostructure and microstructure. Macrostructure refers to the

ways that the entries in a dictionary are arranged. It is vertical in the structure of a

dictionary and the spine of its main body. Microstructure, however, refers to the

ways that diVerent kinds of information are organized in an entry. It is horizontal

in the structure of a dictionary and encompasses the contents of the entry text.

Naturally, the major achievements in dictionary styles and formats from the Wei

to Yuan Dynasty were displayed in both macrostructural and microstructural

conWguration.

During the period from the Wei through the Yuan Dynasties, the entries in a

dictionary were usually arranged in alphabetical or thematic order. The macro-

structure of the dictionary in this period was characterized by further improve-

ments on ‘formal ordering’, represented by The ClassiWed Chapters, by the

emergence of ‘phonetic ordering’, represented by The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes,

and by ‘scientiWc standardization’, represented by The Broad Ready Guide. As was

stated in the Preface to The ClassiWed Chapters, ‘the things in the world are

numerous but, if well treated, each will be set in its proper place’. ‘To be set in its

place’ is simply another way of indicating how themacrostructure of the dictionary

should be designed. The Preface to The ClassiWed Chapters held that ‘if well treated,

unity will be achieved’ according to the principles of dictionary making. Thus,

presently, the characters that are popularly used in the world are numerous in number.

But, thanks to their pronunciation, they can be treated according toThe Rhyme Dictionary


(<集韵>) and each of them can Wnd their proper place in a dictionary in terms of the

phonetic features they share. As for the forms of the characters, there are also some

common features that they share and that is why they can be treated according to The

ClassiWed Chapters. The majority of the characters follow the principles of formal order-

ing. In addition to formal and phonetic arrangements, there is semantic arrangement as

well: for those characters that cannot be further analysed into diVerent parts, they could be

semantically grouped. (from the Preface to The ClassiWed Chapters)

The ClassiWed Chapters, for the Wrst time, established a new set of principles,

i.e. dual arrangement: by radicals at the Wrst level and by rhymes at the second. An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, on the other hand, arranged its

headword characters following ‘formal ordering’ only, that is, according to the

radicals they share. This arrangement is rather complicated and is not user-

friendly in retrieval. The ClassiWed Chapters is designed to co-refer to The

Rhyme Dictionary, dividing the 540 radical sections of An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters into Wfteen volumes and rearranging the head characters in

each radical section according to the rhymes they share. The explication in The

ClassiWed Chapters centres around the pronunciation and meaning of the char-

acter. The head characters in each radical section are taken in their entirety from

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters but rearranged in terms of the

rhymes they share. For each character entry, its pronunciation is notated by

means of fanqie, followed by deWnitions or explications. In so doing, the compiler

made it very convenient for the user to consult.

Second, the macrostructure of The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes is organized

according to ‘phonetic ordering’. Lu Fayan divided the 193 rhyme sections into

Wve volumes on the basis of the four tones shared by the rhymes, thus incorp-

orating more than 10,000 characters into these volumes, which are ‘Wnely ana-

lysed and discriminated’ (from the Preface to The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes).

Third, the macrostructure of The Ready Guide is ‘to group semantically’. When a

proposal was put forward in the Wei Dynasty to compile The Broad Ready Guide,

which was ‘to compensate for what is missing in The Ready Guide’, it was natural

for it to model after The Ready Guide in style and format. The Ready Guide was

thus recognized as ‘a stepping-stone to academics and a model for every intellec-

tual’ (from Presenting a Memorial for The Broad Ready Guide by Zhang Yi). It is to

be highly commended that ‘for the ancient meanings of characters still used in the

Qin and Han Dynasties, it [The Ready Guide] can be used as a yardstick to judge its

correctness; for those no longer in use, it can be used as a basis for deduction and

inference’ (from the Preface to The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide byWang Niansun).

Thus, there was formed a new branch of academic learning – ‘the Erya Studies’,

which is an extension of the macrostructure of The Ready Guide.


As for the microstructure of a dictionary, its core component is made up of

semantic information which is further manifested in phonetic notation, deWni-

tion, and illustrative examples. Firstly, under the inXuence of fanqie and the four-

tone theory, The Jade Chapters abandoned the traditional labelling of ‘read as’ or

‘pronounced as’, which was used as a major form of phonetic notation in An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. The phonetic notation in The Jade

Chapters ‘uses fanqie as the principal form coupled with direct notation’. The

phonetic notation bylaw set down by Jiang Shi for Ancient and Contemporary

Characters (<古今文字>) stated that ‘the pronunciation to be notated is what is

used in the region of Chu and Xia and the characters will be notated one by one’.

This was the Wrst direct speciWcation of how to notate the sounds of words in a

dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography and the practice of notating the

phonetics of words one by one has come down to the present day. Secondly, the

paradigm of form–meaning combination set up by An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters as a major means of deWning words was broken down and a

new combination, that is, phonetic–meaning combination, was established and

advocated. Jiang Shi held that the principles for deWnition in a dictionary should

be ‘to follow the principles of exegesis and loaning and all the meanings can be

interpreted from the contexts where they occur’. ‘To interpret from the context’,

as a guiding principle for deWnition, has a twofold implication: on the one hand,

words and characters are the objects to be deWned in the dictionary; on the other

hand, as a general principle, the meaning of a character, phrase, or text should be

determined and explicated or interpreted from the context in which it occurs.

Thirdly, illustrations play an indispensable part in a dictionary, although they are

usually attached to the deWnitions. The principle of illustrative citations in An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters is ‘to cite examples to make the

meanings of words understandable when they are not apparent’. In other words,

Xu Shen cited examples only in cases where the meaning of a character was

unclear or unknown. The remaining parts of The Jade Chapters clearly show that

under each headword character there are almost always one or more illustrative

citations, and illustrative examples, which are taken from the classics and scrip-

tures, form the backbone of The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics.

To sum up, a great deal of progress was made during this period in terms of

dictionary layout, entry coverage, phonetic notation, and sense deWnition. As far

as dictionary layout is concerned, The ClassiWed Chapters followed the model of

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters in its classiWcation of radical

sections, but within each section the head characters were arranged to the order

of rhyme sequences, which was obviously an innovation found in no previous

dictionaries. Such an arrangement makes it very convenient for users to consult


dictionary information. In terms of headword coverage, dictionaries of this

period attempted to be much wider and more comprehensive. For instance,

The ClassiWed Chapters, on the one hand, retained the tradition of An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and The Jade Chapters in treating headword

characters with greater prominence given to the description of their ancient

pronunciations and meanings and their evolution in form and structure; and,

on the other hand, greater notice was taken of the newly emerged characters

which were created to meet the developing needs of the society of the time. The

Rhyme Dictionary had the widest coverage of vocabulary, i.e. 53,525, which is

42,005 characters more than in The Dictionary of Initial Consonants. There was

also much improvement in phonetic notation. In The Dictionary of Rhymes, for

instance, when a group of characters shared the same pronunciation, phonetic

notation was given only for the character in the Wrst place, and the rest of the

characters in the group would follow the Wrst character. Such a method of

phonetic notation helped considerably with phonetic diVerentiation. The de-

scription of sense deWnition became more detailed and speciWc than in the

previous period. The ClassiWed Chapters, for instance, had not only cloned the

deWnition of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters but also added its

own annotation and explication – for those with variations in pronunciation or

meaning, necessary explanations and phonetic notations were provided after the

deWnitions. In Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures, no judgements

would be given before rigorous textual research had been carried out and

meticulous comments added. In The Augmented Ready Guide, detailed informa-

tion was given to each animal or plant name, describing their shapes, properties,

and functions with quotations from ancient books as evidence of textual re-

search, and, if necessary, quotations were also given of popular sayings with

annotations added. For instance,鲨 (shark) only has a synonym deWnition鮀 (a

kind of small Wsh) in The Ready Guide, but a deWnition of 179 characters was

provided in The Augmented Ready Guide.

Major dictionaries of the periodThe history of Chinese lexicography experienced a long period of exploration subse-

quent to the Wei and Jin Dynasties and a period of rapid progress following the Sui

and Tang Dynasties. The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<干禄字书>) byYan Yuansun (颜元孙), a Tang Dynasty scholar, enjoyed wide circulation and great

popularity. The TangDynasty witnessed the appearance of a series of dictionaries and

character glossaries whosemajor functionwas to codify and standardize, hence falling

into the category of ‘codifying character dictionary’. In the period of the Southern and


NorthernDynasties, the oYcial script in theHanDynasty began to decline in use, and

scripts like the running hand (行书, a style of Chinese calligraphy between the cursive

hand and regular script), the cursive script (草书, a form of Chinese calligraphy with

characters executed swiftly and strokes Xowing together), and the regular script were

created and adopted in formal writing. They became so popular that there was much

confusion in Chinese scripts and handwriting; so it was inevitable to codify and

standardize Chinese characters and the forms of writing them, a number of diction-

aries being compiled to serve the purpose, namelyTheCharacterModels (<字样>) byYan Shigu, The Collection of Characters from Five Classics (<五经文字>) by ZhangShen (张参, 714?–786?), and The New Collection of Character Models from Nine

Classics (<新加九经字样>) by XuanDu (玄度). This new type of dictionary played

a key role in character codiWcation and standardization. In the Tang Dynasty, there

appeared another new type of dictionary, the special-purpose dictionary – the earliest

and most comprehensive of its kind – dedicated to annotating Buddhist scriptures

and sutras, i.e. The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics by Lu Deming, and Sounds and

Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures by Hui Lin. In the Song Dynasty, there also

appeared some inXuential character books and character dictionaries, namely The

ClassiWed Chapters byWang Zhu (王洙) andHuXiu (胡宿) et al.,The Exegesis of Six-

category Chinese Characters (<六书故>) by Dai Tong, The ClassiWed Characters of

Banma (<班马字类>) by Lou Ji (娄机). In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, some

progress was also made in the compilation of thematic dictionaries, namely The

Augmented Ready Guide by Lu Dian, The Extended Ready Guide (<尔雅翼>) by LuoYuan (罗愿), and The Essentials of Augmented Ready Guide (<埤雅广要>) by NiuZhong (牛衷).

There also appeared quite a number of rhyme dictionaries in this period. The

Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes by Lu Fayan is the earliest of its kind still extant. In the

Song Dynasty, the compilation of rhyme dictionaries enjoyed great popularity. The

Tang Dictionary of Rhymes (<唐韵>) was revised by Chen Pengnian and Qiu Yong

(丘雍) and was renamed The Dictionary of Rhymes. It integrated almost all the

achievements in the studies of the rhyme dictionary series following The Dictionary

of Chinese Rhymes and is the most comprehensive one still extant. Ding Du (丁度)

and Song Qi (宋祁), together with other scholars, were summoned by the Emperor

to revise The Dictionary of Rhymes, which was later known as The Rhyme Dictionary.

Other rhyme dictionaries include The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes (<韵略>) byQiu Yong and Qi Lun (戚纶), The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of

Rites (<礼部韵略>), a revision of The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes by Ding Du

et al., The Comprehensive Five-sound Rhyme Dictionary (<五音集韵>) by Han

Daozhao (韩道昭) of the Jin (金) Dynasty, The Comprehensive Dictionary of Ancient

and Contemporary Rhymes (<古今韵会>) by Huang Gongshao (黄公绍) between


the Song and Yuan Dynasties, The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary

Rhymes (<古今韵会举要>) by Xiong Zhong (熊忠) of the Yuan Dynasty, The

Central PlainsDictionary of Sounds andRhymes byZhouDeqing of theYuanDynasty,

and The ClassiWed Dictionary of Zhongzhou Yuefu Rhymes (<中州乐府音韵类编>)by Zhou Congzhi (周从之) of the Yuan Dynasty.

Subsequent to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, considerable achievements were

made in compiling classiWed dictionaries. The Beitang Collection of Copied Books

by Yu Shinan (虞世南) et al. between the Sui and Tang Dynasties is the earliest

classiWed dictionary presently available. The ClassiWed Collection of Art and

Literary Works by Ouyang Xun (欧阳洵), The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners

by Zhang Yue (张说) and Xu Jian (徐坚) et al., and The Sources of Rhyme Ocean

(<韵海镜源>) by Yan Zhenqing (颜真卿, 709–785), which were all compiled in

the Tang Dynasty, are the earliest classiWed dictionaries whose entries were

arranged to the order of rhymes. In the Song Dynasty, a large team of scholars,

such as Li Fang (李昉, 925–996) and Hu Meng (扈蒙), were put together by the

central government to compile large-scale classiWed dictionaries. The outcome of

such eVorts included The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign, The Imperial

Records of the Taiping Reign, The Historical Records of Cefu by Wang Qinruo

(王钦若) and Yang Yi (杨亿) et al., The Jade Sea (<玉海>) by Wang Yinglin, The

Miscellanies of Argumentations Concerning ClassiWed Dictionaries (<类林杂说>)by Wang Mingshou (王明寿) of the Jin (金) Dynasty, and The Compendium of

Scriptures and Classics (<经世大典>) by Zhao Shiting (赵世廷) of the Yuan

Dynasty. In addition, there are also some important dictionaries compiled in the

Song and Yuan Dynasties, for instance, The Language Assistant (<语助>) by LuYiwei (卢以纬) in the YuanDynasty andThe GemDictionary of Rhymes (<韵府群

玉>) by Yin Shifu (阴时夫) at the turn of the Song and Yuan Dynasties.

Between the Wei and Yuan Dynasties, several landmark lexicographical works

stood out among language, rhyme, and classiWed dictionaries. The Broad Ready

Guide, which is representative of general dictionaries dealing with vocabulary and

special terms as well as thematic dictionaries in the middle ancient period (from

the third to ninth centuries), became the initiator of ‘the Erya Studies’. The Jade

Chapters, representative of character dictionaries in the middle ancient period,

inherited and developed the tradition and style of An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters, with remarkable innovations – its head characters were

printed in regular script forms and its deWnitions occupied the dominant place

in the entry. The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes, an early model for phonetic

ordering dictionaries as well as homophone dictionaries, is the earliest rhyme

dictionary with a rather systematic compilation format and style. The Exegetic

Interpretation of Classics, representative of a new dictionary type in the middle


ancient period, adopted the collective interpretation method to deal with the

meanings of characters from diVerent classics and scriptures. It could be clas-

siWed as a hybrid dictionary – a combination of collective interpretations of

classic works and exegetic explication of ancient characters. The Ganlu Dictionary

of Chinese Characters, the Wrst dictionary designed to diVerentiate character

formations, displayed some noticeable innovations though it originated from

The Character Models.

The dictionaries compiled between the Wei and Yuan Dynasties can be generally

classiWed into the following categories: (1) character dictionaries, such as The Exegesis

of Ancient and Contemporary Characters (<古今字诂>) by Zhang Yi of the Wei

Dynasty, The Character Forest by Lu Chen of the Jin (晋) Dynasty, The Jade Chapters

by Gu Yewang of the Liang period of the Southern Dynasty, and The ClassiWed

Chapters by Sima Guang and Wang Zhu et al. of the Song Dynasty; (2) deWning

dictionaries, such as The Broad Ready Guide by Zhang Yi of theWei Dynasty, Sounds

and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures by Xuan Ying and Hui Lin of the Tang

Dynasty; (3) bilingual dictionaries, such as The Complete Turkish Dictionary, (<突厥语大词典>) by Mahmud Khashgari (麻赫穆德•喀什噶里) of the Song Dynasty;

(4) specialized dictionaries, such as The Botanic Compendium (<全芳备祖>) byChen Jingyi (陈景沂) of the Southern Song Dynasty; (5) classiWed (or encyclopedic)

dictionaries, such as The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works, oYcially

compiled in the Tang Dynasty, The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign, also oYcially

compiled in the Song Dynasty; (6) special dictionaries, such as The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes by Lu Fayan of the Sui Dynasty, The Dictionary of Rhymes by Chen

Pengnian et al. of the Song Dynasty, The Rhyme Dictionary by Ding Du et al. of the

Song Dynasty, and The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes by

Huang Gongshao of the Yuan Dynasty.

Academic values and inXuenceThe period of the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties is a very

important period in Chinese history, characterized as a melting pot of diVerent

nationalities and cultures. The inXux of foreign cultures, especially the introduc-

tion of Buddhism, brought forth innovations in the format and style of diction-

ary compilation, in particular the birth of the rhyme dictionary. This new type of

dictionary is designed in a format of rhyme sequencing. Its target user includes

those people interested in composing rhyming prose, and it can help them Wnd

characters that share the same rhyme. Rhyme dictionaries can be divided into

two types according to their format and style. For the Wrst type, characters are

Wrst classiWed according to their diVerent tones, and then further classiWed


according to their rhymes. Characters sharing the same essential vowel or tail

vowel are put in the same rhyme section. For each rhyme section a common

character will be chosen as a signpost. As for the second type, characters are

classiWed into diVerent rhyme sections; all the characters sharing the same

essential or tail vowel are put in the same rhyme section without considering

their diVerences in tone. For each rhyme section, two characters are chosen as the

signpost. Generally speaking, every character in a rhyme dictionary is given some

simple explanation of meaning, which is why ancient rhyme books are generally

classiWed in the ‘dictionary’ category.

The early rhyme books in the history of Chinese lexicography are represented

by The Dictionary of Initial Consonants by Li Deng of the Three Kingdoms Period

and The Collection of Rhymes by Lu Jing of the Jin (晋) Dynasty. For later rhyme

books, The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymesmight as well be called the compendium

of all rhyme books over the Six Dynasties, namely the Wu, Eastern Jin, Song, Qi,

Liang, and Chen between the downfall of the Han Dynasty in ad 220 and the

reuniWcation of China in ad 589. This dictionary established the basic format and

style of ancient rhyme books in China, ‘gained recognition by both scholars and

the common people, and was accepted as a standard paradigm’, exercising direct

inXuence upon rhyme books and dictionaries to come, such as The Dictionary of

Rhymes, The Rhyme Dictionary, and The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the

Ministry of Rites, The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes,

and Hongwu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes during the Ming Dynasty. From the

Yuan Dynasty on, there came a Xowering of drama and opera, as a result of which

quite a number of rhyme dictionaries were compiled to meet the needs of

playwrights, such as The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes and

The Taihe Dictionary of Rhymes (<太和正音谱>). With the introduction of The

Mirror of Rhymes (<韵镜>), new advancements were made in the format and

style of rhyme books and dictionaries – the application of phonological prin-

ciples, such as the rhyme table (等韵图), to the compilation of rhyme books and

dictionaries. The rhyme table locates initial consonants and vowels of a syllable in

their own positions, and diagrams are drawn to illustrate their relationships.

DiVerent rhyme sections can easily Wnd their places in the diagrams, which

certainly beneWts users greatly.

There appeared in the Tang Dynasty two new types of dictionary: character

model books (字样书) and sound-meaning books (音义书). The former deals

with the models, writing styles, formations, and structure of Chinese characters.

The dictionaries of this type include The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters,

The Collection of Characters from Five Classics, The Collection of Characters from

Nine Classics (<九经文字>) from the Tang Dynasty and The Pei Xi Dictionary


(<佩觿>), The General Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<字通>), and The

Dictionary of Ancient Character Exegesis (<复古编>) from the Song Dynasty.

The latter refers to collections of meaning explanations and phonetic annotations

of characters from classic works and scriptures, such as The Exegetic Interpret-

ation of Classics and Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures, which

was compiled by Xuan Ying and Hui Lin of the Tang Dynasty.

To summarize, the values and inXuence of dictionary making and research

between the Wei and Yuan Dynastics are manifold and manifested chieXy by

greater in-depth theoretical generalization concerning lexicographical issues, the

emergence of new dictionary formats and styles, the standardization and con-

ventionalization of these formats and styles, a greater variety of dictionary types,

close interaction with contemporary academic research, and Wnally the far-

reaching impact upon theoretical inquiries of lexicographical issues, dictionary

format and style design and innovation. All these aspects and related issues will

be discussed in the following chapters.


1 1

THE DEVELOPMENT OFCHINESE CHARACTER

DICTIONARIES

WHETHER viewed from a functional perspective and from the angle

of dictionary format and style, Chinese character dictionaries underwent

an important stage of exploration and cultivation during the period from theWei

to the Yuan Dynasty. New types of dictionaries emerged, new theories concerning

dictionary compilation appeared, and new incentives for development material-

ized. All this formed a strong driving force for Chinese lexicography to progress

and prosper.


In the period of the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasty, what lay behind

the development of Chinese character dictionaries was the codiWcation of char-

acter variants, which was instrumental in the birth of ‘character model’ diction-

aries. During the period of the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasty,

separatist regimes were set up nationwide, and Southern China was cut oV from

the North. The oYcial script was dropping out of use and the regular and running

scripts were becoming more and more popular instead. Consequently, it was not

uncommon for single characters to be written with wrong strokes or with several

variants being used simultaneously, especially by ordinary people. This period

was a time ‘when prevailing habits and customs are discarded and characters

changed – seal characters are frequently misspelled and the oYcial script has lost

its true look’ (from The Book of the Wei Dynasty, <魏书>).

In the North, it was nothing but a time of rebellion and unrest. The writing system began

to deteriorate, which was further worsened by the constant coinage of new characters.

The situation of language use in the North was more disappointing than that in the

South. For instance, 忧 (worry) was interpreted as 百念 (with numerous ideas), 变

(change) as言反 (say what is contrary),罢 (cause to halt) as不用 (no longer in use),归

(return) as追来 (run after, chase),苏 (wake up) as更生 (revive),老 (old) as先人 (one’s

ancestor). Such inconsistencies are numerous and frequently encountered in the printed

classics. (from The Teachings of the Yan Family, <颜氏家训>)

It became inconvenient for students and scholars to learn and study the classics

and diYcult for the government to issue orders and decrees. Such a situation called

for the birth of a new type of dictionary – the ‘character model’ dictionary – to

codify and rectify misspelled characters and character variants.

Whenever a society goes from unrest to peace, its ruler will make policies to

strengthen his rule, among which language policy is usually an important

element. During the Tang Dynasty, policies were open and wise and its society

was stable and at peace. It was during the period of Zhenguan (627–649) in Tang

Taizong’s reign that Yan Shigu was put in charge of the Ministry of Secretary. The

duty of the Ministry of Secretary was to authoritatively print the classic works, to

collate the styles of characters, to check and proofread the texts, and Wnally to

produce a standard model textbook that could be taken as a yardstick for the

printing industry and as the Wnal resort when disputes arose, which led to the

appearance of a book entitled Yan’s Manual of Character Models (<颜氏字样>).He produced another book, called The RectiWcation and Standardization of

Chinese Characters. Other dictionaries of the kind included The New Manual of

Character Models from Classics and Scriptures (<群书新定字样>) by Du Yanye

(杜延业), The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The Dictionary of Meticu-

lously RectiWed Characters from Classics (<经典分毫正字>) by Ouyang Rong

(欧阳融), Sound and Meaning of Kaiyuan Characters (<开元文字音义>) by

Xuan Zong (唐玄宗), the Emperor himself, The Collection of Characters from

Five Classics, and The New Collection of Character Models from Nine Classics.

In the Preface to The Jade Chapters Gu Yewang states:

Even though easily confusable words came to extinction, the meaning might be errone-

ous as well. It followed that a lot of disputes and disagreements remained unsettled in the

Five Classics and the Writings of the Three Emperors. For the six kinds of writing script

and the eight styles of writing, there remained wide variations between the ancient and

development of character dictionaries 177

the contemporary: on some occasions, the same interpretation is suitable for diVerent

characters, and, on other occasions, the same character allows for diVerent interpret-

ations – there is much confusion in interpretation among numerous schools of thought.

For the character books and other printed dictionaries, errors are numerous. They are

diYcult to consult and confusion and doubt may easily arise.

Actually, the background to the birth of The Jade Chapters is touched upon

here. First, there appeared ‘diVerent interpretations’ of the classic works; sec-

ondly, character forms underwent dramatic changes from the seal character and

oYcial script to the regular script and caused ‘great discrepancies in writing

between the ancient and the contemporary’; thirdly, ‘there is much diVerence in

interpretation’ of the meaning of characters; and Wnally, errors proliferated in

classic works in circulation and character consultation became more diYcult.

Under such circumstances, a new dictionary type became a must – to codify the

font style, specify the character meaning, rectify errors and facilitate consultation.

Thus, Gu Yewang made an eVort ‘to integrate the achievements of diVerent

wordbooks, to proofread the many classic works and Wnally to establish his

own system – a comprehensive interpretation of the meaning of characters in

the Chinese language’. He beneWted greatly from his predecessors and formed his

own system by relying purely on his own judgement in making decisions as to

what to include and exclude, and how to, in his dictionary.

In the period from the Han to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, character

books and dictionaries were many in number and outstanding in quality. There

appeared some great lexicographical works, such as An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters, The Ready Guide, The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, and The

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms. In the period from the Sui to the Yuan

Dynasty, dictionary making and research developed further. In the early Tang

Dynasty, there appeared quite a number of character books of considerable size.

As recorded in the section on ‘Classic Works’ and in the section of ‘Art and

Literature’ in both the old and the new versions of The Book of the Tang Dynasty

(<唐书>), there are The Guiyuan Collection of Characters (<桂苑珠丛>, 100volumes) by Zhuge Ying (诸葛颖) in the Sui Dynasty and The MagniWcent

Character Dictionary (<字海>, 100 volumes) by Empress Wu Zetian, which are

grandiose achievements. It could be speculated on the basis of these two diction-

aries as to how prosperous and vigorous dictionary making and lexicographical

culture might have been. After a lapse of only a short period of time, there came

another even more miraculous lexicographical work The Sources of Rhyme Ocean,

which comprises 360 volumes. Unfortunately, these dictionaries are no longer in

existence.


11.2 the evolution of lexicographical theories

Philological studies are the theoretical underpinning of the compilation of the

Chinese character dictionary. In the period from the Wei to the Yuan Dynasty

philological studies concentrated mainly on theoretical inquiries into and the

sorting of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, research into the

theory of ‘Six Categories’, and the promotion of epigraphy.

For about four centuries after the birth of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, very scant research was conducted in relation to it. That situation did

not change until the Sui Dynasty. The most outstanding research on An Explana-

tory Dictionary of Chinese Characters was carried out by Li Yangning in the Tang

Dynasty and the Brothers of Xu Xuan and XuKai (徐锴) at the turn from the Tang

to the Song Dynasty. Li Yangning, a Tang Dynasty scholar from County Zhao, was

expert at zhuan script. His expertise in the zhuan script was considered second to

none and he once praised himself as ‘the direct successor to Li Si (the creator of the

xiaozhuan script in the Qin Dynasty)’. It was recorded in Xu Xuan’s Preface to The

Revised Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<校定说文>) that Li

Bingyang ‘reprinted An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters with major

revision and rectiWcation of strokes and techniques of character writing. He was

widely respected and admired by scholars and there came a revival of the zhuan

script and zhou script’.

Xu Kai was the author of The Comprehensive Studies in An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文系传>), which was later known as JuniorXu’s Version. It comprises forty volumes, divided into eight sections:

(a) General interpretations: adding interpretative words immediately following

the original texts, with indicative labels as ‘Xuan’s word’ or ‘Xuan’s note’;

(b) Section comments: analysing semantic relations between various sections;

(c) General comments: listing more than 140 characters classiWed into the

categories of ‘heaven and earth, king and subjects, rites and ceremonies,

Wve xing (the Wve elements of metal, wood, water, Wre, and earth), life and

fate, father and mother, wife and sons, good and evil, wise and stupid, etc’

and discussing the origin of these characters and their form and meaning

relations;

(d) Removal of deceitful statements: especially for disproving the arguments

of Li Bingyang;

(e) Categorized gathering: words of the same kind are grouped together and

their formal structures and semantic relations are analysed;


(f) Sorting: (the analysis of word meaning is used) to deduce the tenor of ‘Six

Categories’ theory, verify it against the behaviour of human beings, and

fully explicate its signiWcance;

(g) Suspended senses: pointing out the characters missed or suspected mean-

ing in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, in addition to

those with diVerences from the zhuan script;

(h) Direct comments: those by the reviser.

As analysed above, Xu Kai is the Wrst scholar who has systematically studied An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters from the diachronic perspective of

lexicography in China. In the Wrst year of Yongxi (i.e. ad 976) during Tai Zong’s

reign in the Song Dynasty, Xu Xuan, together with Gou Zhongzheng (句中正),

Ge Tuan (葛湍), Wang Weigong (王惟恭), and others, was summoned to collate

and revise An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. The revision was

completed in 986 and was later known as Senior Xu’s Version, which is the most

popular version of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters available

today. As was stated in its Preface, Xu Xuan and others did a great deal of work

towards the improvement of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters,

conducted a great deal of research on diVerent versions and editions, added what

had been ‘left out’, supplemented the newly coined, diVerentiated the popularly

misspelled, added notes and explanations, and adopted the phonetic system of

fanqie as employed by Sun Mian (孙愐) in The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes.

Thanks to the Xu brothers’ excellent work, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters became popular again and, an epoch-making event, the Shuowen

Studies gradually evolved as an independent branch of learning.

Since the ‘Six Categories’ theory was put forward in the Eastern Han Dynasty,

there has not been much research concerning its application to analyze the form

and structure of characters. In the Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi wrote The Char-

acter Dictionary (<字说>), which attempts to embrace the truths of all things

between heaven and earth, in keeping with what followed from The Book of

Changes. The characters in The Character Dictionary are arranged in rhyming

order, roughly the same four-tone sequence as in The Dictionary of Rhymes. The

head characters are printed in the style of the zhuan script, through which the

meaning of characters is analysed and interpreted. The form and structure of a

character is analysed as a prerequisite for interpreting its meaning and then the

relationship between form and meaning can be further expounded. For instance,

from the analysis of the formation of the character美 (beautiful), we can see that

‘the upper half of the character is 羊 (sheep) and the lower half is 大 (big).

A ‘‘sheep’’ is ‘‘beautiful’’ when it is ‘‘big’’ ’. When interpreting the meaning of a


character, Wang Anshi often takes into account how it is pronounced, that is,

phonetically interpreting the meaning of a character. For instance,

桧 (Chinese juniper) has the leaves of a柏 (cypress) and the trunk of a松 (pine), and its

leaves and trunk are all in curves (曲). 枞 (Wr), however, has the leaves of a 松 but the

trunk of a柏, and its leaves and trunk are all straight (直). For a枞, we will ‘comply with’

从 in that it is straight, but for a桧, we will have to ‘cut or break’ (会¼刽) in that it is in

the shape of a curve. Because of its straightness, we will have to follow 从 and it is

pronounced从 as in从容 (with ease). Because of its curve, we will have to cut it (会) oV

and it is therefore pronounced会 as in会计.

Wang Anshi also adopted the method of direct phonetic notation to help users

to understand its meaning through its pronunciation. For instance,柽 (Chinese

tamarisk) can predict when it is going to rain and reveals the law of heaven.

Though its nature is sacred it is still a kind of tree. Awood is divine and it cannot

be secularly named. Its pronunciation is赪 indicating ‘full-bloodied (赤) faith-

fulness (贞)’. Wang Anshi believed that for a character, ‘when seeing it you can

know it, when hearing it you can think about it and its meaning is natural.’ ‘As

Confucian scholars have been constantly arguing, the crux of the dispute is the

relationship between name and essence. When this relationship is clariWed, the

universal lawof theworld can be grasped’ (fromTheCollectedWorks ofWangAnshi

(<王文公文集>), Volume 8). He also composed a poemwhich goes like this: ‘All

things have been correctly named since Emperor Xuanyuan. Why should we force

ourselves to discuss this in vain? What we could do is Wll up the wine glass for our

friends but not to order the ghosts to cry at sunset’ (from Notes to Wang Anshi’s

Poems, <王荆文公诗笺注>, Volume 41). It is clear that his motivation for com-

piling The Character Dictionary is to correct the names of objects for practical

purposes. In his analysis, greater emphasis is laid upon the characteristics of formal

features and the functions and dispositions of things in order to explicate the

names of objects, discriminate the diVerences, identify the mainstream and the

branches, and explore the patterns and principles underlying the meanings.

Aware of the changes and developments in language, Wang Anshi analysed

some newly evolved meanings and extended meanings that had not been dis-

cussed in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. For instance, 除 is

deWned as ‘殿陛也 (the steps in front of a palace)’. In The Character Dictionary,

the extended meaning of ‘renewal’ is discussed: it comes from the ‘change or

alternation’ in moving up ‘the steps in front of a palace’. The Character Dictionary

is comprehensive: embracing the ideas and Wndings of the Confucian, the Taoist,

and Buddhist studies, in addition to all other minor schools of thoughts.

Its interpretations are basically well-grounded. Its language is simple but the


meanings expounded are profound. One of Wang Anshi’s purposes in the

compilation of The Character Dictionary is to supplement what had been missing

in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. The Character Dictionary is a

rather systematic sorting of the lexical semantics of the Chinese character system.

Having fully recognized the role of ‘sound component’ of a character in express-

ing meaning, Wang Anshi began to use the principle of ‘similar pronunciation

indicating common meaning’ in analysing the features of the ‘sound component’,

which greatly promoted the study of Chinese characters. ‘Though not free from

exegetical explanation, Wang Anshi has succeeded in dissecting how the form of a

character is related to its meaning and in helping to achieve an easier under-

standing of meanings of Chinese characters. His contribution should be fully

appreciated.’ (胡道静, Hu Daojing, 1956).

The Character Dictionary functions as a bridge connecting the present to the

past in the lexicographical history of China. Its inXuence on dictionary making is

far-reaching and its academic value and signiWcance in theoretical exploration

are remarkable.

Zheng Qiao (郑樵)), a scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, initiated the Six

Categories classiWcation in his work The Succinct Explication of Six-category

Chinese Characters (<六书略>). He reclassiWed the 540 sections of An Explana-

tory Dictionary of Chinese Characters into 330 sections. In his book, Zheng Qiao

not only provided illustrative examples for each of the Six Categories but further

classiWed them into twelve categories. His classiWcation and his method for

classiWcation were, to some extent, inherently defective in that they were

restricted by the ‘Six Categories’ theory. Dai Tong, a Yuan Dynasty scholar,

wrote The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, which used the Six Cat-

egories theory for analysing Chinese characters. He abandoned the sections used

in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and formulated a system of

his own, which comprised nine sections: numerals, astronomy, geography,

human beings, animals, plants, engineering, miscellany, and unsettled things.

These nine sections were further divided into 479 subsections in thirty-three

volumes. He made many original analyses of the meaning of characters but these

were not free from defects, such as making forced analogies and overemphasizing

the past while disregarding the contemporary. Yang Huan (杨桓), also a Yuan

Dynasty scholar, wrote The General Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters

(<六书统>, twenty volumes), which made use of ancient characters to deduce

and seek the original meaning, with the Six Categories theory governing his

analysis of Chinese characters. Unfortunately, his analysis was strongly conWned

within the limits of the Six Categories theory and illustrative examples in his

dictionary were numerous but jumbled.


The Emperor’s fondness for bronze vessels and the great number of such

vessels unearthed brought epigraphy into existence and enabled it to progress

and spread quickly. From a linguistic perspective, epigraphy in the Song Dynasty

broadened the horizon of philological studies and provided new methodologies.

The scope of the study on ancient characters expanded from the xiaozhuan script

to inscriptions on bronze, from literature passing from generation to generation

to literature newly unearthed. For over 400 inscriptive characters unearthed in

the Song Dynasty, the majority of the interpretations by the Song Dynasty

scholars were correct. The methodologies employed by the Song Dynasty

scholars were contrastive analysis, character component analysis, deduction,

conWrmation from literature passed down, etc., which were the basic methods

for interpreting ancient characters and are still being used today. From a lexico-

graphical perspective, epigraphy in the Song Dynasty established the format for

compiling specialized dictionaries. For instance, The Pictorial Dictionary of

Archaeology (<考古图>) by Lu Dalin (吕大临), was the earliest dictionary that

provided a systematic record of ancient vessels, with illustrative sketches. This

dictionary comprises ten volumes, divided according to the classiWcation of

vessels. For each vessel, there is a descriptive diagram or sketch, the name of

the vessel and/or its manufacturer, its size, weight and capacity, in addition to

textual research and record of its owner or place of unearthing. This dictionary

sets a good precedent for later lexicographers to follow in format and style.

In the period of the Sui to YuanDynasty, inquiries into lexicographic issueswere

given in the dictionary prefaces or other articles. Their achievements, however,

were signiWcant. As pointed out in his Presenting a Memorial for Ancient and

Contemporary Characters, Jiang Shi held that characters and language serve the

function of ‘when it is announced in the Palace, it would be passed among the

diVerent trades in the world; when it is written down and printed in ten thousand

copies, all things would be clearly identiWed.’ For Xu Shen, it was his ‘disgust of the

ill-treatment of characters’ that motivated him towriteAn Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters. It is evident that one principal function of a dictionary is the

standardization and codiWcation of language for a community. Lu Deming made

some insightful comments on dictionary coverage. He held that ‘embracing both

the ancient and the contemporary’ should be a general principle for dictionaries of

every type. The principle for rhyme dictionaries was represented in The Tang

Dictionary of Rhymes, which assumed that its coverage would be ‘exhaustive and

supplementwhat has been left out inTheDictionary of Chinese Rhymes’, embracing

‘names of states and counties’, ‘tales and legends, origins of family names, local

produces, names ofmountains and rivers, grasses and woods, birds, beasts, worms

and Wsh’. As for phonetic notation and deWnition, Lu Deming pointed out that the


pronunciation of a character in a dictionary should be ‘put in theWrst place’so as to

‘help the user to compare usage’. A dictionary ‘should add phonetic notation,

deWne the character, trace its origin, and analyse and explain the diYcult points or

confusions’ (from the Preface to Sounds andMeanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures

by Xuan Ying). Lu Deming believed that the citations should be ‘taken from both

the ancient and contemporary literature’ and the compilers should ‘extract out the

fundamental and essential elements’. The citations for each character would be

‘plain but not crude, abundant but not chaotic’.

Lu Deming also established a bylaw for The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics –

‘meaning interpretation coupled with discrimination’. In other words, a diction-

ary should not only interpret the meaning of a character but make further

discrimination from some related characters as well when necessary. The most

outstanding feature of semantic interpretation for a dictionary in this period was

marked by the breakthrough in the paradigm of form–meaning combination laid

down in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters in the period of the

Qin and Han Dynasties. A new paradigm, that is, the combination of sound–

meaning, emerged as a result of the Xourishing phonological studies of the Sui

and Tang Dynasties. With the introduction of Buddhism and the thriving

translation and interpretation of Buddhist scriptures, the role of phonology in

the textual research of scriptures and in meaning interpretation of characters

in dictionary making was recognized and the theories of phonetic–meaning

combination naturally evolved. Xuan Ying stated that ‘to collect and sort the

scriptures is to add phonetic notations and to interpret their meanings’ (Preface

to Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures). The Jade Chapters also

adopted the paradigm of phonetic–meaning combination, that is, phonetic

notation followed by semantic interpretation; whereas, The Dictionary of Chinese

Rhymes put semantic interpretation in front of phonetic notations (丰逢奉, Feng

Fengfeng, 1992). In the Song Dynasty, the works written since the Han and Tang

Dynasties were called into question and scholars wished to get rid of them and

reinterpret the argumentations and ideologies in the traditional classic works.

The movement of reinterpreting the classic works and elucidating their funda-

mental argumentations motivated the compilation of character dictionaries.

In this period, the studies in the Welds of phonetics, grammar, and semantics

had all made great headway, which accelerated the progress of lexicography in

cultural development, knowledge propagation, and language teaching. Diction-

ary making achieved some signiWcant breakthroughs in format and style, such as

formal and phonetic sequencing, in phonetic notation, in phonetic–semantic

combination, in sense deWnition, and in formal analysis. The quality of diction-

ary making and the level of lexicographical research were noticeably enhanced.


11.3 the development of format and style

After the academic disputes and cultural evolution in the period from the Wei to

the Southern and Northern Dynasties, dictionary making began to undergo a

process of multi-dimensional development from the Sui to the Yuan Dynasties,

which was a result of eVorts to meet various lexicographical needs from all walks

of life in society. In terms of functions, there appeared various kinds of diction-

aries to serve the purposes of codiWcation: those for codifying the form and

structure of the character in use, such as The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, those for codifying the pronunciation, such as The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes, those for codifying the meaning, such as The Broad Ready

Guide, those dealing with all three aspects, that is, form, pronunciation, and

meaning, such as The Jade Chapters, those for interpreting multiple scriptures,

such as The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics, and Sounds and Meanings of All the

Buddhist Scriptures, and those for interpreting a speciWc scripture, such as Sounds

and Meanings of the Avatamsaka Sutra (<华严经音义>). In terms of styles and

formats, there emerged formal ordering dictionaries, such as The Character Forest

and The Jade Chapters, phonetic ordering dictionaries, such as The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes, semantic ordering dictionaries, such as The Broad Ready Guide,

or dictionaries that were arranged according to the sequence of the chapters and

sections from which characters were collected and interpreted, such as The

Exegetic Interpretation of Classics or Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist

Scriptures. This indicated that dictionary making reached a rather high standard.

The dictionaries compiled in this period were generally socially motivated and

more user-friendly, with ease of consultation.

The character dictionaries in the early Wei and Jin Dynasties followed the

example of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters in increasing its

coverage of characters and adding those left out by previous compilers, or of The

Ready Guide in augmenting their contents. Although xiaozhuan and the ancient

oYcial script of the Han Dynasty were not still in use, the most popular style of

writing in this period was the regular script, that is, the modern oYcial script,

and this trend was becoming more and more apparent. Consequently, more and

more dictionaries compiled in this period started to adopt the regular script as

the standard style of head character and were breaking away from the conWne-

ments of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and The Ready Guide in

content and format. In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, these new-style

dictionaries were very popular. This trend in the evolution of dictionary making


was also a natural response to the need of society and certainly in keeping with

the general patterns of lexicographical practice.

In the early Wei Dynasty, three character dictionaries, i.e. The Augmented

Cangjie Glossary (<埤仓>), The Broad Ready Guide, and The Exegesis of Ancient

and Contemporary Characters, were compiled by Zhang Yi. They were all subse-

quently lost except for The Broad Ready Guide, which will be dealt with later. It is

evident from its name that The Augmented Cangjie Glossary was compiled to

supplement Three Cang Primer. A more inXuential character dictionary than The

Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary Characters was The Character Forest by Lu

Chen in the Jin Dynasty. Lu Chen collected many rare and odd characters or

character variants to supplement what had been left out from An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. In Jiang Shi’s opinion,

It generally follows the example of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. It

cites extensively and identiWes and diVerentiates ancient characters, characters of

the zhou style, odd characters, and characters easily confusable. Its writing style is the

standardized oYcial script of the Han Dynasty. It has, to a large extent, captured

the essence of xiaozhuan.

In other words, the oYcial script was dominant in this book and its style of

character writing did not violate that of xiaozhuan.

The Character Forest had become popular in the Southern and Northern

Dynasties. Yan Zhitui, a scholar of the Northern Qi Dynasty (550–577), wrote

that once, accompanying the Emperor, he went to a village, named Lielu. It is in

Shang’ai County, dozens of miles to the east of the frontier pass of Jingjing. Later,

he went to another place, near the town of Kangqiu, about a hundred miles to the

east of Jinyang. It is unknown to them what these two places were originally. He

tried hard to seek answers through the books, both ancient and contemporary,

but none was forthcoming. When he came to the character dictionaries, i.e. The

Character Forest and The Collection of Rhymes, the riddle was immediately solved

(from The Teachings of the Yan Family). It is the character books that helped him

Wgure out the diVerent names of two places and the pronunciation of three

archaic characters. It is evident that The Character Forest would be popular in

everyday life for its consultative value. Yan Zhitui was also well aware of the

signiWcance of language and characters. He stated:

Words and characters are fundamental. For students nowadays, they rarely have a better

knowledge of characters: when they read the Five Classics, they follow Xu Miao (徐邈)

rather than Xu Shen, and when they practise writing fu-poems, they believed in Chu’s

(褚) interpretations but neglected Lu Chen’s.


He held that it was wrong to ignore the role of the character dictionary. And

here, when he mentioned the name of Lu Chen, what Yan Zhitui referred to was

The Character Forest he compiled, which served as a transition between the

foregoing An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and the subsequent

The Jade Chapters.

Jiang Shi, a well-known scholar of the Northern Wei Dynasty, was endowed

with a profound knowledge about Chinese characters. He was born into a family

acknowledged for its academic study of the diVerent writing styles of Chinese

characters. Jiang Qiong (江琼), his ancestor from the Three Kingdoms period,

was a disciple of Wei Qu (卫觊) and was expert at writing in the ancient zhuan

style and in exegetic studies. Jiang Qiang (江强), his grandfather, also good at the

ancient zhuan style, held the title of senior academic consultant for the govern-

ment and donated about one thousand books he had collected. Jiang Shaoxing

(江绍兴), his father, was appointed as an oYcial of the royal library and had been

in charge of writing the national history for more than twenty years. Jiang Shi

inherited a great deal from his family. He was good at writing diVerent character

styles, especially the style of xiaozhuan. His writings could frequently be seen on

the signboards of important buildings in the capital city. In the Northern Wei

Dynasty, he presented a memorial to request permission to compile a character

dictionary – Ancient and Contemporary Characters. This memorial discussed the

origin and evolution of Chinese characters, the merits and demerits of character

books compiled since the time of the Qin Dynasty in their content, format and

style. That was an important article on the study of Chinese characters and in the

history of lexicography in China. As far as the format and style of this character

book was concerned, it exempliWed An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Char-

acters: for each head character, the writing style of xiaozhuan is presented Wrst,

followed by its oYcial script form, and, for its diVerent writing styles, such as the

zhou script, odd variants and vulgar ones are listed after the xiaozhuan style with

some comments on their diVerentiation. For each character, pronunciations are

added, which are further diVerentiated as dialectal and standard ones. That

dictionary comprised forty volumes. The memorial Jiang Shi presented showed

that it was comprehensive, embracing both the ancient and the contemporary.

The xiaozhuan and oYcial scripts were contrasted and the variants were exten-

sively collected. For each character, its pronunciation was noted by using fanqie

and the diVerences in pronunciation between diVerent regions were examined.

Therefore, that dictionary is noteworthy for its unprecedented coverage and

combination of features and advantages found in many others, especially The

Dictionary of Dialectal Words and An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Charac-

ters. Jiang Shi himself once commented on the dictionary that ‘it has removed


redundant characters’. It proved highly beneWcial for exegetic studies and dia-

lectal investigations of later generations. The pity was that it was an unWnished

work and has not been handed down to the present time.

The Jade Chapters diVers from those compiled under the guidance of the Six

Categories theory in format and style and is characterized as follows. First, its

head characters are in the form of the regular script. The head characters in

dictionaries compiled before The Jade Chapters are all in the style of xiaozhuan

and the oYcial script, for instance, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Char-

acters, The Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary Characters, The Character Forest,

and Ancient and Contemporary Characters. The Jade Chapters is the earliest

dictionary found to have head characters in the form of the regular script. Its

coverage is over 22,000 characters, including some newly coined characters and

variants, which gives an authentic and comprehensive description of language

change in this period: a more fully developed language system, dramatic increase

in the number of Chinese characters, and the variation of the writing style of

Chinese characters.

Second, reform in the components and radicals of Chinese characters was well

under way. The Jade Chapters removed ten radical sections, such as the radical

sections of 哭, 眉, 后, and 弦, from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and added twelve new sections, such as those of 父, 兆, 索, 单, and

丈. The ordering of radical sections was also changed from ‘formal ordering’ to

‘semantic ordering’. This change resulted from the change of the writing style

from xiaozhuan and the oYcial script to the regular script, and from the

motivation to make dictionary consultation a more user-friendly activity.

Third, fanqie became the dominant form of phonetic notation, assisted by direct

notation. The phonetic notation inAn Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters

was rather imprecise in that a character is usually notated by means of using labels

such as某声 (pronounced as) and读若某 (pronounced like). The Jade Chapters

adopted the method of fanqie, which was a rather substantial advance in phonetic

notation. It not only made dictionary consultation an easier and more pleasant

activity but also reXected the progress in lexicography of its time.

Fourth, deWnitions became more detailed and speciWc. The deWnition in An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters was oriented towards analysing the

form and structure of Chinese characters and inquiring into their original

meanings. The Jade Chapters, however, laid more emphasis on interpreting the

meanings of characters rather than on analysing their formal features on the

understanding that when someone comes to a dictionary he usually wants to

know its pronunciation or meaning rather than its formal structure and original

meaning. Look at the following citation from The Jade Chapters:


夫, 甫俱切。<说文>云: 丈夫, 从一大, 一以像簪, 周制八寸为尺, 十尺为丈, 人长

八尺,故曰丈夫。又,夫三为屋,一家田为一夫也。又音扶,语助也。

(夫: pronounced with the combination of the initial consonant of甫 /pu/ and the vowel

of 俱 /ju/. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters says:丈夫 ‘husband’ comes

from the combination of 一 ‘one’ and 大 ‘big’ in which 一 stands for a hairpin. In the

Zhou Dynasty, eight inches make one foot and ten feet make one yard ‘丈’. The height of

a man is usually eight feet, roughly a yard. And a man is usually dubbed as ‘one yard

person’. Also,夫三为屋. The size of the farmland of a family ‘家’ is made suitable for a

single man. Also, it is pronounced as扶, used as an exclamation expressing the mood.)

Fifth, in the process of meaning interpretation, the compiler’s ideas and

opinions were often added as notes. In The Jade Chapters, ‘Yewang’s note’ was

used to indicate that opinions and comments came from the compiler himself.

The notes involved the compiler’s analysis and reXections about the form,

meaning, and pronunciation of the speciWc character in question. As for the

formal aspect, it identiWed its variants, examined those characters sharing more

similarities in formal features, described how a character underwent diVerentia-

tion and/or combination. As to the semantic aspect, semantic analysis and

interpretation became the dominant method instead of formal or phonetic

interpretation. For deWnition, semantic analysis was more suitable and meth-

odologically more scientiWc than formal and phonetic analysis, for it was more

compatible with the users’ reading habits. The methods adopted in The Jade

Chapters for semantic interpretation are:

(a) description: such as 缆 (mooring rope): Yewang’s note: 缆 refers to thick

rope for mooring.

(b) contrast: 呼: Yewang’s note: air out is 呼 ‘exhale’, whereas air in is 吸

‘inhale’.

(c) generalization: 服 ‘garments’: Yewang’s note; 衣, for covering the upper

part of the body, and 裳 for the lower part. In general, both of them can

refer to服 ‘clothes, garments’.

(d) synonym:伞 ‘umbrella’: Yewang’s note: it is a shield or shelter.

Sixth, the appendix ofMinute DiVerences in Character Formations (<分毫字样>)was attached to the end of the dictionary, which was an invention on the part of

Gu Yewang. He listed a large number of pairs of characters identical in form. For

each pair, he provided phonetic notations and deWnitions to help consultants to

discriminate their diVerences in form, pronunciation, and meaning. For in-

stance, the pair 帷 and 惟: the pronunciation of the former is described as ‘the

combination of the initial consonant of 于 /yu/ and the vowel of 眉 /mei/, its


deWnition is帷幔 (curtain)’, whereas the latter is described as ‘the combination of

the initial consonant of 以 /yi/ and the vowel of 佳 /jia/, its deWnition is 辞也

(functional character)’.

In the Song Dynasty, Ding Du, along with others, compiled The Rhyme

Dictionary. In comparison with The Jade Chapters, it manifested a large increase

in coverage but it is a pity that it did not co-refer to The Jade Chapters. Some

other rhyming characters excluded from The Rhyme Dictionary were gathered

into a new dictionary – The ClassiWed Chapters. For these two dictionaries, ‘those

characters phonetically related are all included in The Rhyme Dictionary while

those formally related are all included in The ClassiWed Chapters’ (Preface to The

ClassiWed Chapters). Therefore, The Rhyme Dictionary and The ClassiWed Chapters

are complementary. The compilation of The ClassiWed Chapters was carried out

successively by Wang Zhu, Hu Xiu, Zhang Cili (张次立), and Fan Zhen (范镇),

and Wnally edited by Sima Guang. That dictionary project started in 1039 and was

completed in 1066.

The Rhyme Dictionary falls into the category of rhyming dictionaries while The

ClassiWed Chapters is a character dictionary. They are, however, complementary

in terms of function. The latter consisted of Wfteen parts and each was further

divided into three volumes. The section divisions in The ClassiWed Chapters were

basically the same as those in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, i.e.

540 sections altogether. Because each of the four sections艸 (grass),食 (food),木

(wood), and 水 (water) actually had two subsections there were 544 sections in

The ClassiWed Chapters. The table of contents of the dictionary was given at the

end as an appendix. Its coverage was 31,319 characters, more than twice the size of

The Jade Chapters. It followed the example of An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and The Jade Chapters, the main focus being laid on form

and semantics, on investigations into the origin of characters, on analysis of

ancient pronunciations and senses, and on evolution of the writing style. The

ClassiWed Chapters had a rigorous format and spared no eVort in making up what

was left out of The Rhyme Dictionary and in eliminating what was redundant in

The Rhyme Dictionary. In each character entry, its fanqie notation was given in

the Wrst place, then the exegetic explanation. When the character had a diVerent

pronunciation or meaning, they would be indicated as appropriate. The charac-

ters identiWed as having multiple pronunciations and/or senses in The ClassiWed

Chapters far surpassed those in The Jade Chapters. The policy adopted by The

ClassiWed Chapters to deal with these characters was to list the pronunciations

and senses in rhyming order. Like The Jade Chapters, more emphasis was laid

upon pronunciation and meaning rather than on the analysis of the formal

structures of each character. Where there existed a variant or variants this


would be noted after the character and sometimes its xiaozhuan formwas indicated

as well. In The ClassiWed Chapters there was a new type of note, i.e.凡 �之类皆

从� (all those like . . . are categorized as . . . ), indicating that semantic categories

had already been considered in working out the format. The writing style of

characters became standardized after it underwent several stages of evolution, and

the theory of ‘Six Categories’ was no longer applicable to the analysis of characters.

The ClassiWed Chapters elaborated nine ways to compensate in its Preface, which

were clearly a summary of its style and format and a reXection ofmany of its unique

characteristics:

. For characters with the same pronunciation but diVerent forms, they are co-

referred;

. For characters with the same meaning but diVerent pronunciations, they are

not co-referred;

. When its original meaning is lost, keep its original explanation, i.e. follow-

ing the traditional method of treatment;

. When the ancient meaning has changed to a new one, keep the new one;

. When the ancient meaning was lost without a new one, keep the ancient

one;

. For those newly coined characters without evidence, give no ‘see special

note’ (i.e. give no new separate section);

. For those losing their original evidence but where their meanings are self-

evident, clarify their motivations;

. For those left out of The Rhyme Dictionary, they are fully treated in this

dictionary;

. For those without a clearly identiWable section, group them according to

their semantic categories.

Since the time of its birth, more and more defects and shortcomings of The Jade

Chapters have come to light, for instance, its listing of characters which is chaotic in

parts, its cumberrome consultation, over-proliferation and disorderliness in section

identiWcation, limitation of lexical coverage, the strictures imposed by An Explana-

tory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and its misclassiWcation of some characters.

Han Daosheng (韩道升) criticized it for ‘selection with the best being missing and

imperfection with many being left out’ and ‘for its classiWcation, being redundant

and sophisticated’. In the 1180s, Wang Yumi (王与秘) revised it by arranging the

characters according to their number of radicals and renamed it The MagniWcent

Chapters (<篇海>). And in the 1190s, Han Xiaoyan (韩孝彦) further revised it –

‘The Jade Chapters is reorganized according to the Wve scales, and its greatest

excellence lies in choosing characters from the thirty-six initial consonants. This


new method surprises the whole academic world’ (Han Daosheng: Preface to The

MagniWcentChapters). In 1208, HanDaozhao, the second son ofHanXiaoyan,made

an even further revision and combined the sections into 440 sections. Its coverage

was also greatly enlarged and the dictionary was re-entitled The MagniWcent Chap-

ters: with Augmentations of Five Scales and Categorizations of Four Tones (<五音增

改并类聚四声篇海>), comprising Wfteen volumes with a coverage of 54,595 char-

acters. The indexing system adopted in both The MagniWcent Chapters and The

Dragon Shrine Character Manual (<龙龛手鉴>) is phonetic ordering but the

speciWc format and arrangement are diVerent. The MagniWcent Chapters arranges

the characters in the sequence of the thirty-six initial consonants and, for each initial

consonant, four scales are further diVerentiated.

11.4 a brief introduction to somerepresentative character dictionaries

Among the character books and dictionaries compiled in the Southern and

Northern Dynasties, the most important is The Jade Chapters, the Wrst regular

script character dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography. Gu Yewang,

born in Wu County, Wu Shire, Liang State in the Southern Dynasty, was a

prodigy. He could read the Five Classics when he was seven and started to

write articles such as The Sun (<日赋>) when he was nine. When he grew up

‘he read all the scriptures and historical books extensively. His knowledge

involved astronomy, geography, divining and astrology, diVerent writing scripts

and rare characters’ (The Book of the Chen Dynasty, <陈书>). He died at sixty-

three. His academic achievements include The Jade Chapters, which was completed

when he was twenty-Wve, and The Stemmata of the Gu Family (<顾氏谱传>), inaddition to a collected work of twenty volumes, and various other works.

Regarding the time of its writing and completion, there is a record in the Song

Dynasty version of The Jade Chapters that ‘on 28March, the ninth year of Datong

in the Liang Dynasty, Gu Yewang wrote it.’ According to The Biography of Xiao Kai

(<萧恺传>) in The Book of the Liang Dynasty (<梁书>), ‘before that, Doctor GuYewang at the Imperial Academy had been ordered to write The Jade Chapters.

Taizong was dissatisWed with it and employed Xiao Kai (萧恺) to revise it because

Xiao Kai was known for his broad knowledge and expertise in philology.’ It is

therefore evident that the writing of The Jade Chapterswas not directly ordered by

the Emperor but by the prince – Taizong. In the ninth year of Datong in Emperor


Liangwu’s reign, the twenty-Wve-year-old Gu Yewang presented the completed

version of The Jade Chapters to Prince Xiao Gang (萧纲, Emperor Jianwen). In

548, Xiao Gang ordered Xiao Kai, the son of Xiao Zixian (萧子显), to take charge

of the revision of The Jade Chapters. It is thus clear that the compilation of The

Jade Chapters started in 538 and was completed in 543. It was revised by SunQiang

(孙强) in the Tang Dynasty (674) and by Chen Pengnian and others in the Song

Dynasty (1013). After all these revisionsThe Jade Chapterswas not what it had been

when it was compiled by Gu Yewang. The most popular version of The Jade

Chapters currently available is the revised edition by Chen Pengnian et al. and it is

renamed The Immensely Augmented Jade Chapters (<大广益会玉篇>).The present version of The Jade Chapters, i.e. The Immensely Augmented Jade

Chapters consisted of thirty volumes. The number of characters totalled ‘158,641

in the old version and 51,129 in the new version, 209,770 characters altogether.

The explanatory notes were 407,530 characters. The number of characters covered

in the dictionary were actually a little over 22,000. Thus, the present version is

neither what it was like when Gu Yewang wrote it nor when Sun Qiang revised

and expanded it.

The Jade Chapters basically adopted the section segmentation system of An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, with 542 sections, two sections

more in number. It deleted some sections of Xu Shen’s dictionary, such as the

radical sections哭,延, 杀, 眉, 白 [actually 自 ‘self ’, not 白 ‘white’], 饮,后,弦,

etc., added some new sections, such as the radical sections父,喿,处,兆,盘, 索,

床,单, and丈. The character书 was just a character in Xu Shen’s dictionary, but

it was established as a separate section in The Jade Chapters, and the section画 in

Xu Shen’s dictionary was downgraded as part of the书 section. The sequence of

the sections was also diVerent from that in Xu Shen’s dictionary as a result

of adjustment and rearrangement. For instance, the thirteen sections involving

such characters of interpersonal relations as人,儿,父,臣,男,民,夫,予,我,身,

兄,弟, and女 were collectively treated in Volume III, which made it fundamen-

tally diVerent from Xu Shen’s dictionary insofar as the sections were arranged

according to the ‘formal ordering’ principle based on the Six Categories theory in

Xu Shen’s dictionary, whereas in The Jade Chapters, they were treated according

to the semantic relations they bear. It is hard to pass judgement on this treatment,

but for those users who are not familiar with the Six Categories theory, it is more

convenient.

Unlike An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which analyses the

form and structure of the character according to the Six Categories theory, The

Jade Chapters focuses on phonetic–meaning relations in deWnition. After each

head character, it is the phonetic notation by fanqie, followed by an explanation


of its meaning. Some explanations are supported by citations and there are also

situations where citations are directly employed as ‘deWnitions’. For those char-

acters with diVerent spellings, the ancient spelling or its variants are listed

afterwards. For example, 堆 is in section 土 of Volume 2. It is deWned and

explained as ‘堆, 都回切, 聚土也。<楚辞> 云: 陵魁堆以蔽视。’ (堆 is notated

in fanqie as 都回. It means 聚土 ‘earth piling up’. In The Songs of Chu, there is

陵魁堆以蔽视 ‘The biggest mausoleum is piled up and the horizon is

obstructed’.) The citation from The Songs of Chu is used directly as a deWnition.

Let us look at another example: 垂 has an entry ‘垂,时规切。<说文>云:远边

也。’ (垂 is notated in fanqie as时规. And in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, it says远边也 ‘faraway’.).

It is obvious that there is no further explanation of it since An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters has already deWned it nice and clearly. For a few

characters, direct phonetic notation is employed rather than fanqie. For instance,

茵 in示 section is notated 音因 (pronounced in the same way as 因).

The present version of The Jade Chapters includes a preface written by Gu

Yewang, which points out that the purpose of its compilation is to research and

discover similarities and diVerences between ancient and contemporary charac-

ters in their formal structure and semantic interpretation and to help solve the

users’ confusions and diYculties in these respects. He aims to ‘comprehensively

study and integrate the many texts, compare and verify the diVerent books, and

form a scheme of his own’. The explanations of characters in it, however, are on

most occasions highly simpliWed. This might be a result of revision and deletion

by later scholars. According to The Book of the Sui Dynasty, The Jade Chapters

comprises thirty-one volumes, possibly counting the preface as one volume.

The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters was compiled by Yan Yuansun, a

Tang Dynasty scholar, and comprises only one volume. Yan Yuansun, known as

Yu Xiu, was born in Wannian (Xi’an today). Yan Shigu, Yan Yuansun’s ancestor,

had been ordered by Emperor Taizong to ‘verify and authorize the Scriptures.

Thus [he] has recorded the writing styles of characters as samples to verify the

writing style of regular scripts. These sample writings are very popular and

entitled Yan’s Manual of Character Models’ (Preface to The Ganlu Dictionary of

Chinese Characters), on the basis of which Yan Yuansun compiled The Ganlu

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. By 干禄 ‘Ganlu’ is meant ‘seeking a position

earning salaries’. This dictionary was intended to help diVerentiate the diVerent

styles of character writing, especially for oYcials to recognize and correctly use

the characters in government documents, such as memorials, letters and corres-

pondences, court verdicts and legal charges. It is the Wrst character dictionary to

diVerentiate the formal features of Chinese characters. Though originating from


Yan’s Manual of Character Models, it ushered in a new epoch of character

dictionary compilation and a new dictionary species – the Chinese character

dictionary with a focus on formal description and diVerentiation. The characters

in the dictionary are Wrst divided into four sections according to the four tones in

pronunciation and are then further arranged according to the radicals they share.

For each character entry, there is a split into three styles, namely popular, general,

and standard, according to their diachronic sequence and diVerence in areas of

use. Listing is also made of some popularly used simpliWed characters with

elaborate sense diVerentiation. As meaning explication is not done character by

character, and deWnitions, if there are any provided, are usually rather rough and

ready, this dictionary can only be used as a general character glossary for

checking character variants. In 774, Yan Zhenqing, Yan Yuansun’s nephew and

also a great master of calligraphy, copied it and had it inscribed on stone tablets.

According to Chen Zhensun (陈振孙), a Song Dynasty scholar, there is a sequel

of The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which is entitled The Extended

Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<广干禄字书>, Wve volumes) by Lou Ji

in the Song Dynasty. Unfortunately, it is no longer in existence.

The Collection of Characters from Five Classics was written by Zhang Shen in

the Tang Dynasty. It consists of three volumes. In June 776, he started to collate

and verify the words and characters in the Five Classics on imperial order. When

he ‘had Wnished collecting the diVerent versions of the Five Classics, all the walls

of the room were piled up with books’. Then, he began to collect confusable

characters and interchangeable variants. Based on the Xiping Stone Inscriptions of

the Han Dynasty and other wordbooks and dictionaries, such as An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The Character Forest, and The Exegetic Inter-

pretation of Classics, he identiWed 3,247 characters (3,235 characters according to

his Preface). These characters are further classiWed into 160 radical sections. For

each character, phonetic pronunciation is notated, mainly by means of fanqie,

but sometimes direct notation is also employed. In terms of character formation,

diVerentiation is made in the evolution of the writing style of the character, the

variants of a character, the characters bearing resemblance in form, and the

misspelled characters. In terms of pronunciation, diVerentiation is made in

characters with divergent pronunciations and characters easily mispronounced.

In terms of character meaning, loaned meanings are further identiWed, and the

deWnitions are more speciWc and precise than those in An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters. Moreover, new senses or existing senses left out of An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters are added, and the characters newly

added are also well treated in terms of their sense deWnitions. This is a special

wordbook about diVerentiating the formal structure and phonetic pronunciation


of characters in the classics and scriptures in the tradition of Yan’s Manual of

CharacterModels,TheNewManual of CharacterModels fromClassics and Scriptures,

and The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters. In a word, the collection of

characters is rich in content, with careful discrimination of their writing styles in

the classics, good illustration of the diVerences in spelling between the ancient and

the contemporary, and eVective correction of mistakes. Furthermore, the work has

preserved many ancient pronunciations and exegetic interpretations, making it an

important contribution to the standardization of Chinese characters.

The New Collection of Character Models from Nine Classics was written by Xuan

Du in the Tang Dynasty, consisting of one volume only, and was based on co-

textual research of other classics to rectify the errors in character writing styles in

The Collection of Characters from Five Classics. It also identiWed 421 characters

missing from The Collection of Characters from Five Classics and classiWed them

into seventy-six sections. It focused on investigating and codifying the form and

style of characters, notating the pronunciation, and interpreting the meaning of

characters. It followed the same pattern as The Collection of Characters from Five

Classics in format and arrangement, but not in phonetic notation. It employed

direct phonetic notation rather than fanqie, and if no character sharing the same

pronunciation is available, it would oVer indirect notation by using two characters

with one sharing the same initial consonant and the other the same vowel.

Functionally speaking, The New Collection of Character Models from Nine Classics

can be virtually treated as a supplement to The Collection of Characters from Five

Classics, aiming to discriminate and codify the form andwriting style of characters

in the classics, help the user understand the diVerences in spelling between the

ancient and the contemporary, and preserve a number of ancient pronunciations

and exegetic interpretations. It is extraordinarily rich in language data and par-

ticularly beneWcial for studying the ancient classics.

The Five-scale Compendium of Chinese Characters: with Revisions and Four-tone

ClassiWcations (<改并五音类聚四声篇>), is generally abbreviated to The Five-

scale Compendium (<五音类聚>) and variously known as <改并四声篇海>,<五音篇海>, <篇海集韵>, <五音聚韵>, and <五音聚韵>. It was compiled

by Han Daozhao, a Jin (金) Dynasty scholar. Han Daozhao, known as Bo Hui,

was born in Songshui of Zhengding (Zhengding County in Hebei Province today).

It was completed in 1208, based on The Four-tone MagniWcent Chapters (<四声篇

海>) andwithmuch revision, amendments, and augmentation. Themotivation for

writing the book is clear from the Preface by his cousin, Han Daosheng:

Daozhao has extensively collected previous literature to discover their principles and

paradigms. After thorough comparison and consideration he concludes that the literature


on phonetic notation of Chinese characters is good enough but the information is not

speciWc enough and the classiWcation of sections and entries are rather wordy and

redundant . . . So he starts to recast the regulations and patterns, to revise, combine,

and add new information, to specify the underpinnings and look into the origins.

The Five-scale Compendium had a coverage of 56,001 characters and had been

the most comprehensive collection of regularized Chinese characters in the

history of Chinese lexicography. Its entry characters are in the form of the regular

script. It has 444 radical sections, the number coming from The Book of Changes,

i.e. the 384 yao plus sixty – a cycle of years, indicating its foursquareness and

conventionality. It has established a new format based on the classiWcation of Wve

kinds of pronunciation, i.e. front dentals, tongue-sounds, labials, back dentals,

and laryngeals. Its phonetic notation is mainly by means of fanqie, with direct

notation occasionally. As for its deWnition, it has basically kept the style and

features of The Jade Chapters and The ClassiWed Chapters and is a collective

integration based on The Jade Chapters and The ClassiWed Chapters, hence a

large-scale character dictionary with a relatively complete adoption of the Chi-

nese character system from the time of the Han Dynasty. It has provided a general

picture of the evolution of the Chinese character system since the compilation

of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. It has also recorded

many variant and rare characters and has well preserved the reading materials

with pronunciation notated and the earliest meanings of some characters and

rarely seen materials as well as the names of the rhyme books later lost. There is

a great deal it can contribute to sorting the character books of today, studying

the evolution of the writing styles of Chinese characters, tidying up character

variants, and studying the cultural history of China and the history of the

regularization of Chinese characters.

Once the writing style of the zhuan scripts had become outdated and the

oYcial and regular scripts ever more popular, the great discrepancy between

ancient and contemporary characters was more apparent. There was also a

dramatic increase in the number of newly created characters and variants of

character spelling, drawing the attention of more scholars to research in this Weld.

Since the time of the Song Dynasty, a number of character books and dictionaries

had been compiled, some focusing on discriminating the standard writing form

and style of popular characters, some on the evolutional deterioration of picto-

phonetic characters, and other on inquiring into the evolution from oYcial script

to regular script with An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters as its basis.

The most famous character books and dictionaries of this kind include The Pei Xi

Dictionary, The Dictionary of Ancient Character Exegesis, The General Dictionary


of Chinese Characters, The Dragon Shrine Character Manual, and The Character

Mirror (<字鉴>).The Pei Xi Dictionary was written by Guo Zhongshu (郭忠恕) in the Song

Dynasty. It has three volumes. The Wrst volume deals with the objectives of

compilation and the author’s opinions on the evolution and change of charac-

ters. The second and third volumes divide the characters into ten sections

according to the four tones of the Chinese characters. The easily confusable

characters are arranged together in pairs and their diVerences in pronunciation

and meaning are notated and explicated. It includes an appendix that diVerenti-

ates and rectiWes the misspelled characters. This dictionary sets an example for

discriminating easily confusable characters and between characters similar in

form, pronunciation, and meaning.

The Dictionary of Ancient Character Exegesis was written by Zhang You (张有)

in the Song Dynasty. It has two volumes and its lexical coverage is 3,000 characters

or so. These characters are divided according to their tones. The mistakes in the

popular use of characters are identiWed according to the standard set by An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. For each character entry, the head

character is of a zhuan-script style, coupled with variants in the vernacular and

popular style. The characters similar in form and strokes are discriminated one by

one to guarantee freedom from misuse. This dictionary proves to be of value to

the study of the change in the form of characters in ancient times.

The General Dictionary of Chinese Characters was written by Li Congzhou

(李从周) in the Song Dynasty. It has only one volume, aiming to explore the

origin of characters. It makes use of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters to explain the radicals of regular script in popular use. It covers 601

characters, which are further divided into eight-nine sections, or 89 sections

according to the strokes of regular scripts. The head character is in the style of the

zhuan script, included with notes in regular scripts. The phonetic notation is in

the Wrst place, followed by its deWnition. The exegetic interpretations all follow

what is said in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. This dictionary is

important for the study of lexicographical theories concerning dictionary com-

pilation in the Song Dynasty.

The Dragon Shrine Character Manualwas written by Seng Xingjun (僧行均) in

the Liao Dynasty and was completed in 997. It was originally entitled The Dragon

Shrine Character Mirror (<龙龛手鉴>, originally <龙龛手镜>), and was re-

named as such because the last character (镜) in its original title bore the same

pronunciation as the second character (敬) in the name of the Emperor’s

grandfather Zhao Jing (赵敬). This book was intended for studying the Buddhist

scriptures and its characters are arranged according to the radicals and the four


tones that the characters share. There are 240 sections in the book and they are

further classiWed into four volumes according to the four tones. Its format has

integrated the advantages of both radical and phonetic ordering and it is an

innovation with respect to the traditional format. The characters covered in each

section have become roughly Wxed. The book has over 26,430 entry characters

and more than 163,170 notated characters, 189,610 in total size. Under each

character entry are listed its standard style, folk style, ancient style, contemporary

style, general style, and variant style. Each entry character is phonetically notated

and semantically deWned. The pronunciation is notated in fanqie or directly

notated. The deWnitions are usually very simple. The book has a ‘miscellaneous

section’ (list of characters diYcult to retrieve). It has provided a workable way for

using radical ordering in dealing with diYcult characters. The book has also

collected a large number of folk-style and variant-style characters prior to the

Tang Dynasty, which are important materials for studying the change and

evolution of ancient characters. It is especially valuable for the study of and

research on the scriptures in Dunhuang grottos. Meanwhile, its innovation in

format has also provided direct evidence for studying the format and style of

character dictionary compilation in the Liao Dynasty.

The Character Mirror was written by Li Wenzhong (李文仲) in the Yuan

Dynasty. It has Wve volumes and the characters are arranged according to their

tones and the 206 rhyme sections. The comments on the misuses and errors of

folk style are usually given after the phonetic notation and semantic interpret-

ation. It takes An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters as its standard in

making judgements regarding character spelling, eliminating misprints, and

correcting mistakes in using characters in the past.

In addition to the dictionaries for rectifying the errors in character use, there

are also those specializing in diVerentiating characters from historical works,

such as The ClassiWed Characters of Banma, which was written in 1181with the aim

of collecting and dealing with the ancient and rare characters used in The Records

of the Historian by Sima Qian (司马迁) and The Book of the Han Dynasty by Ban

Gu. The characters are arranged according to their tones. The book covers 1,800

characters in Wve volumes. In 1264, Li Sengbo (李僧伯) revised it and added

1,239 characters, which were attached to the sections they belong to. The diction-

ary is based on co-textual research on the two historical books for diVerentiation

of character meanings and pronunciations. For entry characters in the book, a

great deal of information is provided in relation to sense discrimination and

pronunciation diVerentiation, and there is also a detailed and exhaustive listing

of loan characters and ancient and contemporary character variants. This dic-

tionary is not only useful for reading The Records of the Historian and The Book of


the Han Dynasty but also very important for studying the compilation of special

dictionaries in the Song Dynasty.

The Dictionary of Characters from Classics and Scriptures with Phonetic Dis-

crimination (<群经音辨>) was written by Jia Changchao (贾昌朝, 997–1065) in

the Song Dynasty with a view to phonetic codiWcation. It has seven volumes. The

Wrst Wve volumes are designed to diVerentiate characters ‘similar in formation

but diVerent in pronunciation’, Volume 6 to discriminate character pronunci-

ations in voicing and rhyming, and characters whose pronunciations are con-

fusable, and Volume 7 to deal with the merits and demerits of exegetic

interpretation. It is the Wrst dictionary dealing with the transformation of parts

of speech and character senses in the history of Chinese lexicography, which

identiWes both the change in meaning and the change in part of speech according

to their pronunciations. In a sense, it can also be regarded as the Wrst morpho-

logical dictionary in the history of Chinese character dictionary. Special attention

should be paid to its achievement in using the change in phonetic tones to index

the change in meaning and in part of speech. Zhu Yizun (朱彝尊), a Qing

Dynasty scholar, holds that ‘the dictionary is specialized in phonetic discrimin-

ation, dealing with the characters with the same spelling but diVerent pronun-

ciations. The pronunciations are collected from the classics and the diVerent

dialects nationwide.’ Thus, he ordered Zhang Shijun (张士俊), his disciple, ‘to

print it and let it pass down from generation to generation’.

In the Song Dynasty, there was another dictionary worthy of special mention,

i.e. The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, literally ‘Six Categories’

Interpretation, which was written by Dai Tong. Dai Tong was born in Yongjia,

today’s Zhejiang Province. The dates of his birth and death are unclear. It is also

unclear when the dictionary came to fruition, but according to The General

Interpretation of Six-category Chinese Characters, that book took him thirty years.

The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters explicates the meanings of

characters in the light of the ‘Six Categories’ theory. The main parts of the

book are an introduction, table of contents (including explanatory notes),

general explanations, and the body of the text. ‘General Interpretations’ is an

expatiation on the author’s philological theories. The main body has 33 volumes,

dealing with 7,603 entries. The principles for selecting entry characters are: (a) no

unusual characters, i.e. rarely used characters; (b) no deteriorated character

form, i.e. only the original form of the character; (c) no characters without

citations from the ancient or contemporary books. According to the principle

of ‘things are sorted by their classiWcations and grouped together’, the characters

are classiWed into seven types, namely ‘number, astronomy, geography, human

beings, animals, plants, engineering’, in addition to a ‘miscellaneous’ type. For


those characters whose formations are unidentiWable and their derivatives, he

identiWed 222 characters for them and classiWed them into a separate section and

attached it to the end of the book as an appendix of ‘Questionable Types’.

In The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, none of the entry characters

is used to head the radicals. Instead, the bronze inscription is employed as the

base character. If the inscription does not suYce, then xiaozhuan is employed to

reinforce. Therefore, The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters diVers in

format from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. In the main body,

each character is normally treated in one separate entry. The original character

form is given in Wrst place, then phonetic notation, followed by deWnition. The

phonological system of The Dictionary of Rhymes is adopted for this book and the

mode of phonetic notation is in fanqie, coupled with four tones and direct

notation of homophones. The deWning methods are semantic signposts, analogy,

and direct interpretation, etc. The meanings abstracted from citations are also

employed and glossed as supplementary means for meaning interpretation:于书

传为某某之义 ‘meaning . . . according to the annotation from a certain book’,

说见某下 ‘for annotations, see below a certain character’,义见某下 ‘ for mean-

ing, see below a certain character’, 详见某下 ‘for details, see below a certain

character’,义不待训 ‘for meaning, further interpretation needed’, and义不待释

‘for meaning, further explanation needed’. By these means, the compiler aims to

achieve concision and avoid redundancy. The features of this book are as follows:

It not only concentrates on the original meaning but also points out the extended

meanings and loaned meanings. It contrasts the contemporary with the ancient and

compares the standard with the popular. It lays more emphasis on citations and textual

research, combining the features of notating, researching, and discriminating. It contains

abundant knowledge of ancient culture. Its value also lies in its employment of the

technique of ‘seeking meaning by sounds’ and the method of using bronze inscriptions to

attest the characters.’ (刘斌, Liu Bin, 1988)

Under the inXuence of The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, there

appeared a series of dictionaries named after六书 (Six Categories), such as The

General Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, The Original Exegesis of Six-

category Chinese Characters (<六书本义>), The Overall Exegesis of Six-categoryChinese Characters (<六书总要>), The Origins of Direct Phonetic Notations

of Six-category Chinese Characters (<六书溯原直音>), The Learned Exegesis

of Six-category Chinese Characters (<六书通>), The Standardized Exegesis of

Six-category Chinese Characters (<六书准>), and The Phonological Exegesis

of Six-category Chinese Characters (<六书系韵>). The best-known dictionary

is The General Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, written by Yang Heng


(杨恒) in the Yuan Dynasty. It has twenty volumes and its compilation is

governed by the theory of ‘Six Categories’. It aims to rectify the writing style of

xiaozhuan in accordance with ancient characters, dazhuan, and bronze inscrip-

tions. For each character entry, the ancient character form and dazhuan form are

listed Wrst, followed by the bronze inscription character, and Wnally the xiaozhuan

form. For the categories of pictographic, associative, pictophonetic, and mutually

explanatory characters, it mainly follows The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese

Characters with some amendments and supplements. As to the other two cat-

egories, i.e. self-explanatory and phonetic loaning, they are mainly based on the

research conducted by the compiler himself.

11.5 the academic value andcultural implications

The academic values of Chinese character dictionaries in the period from the Wei

to the Yuan Dynasties are mainly evident in the improvements in dictionary

format and style established in the Han Dynasty. In terms of macrostructure, it is

principally a question of the widely used radical system as the basis for the

arrangement of head characters, and, in terms of microstructure, phonetic

notation becomes more accurate, senses to be deWned are more selective, and

citations are somewhat more standardized. The sociological value of character

dictionaries in this period is evident in the codiWcation and standardization of

Chinese characters and their use. The wide circulation of dictionaries has facili-

tated the process of the standardization of Chinese characters.

The Jade Chapters diVers, to some extent, from An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters in format and style. The 542 sections in The Jade Chapters

basically result from revisions and amendments of the 540 sections in An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, but its deWnition style is quite

diVerent. The head character in The Jade Chapters is in the form of the regular

script, and therefore it does not have to resort to the Six Categories theory in

analysing the form and structure of characters. It focuses on providing exact and

comprehensive deWnitions of the deWned characters. In this sense, The Jade

Chapters surpasses An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters in terms of

practicality and ease of consultation. Its inXuence on dictionaries of later gener-

ations is profound and far-reaching in their megastructural design, in their

format and style, and in their theoretical explorations.


The ClassiWed Chapters is a direct heritage of both An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and The Jade Chapters. It has provided helpful experience for

later dictionary compilation. The nine items its Preface elaborates upon in

relation to dictionary compilation are still thought-provoking for today’s dic-

tionary makers in entry selection and arrangement. It has followed the model set

by An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and The Jade Chapters, giving

great prominence to etymological inquiries, extensive collection of homophones,

homographs, and homonyms, and elaboration of transformation in writing

styles from the ancient to the contemporary forms. Its lexical coverage, however,

is not conWned to that of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and

The Jade Chapters. It has taken in a great number of newly created characters and

archaic characters and is, therefore, commended by Huang Kan as ‘the most

comprehensive character dictionary ever compiled’. Its lexical coverage is exten-

sive, precise, and meticulous. It is a treasure house of Chinese characters, having

preserved valuable reference materials for tracing the development of Chinese

characters. The ClassiWed Chapters provides labels for homophones, homographs,

and homonyms if there are phonetic and semantic variations. It has established

a new system of character arrangement and retrieval – radicals used as the basis

for its macrostructure and rhyme segmentation as supplementary retrieval

means. Where characters have various pronunciations and senses, their phonetic

notations and deWnitions are, as a rule, arranged in the order of their rhyme

segments. The arrangement of all entry characters in the dictionary follows the

order of rhyme segments rigorously, which is unique in the history of Chinese

lexicography.

The contribution of The Four-tone MagniWcent Chapters to Chinese lexico-

graphical studies lies in radical simpliWcation and stroke-based character arrange-

ment. It is a trend in the development of Chinese character dictionaries to reduce

the number of radical sections. It has reduced the number from 542 in The Jade

Chapters to 444. In the same radical section, characters are arranged according to

the number of strokes. Its wide selection of Chinese characters tempted the

compilers of The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi to take serious note of it and

adopt quite a number of entry characters from it, which is solid proof of its great

academic value and its profound impact on later generations of dictionaries.

The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters by Dai Tong was compiled to

contest the phenomenon of ‘name-essence chaos’ in traditional philology and

exegetic studies, with the aim of achieving ‘a name matching its reality’. In The

General Interpretation of Six-category Chinese Characters, he states:


During the decline of the Zhou Dynasty, oYcials were forgetting what they should obey

and the scholars were forgetting what they should learn. To the time when books were

burnt in the Qin Dynasty, the good deeds of former kings had become extinct. From

zhuan script to bafen (a type of oYcial script), and to cursive script and regular script,

errors and falsehoods were widely circulated and passed on. And today, the chaos and

disorder in character use have gone to extremes and the use of names is even worse.

Name, a big thing for ruling; character, a big thing for naming. When characters are in

disorder, the names will be in chaos too; and when the names are in disorder, the realities

are easily distorted; when names are in disorder and realities distorted, the people will be

deluded, orders confused, laws disobeyed, and rites and ceremonies violated. Conse-

quently, the whole of society will be in disorder. If a country is to be well governed, it

should start from name rectiWcation.

In the Preface to The Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters, he also points

out:

The theory of Six Categories is the entrance to learning and the ancestor of all scholars . . . It

is a general interpretation of all the scholarly works. If the theory of Six Categories is

mastered, one can read all the books under the sunwithout the assistance of any explanatory

notes. If it is not grasped and if one possesses erroneous explanatory notes, he could only

expect to be puzzled and lost.

Having recognized the extreme importance of the Six Categories theory, Dai

Tong aims to compile a dictionary to help scholars study the classic works

‘without resorting to explanatory notes’. It is not hard to imagine that The

Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters holds an important position in the

lexicographical history of China. It is a cultural treasure and plays an indis-

pensable part in helping to read ancient literature and in conducting ancient

lexicographical research. Certainly, it has its limitations. For instance, it has

exaggerated the role of the Six Categories theory. For some characters, their

arrangement is problematic. Moreover, there are also some mistakes in its

explanatory notes in the text. But, most deWnitely, the presence of Xaws will

not obscure the splendour of the jade.


12

THE DEVELOPMENT OFCHINESE WORDDICTIONARIES

BETWEEN the Wei and Yuan Dynasties, the Confucian classics and their

studies continued to hold a uniquely signiWcant position in China’s academic

world. Consequently, Chinese dictionary compilation over this period still at-

tached great importance to the exegetic explanations of Confucian classics,

represented by such word dictionaries as The RectiWed Interpretation of Five

Classics, The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics, and The Broad Ready Guide.

Starting from the time of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Buddhism had become

widespread within the Chinese territories, and the exegesis of Buddhist scriptures

turned out to be another focus of dictionary compilation during this period,

represented by Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures and its sequel.


Human history is divided into periods in all civilizations, and each period is

culturally marked and academically led by the mainstream of its human needs.

The evolution of lexicography in the period of the Wei to Yuan Dynasty is

naturally directed and spurred by the mainstream humanity need of the period.

On the one hand, the upper class was chieXy dominated by the Confucian

ideology in classic knowledge, ways of thinking, and religion. The representative

dictionaries of this period are The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics by Kong

Yingda et al. and The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics by Lu Deming. On the

other hand, the lower class was increasingly inXuenced by the gradual eastward

penetration of Buddhism in their everyday life, ways of thinking, and regional

religion. The representative dictionary is Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist

Scriptures by Buddhist monks in the Tang Dynasty.

Since the time of the Han Dynasty, the Confucian School had gradually

assumed the dominant position – enjoying the power of advocating the truth.

And, naturally, the Confucian works became the authoritative classics in the

ideological world of China. These classics were thought to have contained all the

knowledge and thought in the world. The process of interpreting, expounding,

and adding explanatory notes to these classics was thought to be a process of

seeking the ‘meaning’ beyond them. The addition of notes to the classics meant

starting from the analysis of words and characters so as to construe the meaning

of the classics; to preach the classics was to advocate the meaning in them, but it

must start from interpreting the meaning of each name and object that a

character or word designates. For each scholar or oYcial, reading and studying

the classics had become compulsory. For a united empire, there was also a need

for a uniWed interpretation system for classic works. Such a system would be

helpful in integrating the ideology of the people, educating young children in

school, and putting scholarly oYcials to the test. Education played an important

part in laying a sound foundation of knowledge and thought for young people,

and oYcial selection would promote the common knowledge and thought in a

community and ensure that it was oriented in a desirable direction. For the

government, when facing such a situation of confusion and disorder in know-

ledge and thought resulting from the enormous explanatory notes on the classics

accumulated over centuries, a rational decision had to be reached as to the

establishment of a uniWed interpretation system for classic works.

Since the time of Southern and Northern Dynasties, the study of Confucius

and the preaching on Confucianism had become prevalent, which resulted in

various schools and extremely diversiWed interpretations. In the eyes of Lu

Deming, it was a time ‘when minute words have lost their colours and the

great imports have deviated and become absurd. With the intention of attacking

diVerent opinions, some scholars have even come to inventing interpretations’.

He undertook to compile The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics ‘to save the

classics from dying out’ (from the Preface to The Exegetic Interpretation of

Classics). This dictionary was intended for the codiWcation of language and

characters and for the satisfaction of the need to read and interpret the classic

works. In the Tang Dynasty, against the new socio-cultural background, scholars


began to reconsider the textual meanings of the Pre-Qin Dynasty classic works in

order to appreciate the traditional culture contained in them. Dictionaries were

produced to help interpret and understand the Pre-Qin Dynasty classics and to

rectify mistakes in the exegetic interpretations of classics in previous dictionaries,

for instance, The RectiWcation of Classic Interpretations (<刊谬正俗>, eight

volumes) by Yan Shigu of the Tang Dynasty. This dictionary cited extensively

from ancient classic works, aiming to rectify errors in interpreting and under-

standing the words and phrases of the Six Classic Books. Look at the following

example:

渚: The Ready Guide says: ‘a small洲 (islet) is called渚 and a small渚 is called沚.’ They

all refer to small pieces of land on the river that people can live on. In The Book of Songs,

there is ‘鸿飞遵渚’, which means geese Xying over the islets. But in On Destiny (<辨命论>), Liu Xiaobiao (刘孝标) says ‘三闾沉骸湘渚’ (San Lu OYcial, i.e. Qu Yuan,

drowned himself between the islets in the Xiang Jiang River). Note: Qu Yuan went to the

Miluojiang River to drown himself. The water there had to be very deep. It could not be

between the shallow islets.

Buddhism was introduced into China in the Eastern Han Dynasty, as the

Buddhist scriptures were becoming numerous and voluminous. As time passed,

the language of the Buddhist scriptures became more and more diYcult to

comprehend, which was completely out of keeping with the popularization of

Buddhism among the general public. Meanwhile, errors occurred in the copying

and circulation of the scriptures. The situation was adequately described by Liu

Yu (柳豫) as follows:

The Buddhist scriptures are voluminous and the argumentations in them are profound.

They are aZicted with errors and misspellings, and their phonetic notations and seman-

tic interpretations are often rough and neglectful. Days and months are spent in studying

and sorting them. There is some progress, but concerns are inevitable. ReXections on

them often come to nothing. All the scholars of good will would be troubled by them.

(from The Compendium of China’s Buddhist Sutras, <中华大藏经>, Volume 59:510)

Against such a background, dictionaries emerged that were oriented towards

facilitating the understanding and interpretation of the sounds and meanings of

Buddhist scriptures.

In the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, there emerged aca-

demic works on phonetic notation and semantic interpretation of Buddhist

scriptures. For instance, Dao Hui (道慧), a monk of the Northern Qi Dynasty,

compiled Sounds of All the Buddhist Scriptures (<一切经音>). With the intro-

duction and translation of Buddhist scriptures, the Indian and Chinese cultures

development of word dictionaries 207

began to converge and exert inXuence upon each other, which promoted inter-

cultural communication. There were some new words introduced from Bud-

dhism into the Chinese language, such as 因果 (cause and eVect), a free

translation, and 浮屠 (Buddha), a transliteration. These new words call for

special dictionaries of Buddhism and general dictionaries to deal with them.

The Tang Dynasty brought with it general dictionaries for interpretations of

Buddhist scriptures, such as Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures

by Xuan Ying and Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures by Hui Lin.

At the time of the Liao Dynasty, there appeared a sequel to Hui Lin’s Sounds and

Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures – The Extended Sounds and Meanings of All

the Buddhist Scriptures (<续一切经音义>).

12.2 the evolution of lexicographical theories

The theoretical underpinnings of Chinese dictionary making are the semantic

studies of the Chinese language and serious probing into the Chinese lexicon. In

the period from the Wei to the Yuan Dynasties, the focus of the semantic studies

shifted to an investigation into phonetic–semantic relations in the Chinese

language, which is manifested by preliminary explorations from the phonetic

and the lexical semantic perspectives. The most inXuential school of thought is

the ‘right radical theory’.

The ‘right radical theory’ is explained by Shen Kuo (沈括, 1031–1095), a

Northern Song scholar, in The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues as follows:

Wang Shengmei (王圣美) was interested in the study of characters. He developed a

theory that the meaning of a character resides in its right radical. For the ancient

character books, all the focus was on the left radical of the character. For Chinese

characters, the left radical indicates the category it belongs to and the right radical

indicates its semantics. For instance, for all the characters related to wood, their left

radicals are all木 (wood). As to the right radical, let us have a look at戋, which means小

(small, little). When there is little water, it is浅 (shallow); when there is little ‘gold’ (金),

it is 钱 (coin); when there is little badness (歹), it is 残 (defect); and when 贝 (shell,

meaning ‘money’ in ancient Chinese) is small, it is贱 (cheap). For all the characters of

this type, their meanings are related to and based on the right radical戋 (small, little).

The left and right radicals refer to the formal and phonetic components of the

Chinese character respectively. The ‘right radical theory’ diVers from phonetic

interpretation in that phonetic interpretation focuses on the pronunciation but


overlooks the meaning. Moreover, the criteria used in phonetic interpretation are

rather vague. The focus on phonetic components in the ‘right radical theory’ is

motivated by the fact that for pictophonetic characters, phonetic components are

also ‘meaning-embodied’.

In the Song Dynasty, Zhang Shinan (张世南) and Wang Guanguo (王观国)

made similar proposals to the ‘right radical theory’. Zhang Shinan states:

SinceAnExplanatoryDictionary of Chinese Characters, the left radical of a character has been

used as an indication of its category and The Jade Chapters follows suit. It is not known to

them that the right radicals normally also fall into categories. For instance, 戋 means

‘shallow’ and ‘small’. So the water that can be waded through is called 浅 (shallow). The

defects caused by illness are called残 (handicapped); goods that are not expensive are called

贱 (cheap); and types of wood that are light and thin are called 栈 (plank). Let us look at

another instance. 青 (green) has the meaning of essence and brightness. The sun with

nothing to cover it is called晴 (Wne); the cleanliness and clearness of water is called清 (clean

and clear); bright eyes are called睛 (bright eye), and the polished rice is called精 (reWned).

From these two examples we can see the general pattern. (from The Travels of a Tourist

OYcial, <游宦纪闻>, Volume 9)

Wang Guanguo proposed a similar theory, called the ‘proto-character theory’.

He states:

卢 is a kind of proto-character. Adding金 (metal) to it, it is鈩 (furnace); adding火 (Wre)

to it, it is炉 (stove); adding瓦 (tile) to it, it is ‘卢瓦’ (stile); adding目 (eye) to it, it is矑

(eyeball); adding黑 (black) to it, it is黸 (black). When it is necessary to omit some part

of a character, it will be the radical part rather than the proto-character. When the bare

proto-character is used, its meaning is still complete in cases where it is used to substitute

part of the characters sharing the proto-character. Let us see another example.田 (Weld;

farmland) is also a proto-character. It can be used as畋 (Weld) in畋猎 (Weld hunting);

and it can also be used as佃 (till) in佃田 (till the farmland). When there is a need to use

the simpliWed form, 田 can be used instead. This applies generally to other similar

situations. (from The Scholarly Circles, <学林>, Volume 5)

Dai Tong, a Yuan Dynasty linguist, laid special emphasis on exploring the

relations between phonetics and semantics. He proposed that the meaning of a

character should be sought from its pronunciation. He held that the character, its

radical included, comes from its pronunciation. Pronunciation comes Wrst, and

when a form is given a pronunciation a character comes into being. For the

meaning of a pictophonetic character, if it is sought from its pronunciation, it

can be obtained, but if it is sought from its character or its radical, one will be

confused. For 昏 (dizziness), it originally refers to 昏 (dusk, evening) of a day.

The昏 of the mind or eye is analogical to that of the day, and心 (mind) or 目


(eye) needs to be added to it. As for ‘marriage’, it usually takes place at dusk and it

is also called昏 and女 (female) needs to be added to it (from The Exegesis of Six-

category Chinese Characters).

12.3 the development of format and style

Compared with the period of the Han Dynasty, the format and style of word

dictionaries in the period of the Wei to the Yuan Dynasties had the following

features. First, in macrostructure, the entries are arranged according to their

formation and structure and their phonological and semantic systems. Second,

fanqie is usually adopted in phonetic notation and it is relatively more precise.

Third, the focus of deWnition has shifted from the original meaning to the

multiple meanings simultaneously: rational meaning, denotative meaning, social

meaning, aVective meaning, reXective meaning, associative meaning, and the-

matic meaning. Fourth, more attention has been given to etymological investi-

gation. Fifth, as to the controversial deWnitions, diVerent opinions are collected

and presented together, which calls into play ‘sense sorting’ and ‘set explanation’.

Finally, the scope of citation has been expanded. In addition to the classic works

of Confucian and the Taoist schools, quotations are also given from books

concerning history, philosophy, Buddhism, and other sources.

Let us Wrst examine the diVerent ways etymological information is treated by two

lexicographers and show how the organization of an entry has beneWted from

previous lexicographers and what this implies for future lexicographers. Kong

Yingda, in dealingwith sense relations of Chinese words, proposed that ‘themeaning

of a character exists in its pronunciation’ and that ‘a borrowed pronunciation carries

with it its meaning’. He was the predecessor of the Qing Dynasty scholars who

advocated that ‘the meaning of a character can be sought from its pronunciation’.

The principle of the meaning of a character residing in its pronunciation applies to

cognates. Let us have a look at the following example: InMao Heng’s Exegesis of the

Book of Songs, there is ‘韩侯取妻,汾王之甥’. As for the meaning of汾,Mao Heng’s

Exegesis of the Book of Songs interprets it as大 (large). In The RectiWed Interpretation

of Mao’s Book of Songs, Exegetic Interpretation (<释诂>) interprets 坟 as大. Mao

Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs reasons that坟 and汾 are identical in pronun-

ciation and therefore infers that they should share the same meaning of大. In Kong

Yingda’s reasoning,汾 has the same pronunciation as坟. Since坟means大, thus,

the meaning of汾 should also be大.


The principle of borrowed pronunciation carrying its meaning with it applies

to those phonetically loaned characters. Let us have a look at the follow-

ing example: In Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs, there is ‘周公遭变者,

管蔡流言, 辟居东都’. As to the meaning of 辟, The RectiWed Interpretation of

Mao’s Book of Songs has it that in ancient times,避,辟,譬, and僻 were the same.

The others had all borrowed its pronunciation and carried with them its meaning

respectively. Zheng reads辟 as避 according to such an interpretation.

Let us turn to Hui Lin’s interpretation of etymological information. Firstly, he

looks into where the term comes from. Here is an example: In ‘绰袖:上昌若反,下

囚就反’, what does 绰袖 mean? ‘Note: 绰袖 refers to a coat with a large sleeve.

Probably a fad word: when someone with a large sleeve passes by, this will create a

gentle breeze. It is thus called绰袖.’ (from Volume 37:12)

Secondly, he goes back to its source. Look at the following example: For 摩挱

(massage), The Dictionary of Initial Consonants says ‘摩挱, like caressing and

touching’ (from Volume 37: 2). It is evident that摩挱 came into use no later than

the period of the Three Kingdoms.

From the analysis of the format and style of The Exegetic Interpretation of

Classics, we can also see a similar relationship of heritage for its microstructure –

learning from the previous and with implications for the future. The format and

style of The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics concerns three aspects – character

codiWcation, phonetic notation, and sense deWnition. In character codiWcation,

work is done as follows: (a) for apparent erroneous ones, write the correct one

directly, and in the note, use the label ‘. . . 字或作某’ to indicate the erroneous

one; (b) use a character with similar spelling to substitute one with a diVerent

meaning, and they are both taken as correct; (c) for those folk characters that are

already widely accepted in popular use, make no change or comments; (d) for

some variants, notate the proper one; (e) for those ancient-style characters in The

Collection of Characters from Ancient Books (<古文尚书>), notate their contem-

porary counterparts; (f) for those deviational characters resulting from circula-

tion or copying, collate them and identify the proper one. In phonetic notation,

work has been done to the diYcult characters, those with diVerent pronunci-

ations, those phonetically loaned characters, and those confusable characters. In

sense deWnition, part of the tradition from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters has been kept and there are also some innovations by Lu Deming

himself: (a) list the correct deWnition at the Wrst place but still keep the diVerent

interpretations for reference; (b) the data for deWnition come not only from

the masters’ notes to the scriptures and character books compiled from the

Han to the Six Dynasties, but also from the dialects and customs; (c) in

addition to sense deWnition, there are also explanatory notes to grammatical


phenomena. It is certain that quotations from the dialects and explanations

of grammatical phenomena did not fall into the scope of previous word-

books and dictionaries.

What is especially worth noting is the appearance in the period of theWei to the

Yuan Dynasties of a new type of dictionary, such as The Dictionary of Characters

from Classics and Scriptures with Phonetic Discrimination, which, for the Wrst

time in the history of Chinese lexicography, deals with the transformation of

parts of speech and lexical meanings. It was written by Jia Changchao of the Song

Dynasty. This dictionary comprises seven volumes: the Wrst Wve diVerentiate

between characters that are the same in formation but diVerent in pronunciation;

the sixth discriminates character pronunciations – their diVerences in voicing,

rhyming, and characters whose pronunciations are confusable; and the seventh

deals with problems in exegetic interpretation. Generally speaking, the tone

conversion and the change of voicing dealt with in the dictionary fall into four

categories. First, the level tone, the rising tone, and the voiceless tone have

converted to the falling tone, the entering tone, and the voiced tone respectively;

second, the falling tone, the entering tone, and the voiced tone have converted to

the level tone, the rising tone, and the voiceless tone respectively; third, the level

tone, the rising tone, and the voiceless tone have remained unchanged; and

fourth, the falling tone, the entering tone, and the voiced tone have remained

unchanged. All these four categories of change can bring about a change in part of

speech and lexical meaning. The changes fall into 11 patterns:

(a) N! V:*1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 6

there is ‘枕, 藉首木也, 章荏切。首在木曰枕, 章鸠切’. *2 level tone to

rising tone, Category III. 3) entering tone to falling tone, Category IV.

(b) V! N:*1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 2

there is ‘数,计也,色主切。数,计目也,尸故切’.*2 falling tone to level tone,

Category II.

(c) V ! Adj.: *1 rising tone to entering tone, Category I. For instance, in

Volume 2 there is ‘数, 计也, 色主切。数, 屡, 色角切’. *2 falling tone to

level tone, Category II. 3) level tone to rising tone, Category III.

(d) Adj.! V:*1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume

1 there is ‘近, 迩也, 真谨切。近, 附也, 其靳切’. *2 falling tone to level

tone, Category II. 3) falling tone to entering tone, Category IV.

(e) N!Adj.:*1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 1

there is ‘跛,足疾也,波我切。跛, 偏任切,彼义切, <礼>: 立无跛’. *2 fall-

ing tone to level tone, Category II.


(f) Adj. ! N: *1 level tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in

Volume 2 there is ‘敦, 厚也, 都屯切。敦, 器也, 都队切, <礼>: 珠盘玉

敦’. *2 falling tone to level tone, Category II.

(g) Num. ! Partitive nouns: rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For

instance, in Volume 6 there is ‘两, 偶数也, 力奖切。物相偶曰两, 力让

切, <诗>: 葛履五两’.

(h) Intransitive Verb! Transitive Verb: rising tone to falling tone, Category I.

For instance, in Volume 6 there is ‘远,疏也,于阮切,对近之称。疏之曰

远,于眷切, <论语>:敬鬼神而远之’.

(i) Nouns without a change in part of speech but with a change in tone: *1level tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 1 there is

‘牙, 牝齿也, 五加切。牙, 车輮也, 五驾切, <礼>: 牙也者以为固抱也’.

*2 falling tone to level tone, Category II.

(j) Verbs without a change in part of speech but with a change in tone: *1 level

tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, inVolume 1 there is ‘分,别也,府

文切。分,限也,扶问切’.*2 level tone to rising tone, Category III.

(k) Adjectives without a change in part of speech but with a change in tone:

rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 1 there is

‘少, 鲜也,书沼切。少, 稚也,施诏切’.

The above discussions are all concerned with the transformation of parts of

speech and lexical meanings brought about by the change in phonetic tones,

which all belong to the morphological changes of classical Chinese philology. It is

in this sense that The Dictionary of Characters from Classics and Scriptures with

Phonetic Discrimination is regarded as the earliest morphological dictionary in

the history of Chinese lexicography.

12.4 a brief introduction to somerepresentative word dictionaries

The word dictionaries of the ancient Chinese language in the period from theWei

to the Yuan Dynasties fall into two major classes: the interpretation of Confucian

Classics, represented by The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics, The Exegetic

Interpretation of Classics, The Broad Ready Guide, and the interpretation of

Buddhist scriptures represented by Xuan Ying’s and Hui Lin’s Sounds and Mean-

ings of All the Buddhist Scriptures.


The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics was compiled by Kong Yingda, Yan

Shigu, and others in the Tang Dynasty. In the third year of Zhenguan, i.e. 629, Yan

Shigu was recommended by Wei Zheng (魏征) to take charge of the revision of

The Book of the Sui Dynasty. The following year, when he realized the numerous

errors in the classic works resulting from long-time circulation and manual

copying, Emperor Taizong ordered Yan Shigu to collate and rectify The Five

Classics (<五经>). The Confucian scholars were not satisWed with the rectiWed

version of The Five Classics by Yan Shigu and the book met with Werce criticism.

The Emperor ordered Fang Xuanling (房玄龄) and other Confucian scholars to

examine and assess the book. Yan Shigu answered one by one the various

questions and censures he faced. His citations came from a variety of contem-

porary and ancient books and his argumentation was logical and convincing.

Later, when Kong Yingda et al. were ordered to compile The RectiWed Interpret-

ation of Five Classics, Yan Shigu was also invited to participate in the project. The

Five Classics codiWed by Yan Shigu was oYcially issued nationwide. It was used in

the Imperial Examination and scholars read it scrupulously and respectfully. For

centuries it had not met with criticism or opposition. ‘RectiWed interpretation’ in

the title of The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics comes from ‘rectifying the

notes and interpretations identiWed by previous scholars’. The dictionary com-

prises 180 volumes, containing The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Changes

(<周易正义>, fourteen volumes), The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of

Ancient Texts (<尚书正义>, twenty volumes), The RectiWed Interpretation

of Mao’s Book of Songs (forty volumes), The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book

of Rites (<礼记正义>, seventy volumes), and The RectiWed Interpretation of Zuo’s

Spring and Autumn Annals (<春秋左传正义>, thirty-six volumes). In the com-

pilation of The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics, the principle is strictly

observed that ‘emphasis should be Wrst laid upon interpreting and sorting the

text and that the notes given by previous scholars should not be readily dis-

carded’. Where disputes arose, they would be judged against the many notes

added by scholars in the Han and Wei Dynasties. Thus, The RectiWed Interpret-

ation of Five Classics is also a book surveying and summarizing the achievements

accomplished in the period of the Han to Jin (晋) Dynasties.

The characters and their meanings in the Pre-Qin Dynasty classic works under-

went major changes: as for the pronunciation, there were great discrepancies

between the ancient and contemporary and, as for the form of characters, they

were subject to the transitional changes from the zhuan script to the oYcial script.

The use of phonetically loaned characters had also given rise to the abuse of variant

and simpliWed characters. These changes and transformationsmade it very diYcult

for people to read Pre-Qin classic literature. After a survey of various opinions


from 230 diVerent schools and a careful examination of their similarities and

diVerences, Lu Deming compiled The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics. It is an

important work for studying the notes on Pre-Qin Classic works. Lu Deming was

born in Suzhou, today’s Jiangsu Province. He was a Confucian scholar and his

other academic works include The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from the Book

of Changes (<周易文句义疏>, twenty-four volumes), The Exegesis of Lao Zi

(<老子疏>, Wfteen volumes), and The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from

Zhuang Zi (<庄子文句义>, twenty volumes). The compilation of The Exegetic

Interpretation of Classics came to fruition in 583 when he was teaching at the

Imperial College. The book has thirty volumes, the Wrst of which is the Preface

and Contents; the remaining twenty-nine volumes deal with the words and

sentences of fourteen classic works, namely The Book of Changes, The Collection

of Characters from Ancient Books, Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs, The

Rites of the Zhou Dynasty, Etiquette and Rites (<仪礼>), The Book of Rites, Zuo’sSpring and Autumn Annals, Gongyang’s Spring and Autumn Annals (<春秋公羊

传>), Guliang’s Spring and Autumn Annals (<春秋榖梁传>), The Book of FilialVirtues, The Analects of Confucius, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and The Ready Guide. These

classic works are arranged in chronological order and the quotations for inter-

preting meaning and pronunciation are clearly identiWed by their sources. As for

the treatment of words and characters in The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics,

some are phonetically notated only, some are semantically interpreted only, and

some are simply collated without any treatment of pronunciation or meaning.

The earliest exegetic dictionary subsequent to The Ready Guide is The Pocket

Ready Guide by Kong Fu of the Han Dynasty. Its coverage, however, is limited. Of

the Erya (i.e. The Ready Guide) dictionary series, the most important is The

Broad Ready Guide by Zhang Yi of the Three Kingdoms Period. In its title, ‘broad’

means ‘broaden its use’. Zhang Yi left behind no autobiography. According to the

biography of Jiang Shi in The Book of the Wei Dynasty, ‘In early Wei Doctor Zhang

Yi from Qinghe county wrote The Augmented Cangjie Glossary, The Broad Ready

Guide, and The Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary Characters.’ Yan Shigu also

mentioned Zhang Yi in The Style Guide to the Book of the Han Dynasty (<汉书叙例>) when he was commenting on scholars with expertise in explanatory

notes from the time of the Western Han Dynasty. He says that ‘Zhang Yi, known

as Zhi Rang, came from Qinghe, or Hejian according to another source. In the

period of Taihe (ad 227–ad 232) inWei, he was appointed Doctor.’ In his Presenting

the Memorial for The Broad Ready Guide, Zhang Yi spoke highly of The Ready

Guide but, at the same time, he pointed out its defects and shortcomings: its

coverage of exegetic interpretation on characters and its scope of things discussed

are not complete. So he read and collected extensively to embrace what was not


included in The Ready Guide. There were extensive citations from ancient

character glossaries and the notes and commentaries added by Confucian

scholars of the Han Dynasty to classic works. It recorded ‘characters with

identical formations but diVerent meanings, characters whose pronunciations

are lost because of phonetic changes, special expressions from diVerent regions,

and names of common objects which changed over time’. In other words, it made

an eVort to take in what had been left out in The Ready Guide – the exegetic

interpretations that had been left out and newly emerged characters, words, and

phrases. His Memorial for The Broad Ready Guide stated that The Broad Ready

Guide had three volumes and 18,150 characters. Later, in the process of circulation

and copying, it was subdivided into four volumes and then into ten further

volumes, but the number of entry characters was less than that of the original.

The number of semantic categories, represented by chapters, in The Broad Ready

Guide was the same as The Ready Guide, i.e. nineteen categories. The mode of

interpretation and explanation remained the same. The Wrst three categories, i.e.

Interpreting Exegesis, Interpreting Words, and Interpreting Rhetoric, dealt with

general words and expressions. The following sixteen categories dealt with

words of an encyclopedic nature. For each chapter, there were new supplements.

For instance, Interpreting Mountains in The Ready Guide stated that ‘Taishan is

East Mountain, Huashan is West Mountain, Huoshan is South Mountain, Heng-

shan is North Mountain, and Central Summit is Mid Mountain’, whereas in The

Broad Ready Guide the wording was: ‘Daizong is called Taishan, Tianzhu

Huoshan, Huashan Dahua, and Changshan Hengshan’. For the four big moun-

tains, each of their diVerent names was given, which was what The Ready Guide

had failed to do. A note added to ‘Huoshan is South Mountain’ in The Ready

Guide by Guo Pu said ‘that is Tianzhu Mountain, where water comes from’. It is

clear that in the period from the Wei to the Jin (晋) Dynasty, Huoshan had

already been called Tianzhu.

In the Preface to The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide, Wang Niansun, a Qing

Dynasty scholar, commented on The Broad Ready Guide stating that it [The Broad

Ready Guide] had broadly embraced the great masters’ interpretations of The Book

of Changes, The Book of Ancient Texts, The Book of Songs, The Book of Three Rites

Texts, and Three Annals (<三传>, that is Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals,

Gongyang’s Spring and Autumn Annals, Guliang’s Spring and Autumn Annals), the

annotations on The Analects of Confucius, Meng Zi, Hong Lie (<鸿烈>), andStandard Words, the appreciation and explanations of The Songs of Chu and Fu-

poems of the Han Dynasty, the records of divination combined with the mystical

Confucian belief in the Qin andHan Dynasties and the diVerent theories contained

in The Cangjie Primer, The Exegetic Primer, The Pangxi Primer, The Dictionary of


Dialectal Words, and An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. For the

meanings of ancient characters retained from the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties,

it could be used to rectify them and for those lost as a basis to look into them. Its

signiWcance to exegetic interpretation and explanation is enormous. The data

sources of The Broad Ready Guide are so extensive that it has well preserved the

exegetic studies of the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties. It is the most important

exegetic dictionary since The Ready Guide.

The word dictionaries in the Song Dynasty had generally followed the example

of The Ready Guide. The Augmented Ready Guidewas written by Lu Dian between

1078 and 1085. The Extended Ready Guide by Luo Yuan was completed in 1174.

They are mostly amendments to works on The Ready Guide – further additions to

the contents and more detailed interpretations and deWnitions. In the Yuan

Dynasty, the main thematic dictionaries were The Essentials of Augmented

Ready Guide by Niu Zhong and The Phonetic Interpretation of the Extended

Ready Guide (<尔雅翼音释>) by Hong Yanzu (洪焱祖).

埤 in埤雅, the Chinese title for The Augmented Ready Guide, means ‘beneWcial

increase’, so The Augmented Ready Guide aimed to beneWcially augment, amend,

and supplement The Ready Guide. Early in the Southern Dynasty Liu Yao (刘杳),

a Liang scholar, compiled a dictionary called The Augmented Ready Guide (Wve

volumes), and in the Tang Dynasty Liu Bozhuang (刘伯庄) compiled Supple-

ments to the Ready Guide (<续尔雅>, one volume). However, unfortunately,

both of them were lost. The version of The Augmented Ready Guide available at

present was compiled by Lu Dian, a Song Dynasty scholar. Lu Dian was born in

Shanyin in Yue State (today’s Shaoxing County, Zhejiang Province). He was an

oYcial scholar and was known for his expertise in the study of The Book of Rites

and the research in exegetic interpretations of names of objects. He had written

242 volumes of academic works, such as The Proprieties (<礼象>), The Later

Spring and Autumn Annals (<春秋后传>), The Taoshan Collection (<陶山集>),and Talks on Poetry (<诗讲义>), and all of them are lost. The works still available

are The New Meanings of the Ready Guide (<尔雅新义>, twenty volumes) and

The Augmented Ready Guide. The Augmented Ready Guide was originally entitled

The ClassiWcation of Things and Objects (<物性门类>), consisting of InterpretingFishes (thirty entries), Interpreting Beasts (forty-four entries), Interpreting Birds

(sixty entries), Interpreting Creatures (forty entries), Interpreting Horses (Wfteen

entries), Interpreting Woods (thirty-one entries), Interpreting Grasses (sixty-four

entries), and Interpreting Heavens (thirteen entries). The Augmented Ready Guide

had eight chapters and twenty volumes. It deWned not only the Chinese lexicon

but the names of objects as well. It consisted of 297 entries, among which ninety-

Wve were plant names, 189 were animal names, and thirteen were astrological


terms. The dictionary was over 100,000 characters in size and had diVerent

versions in the Song and Ming Dynasties. The features of The Augmented

Ready Guide were as follows: when interpreting the names of objects, it gave

some brief descriptions of their shapes and features, some explanations of the

features, and explorations of their origins. Moreover, quotations were extensively

given from a variety of sources. It provided exegetic interpretations and explan-

ations of both words and expressions and encyclopedic terms, and linguistic

information was usually provided in dealing with the names of objects. It was

slanted towards practical usage and user-centered in solving problems and

confusions. As to the diYcult characters, phonetic notations and brief deWnitions

were usually provided. It manifested a spirit of seeking truth from the facts and

its emphasis was on investigation. It provided valuable lessons for future re-

searchers of exegetic interpretation to learn. Unfortunately, there were some

conjectures cited from The Character Dictionary by Wang Anshi in interpreting

character meanings and far-fetched interpretations could occasionally be

encountered. Another defect is found in its citations whose sources were not

directly labelled, which is inconvenient for users since they have to refer back to

the original sources.

Supplements to the Ready Guide was written by Luo Yuan in the Song Dynasty

and aimed to interpret the names of objects in The Ready Guide, involving the

names of grasses, trees, birds, animals, creatures, and Wshes. It was compiled as

an extension to The Ready Guide, hence the name. It has thirty-two volumes

and 407 entries. The names of objects fall into six categories: grasses, woods,

birds, beasts, creatures, and Wshes. The objects sharing similarities in properties,

functions, or performances are grouped into the same volume.

With regard to the format and style, it diVers slightly from The Ready Guide, with each

character explained in one paragraph as one entry. It describes the object for what it is

and it is done through careful and detailed examination. For the citations, they are

veriWed against their sources before they are Wnally adopted in the book. Its content is

extensive and profound, good enough to explain the doubts away and to answer the

questions fully. (from Essentials of the Well-known Chinese Academic Works: Language

and Characters Volume, <中国学术名著提要•语言文字卷> 1992:167)

Buddhism was introduced into China in the early Eastern Han Dynasty and

was prevalent in the Tang Dynasty. In order to help the believers to study the

scriptures of Buddhism, especially help them to overcome the diYculties in

learning the pronunciations and capturing the meanings of characters, a series

of dictionaries were compiled to phonetically notate the pronunciations of

characters and semantically deWne their senses. There are dictionaries for one


speciWc Buddhist scripture, such as Sounds and Meanings of the Lotus Sutra (<妙法莲华经音义>, eight volumes) by Kui Ji (窥基, also known as大乘基), Sounds

and Meanings of the Avatamsaka Sutra by Hui Yuan (<慧苑>), and Sounds and

Meanings of Maha Parinibbana Sutta (<大般涅槃经音义>, two volumes) by

Yun Gong (云公); there are also dictionaries for a set of scriptures, such as the

two versions of Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures by Xuan Ying

and by Hui Lin respectively, The Extended Sounds and Meanings of All the

Buddhist Scriptures by Xi Lin (希麟), etc. The term 一切经 (all the scriptures,

all the sutras) Wrst came into use in the Sui Dynasty, also known as 大藏经,

referring to all the classic scriptures or the whole canon of Buddhism. The term

音义 refers to ‘notating the sounds of characters and interpreting their meanings’,

that is, by means of extensively citing from ancient character books, rhyme

books, and other classic works to interpret the meaning of characters and notate

their pronunciations.

With regard to the life story of Xuan Ying, mention was made in a postscript to

The Continuation of Biographies of Great Monks (<续高僧传>), which states that

‘Xuan Ying is a monk in a temple in the capital. He has won wide respect for his

accomplishments in philological studies. He is a master of the study of the

phonetic system of Buddhist scriptures.’ In The Records of Internal Classics of the

Tang Dynasty (<大唐内典录>), there is also an account of him, which states that

Xuan Ying, a Master in the Temple of Da Ci’en Temple, was summoned several times by

the Emperor to collect and sort Buddhist scriptures and phonetically notate and seman-

tically interpret characters from them. He cited quotations from various classic works to

support his interpretations. The book can help its users to readily understand the

scriptures. It is a pity that his works stopped at that, without going further.

Xuan Ying Wnished his Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures at the

end of the Zhenguan period during the reign of Emperor Taizong. It consists of

twenty-Wve volumes and the characters treated in the book involve 454 Buddhist

scriptures. In format and style, it follows the example of The Exegetic Interpretation

of Classics by Lu Deming – in each character entry phonetic notation with fanqie is

given in the Wrst place, then its deWnition. The Buddhist names and terms are also

given phonetic notations and comments are given on their translation. The book

has the function of both a Buddhist dictionary and a general-purpose dictionary. Its

defects lie in its lack of a co-referential network for the characters treated, in

frequently encountered unnecessary repetitions, and in the imbalance of the treat-

ment between diVerent characters in notation and interpretation.

With regard to the life story of Hui Lin, there is a relatively detailed record in

the Wfth volume of The Biographies of Great Monks of the Song Dynasty (<宋高僧


传>卷 5). Hui Lin was born in Sule State in the West Territories (today’s Kashi in

Xinjiang Province) and his family name was Pei. He was a disciple of a great

master named Bu Kong in ‘True Word’ Sect. He was a monk of Xi Ming Temple

in Chang’an (today’s Xi’an, Shanxi Province). He ‘inwardly strictly observes the

regulations and outwardly studies the Confucian Classics. He has a profound

knowledge of Indian philology and exegetic studies.’ It is recorded that he started

to write Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures in 788 and Wnished it

in 810 (according to another account it started in 783 and Wnished in 807). It is

also known as <大藏音义>, abbreviated to <慧琳音义> (Hui Lin’s Sounds and

Meanings). It has 100 volumes, covering 31,000 entries and the characters indi-

vidually treated came to 6,000 in total. The words and phrases interpreted and

notated in the book are cited from over 5,700 volumes of the 1,300 diVerent

Buddhist scriptures, with a total of about 600,000 characters in size. In order to

notate and interpret the sound and meaning of the character in Buddhist

scriptures, he has broadly cited from various ancient rhyme dictionaries, such

as The Interpretative Manual of Rhymes (<韵诠>), Rhyme Essentials (<韵英>),and The RectiWcation of Initial Consonants and Vowels (<考声切韵>), and

from various character glossaries and dictionaries, such as An Explanatory Dic-

tionary of Chinese Characters, The Jade Chapters, The Character Forest, The

Orthographical Manual of Characters (<字统>), The RectiWcation of Ancient

and Contemporary Characters (<古今正字>), and Sounds and Meanings of

Kaiyuan Characters. For those characters, words, and phrases which were not

treated in previous rhyme books and character dictionaries, he would cite

extensively from the classic works. Moreover, it recorded the sounds and mean-

ings added by Xuan Ying, Hui Yuan, etc. It is a huge masterpiece of notation

and interpretation of the sounds and meanings of characters in Buddhist scrip-

tures – exhaustively embracing the ancient exegetic interpretations, phonetically

notating the Sanskrit classics – and it is broad in collection and rich in content.

The Extended Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures was compiled

by Xi Lin in the Liao Dynasty. He was a monk in the Congren Temple in the

capital of Yanjing. According to An Introduction to Buddhist Scriptures in China

(<中国佛教史籍概论>) by Chen Yuan (陈垣), this dictionary was Wnished in

987. It consisted of ten volumes and the entry characters were taken from 226

volumes of Buddhist scriptures. For each entry, phonetic notation was given in

the Wrst place, followed by its deWnition. It cited Wrst from the character books

and rhyme books, then from Confucian classics and historical books and other

classic literature. It followed Hui Lin’s Sounds and Meanings in format and style.


12.5 the academic value and influence

The academic value and inXuence of dictionaries over the period from the Wei

to the Yuan Dynasties has gone beyond its function as a reference tool.

The dictionaries have become classic works in themselves. They serve not only as

references for studying and reading classics but also as beacons for researchers of

later generations, and not surprisingly some academic disciplines have come into

being as a result of the study of these dictionaries. Wang Niansun, a Qing Dynasty

scholar, was an expert in exegetic studies. He spent ten years compiling The

RectiWed Broad Ready Guide. He pointed out that ‘‘the present version is based

on a version of The Broad Ready Guide whose size is 16,913 characters. It deletes

ninety-six redundant characters and adds 590 characters previously left out. It now

has 17,326 characters, 824 characters fewer than the number mentioned in the

original version’ (cf: Zhang Yi’s Memorial for The Broad Ready Guide: Appendix).

Verifying against other character books and dictionaries, Wang Niansun collated

Cao Xian’s (曹宪) version. He worked entry by entry and gave detailed reasons and

evidence for his revision. His work involves correcting errors, eliminating redun-

dant characters and adding missing ones, in addition to rearranging those in the

wrong order or misplaced. He rectiWed 580 erroneous characters, added 490

characters that were left out, and deleted thirty-nine redundant characters. He

corrected 123 places of wrong ordering, removed nineteen textual wordings from

among notating wordings, and removed Wfty-seven notating wordings from among

textual wordings. He spared no eVort in keeping the original appearance of the

book. Meanwhile, he cited extensively to expound the content of The Broad Ready

Guide, believing that ‘the essence of exegetic explanation lies in its sound. Thus,

there are characters with the same pronunciation but diVerent spellings and

characters with similar pronunciations but identical meanings. These characters

have been grouped together or separately, but they are linked by a single thread.’

Therefore, ‘ancient meanings should be sought according to their ancient

pronunciations. Analogies should be made and extensions should be taken into

consideration, not being conWned to their formal features and stylistic charac-

teristics’. Greater attention was given to seeking meaning by means of studying its

sound, without being conWned by formal analysis alone. It appears, through the

continuous eVorts of later generations, that the discipline of ‘the Erya Studies’

has won independence from exegetic studies of philological reference books.

Another inXuential work is The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics. It bears

signiWcance not only to the study of the circulation history of ancient classics


but also to linguistic studies in identifying the sound and meaning of characters,

segmenting sentences, and rectifying errors while reading ancient books. The

Exegetic Interpretation of Classics has preserved a number of phonetic notations

of ancient characters and materials of the 8,000 entries of variant and loaned

characters, very valuable for studying Chinese phonetic history. Its preservation

of the pre-Tang Dynasty pronunciations is precious material for studying and

restoring the phonological system in mid and early Ancient Chinese.

It has adopted the phonetic notations from 230 diVerent schools in the Han to Six

Dynasties. It has recorded the exegetic studies of some Confucian scholars and veriWed

them against each exegetic book available. With the help of this dictionary newcomers are

able to have an insight into the ancient meanings. Apart from books of exegetic studies, this

is the only dictionary that scholars can refer to. As a remnant of the past, scholars could

experience what it was originally like. (from The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the

Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature, <四库全书总目提要>)

The sounds and meanings recorded are very useful for studying the changes of

phonetics and rhymes since the Jin (晋) Dynasty, the evolution of ancient lexical

meanings, and the appearance of a character with diVerent pronunciations and

meanings. The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics has preserved a great deal of

linguistic data not available from other sources. It has also rectiWed fourteen

classic works, including The Book of Changes. Thus, it is very important in

classiWcational literature and collative studies. It is the earliest special dictionary

for phonetically notating and semantically interpreting characters from a set of

scriptures and it holds an important position in Chinese lexicographical history.

The two diVerent versions of Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures

by Xuan Ying and Hui Lin respectively relate to interpreting the sounds and the

meanings of the characters of Buddhist scriptures. They are extremely useful for

studying Buddhist scriptures. Having preserved the pronunciations and meanings

of ancient characters, they turn out to be valuable to exegetic studies of ancient

characters. They have also cited widely from various ancient classic sources and

therefore retained what have been lost in other sources, bearing signiWcance to

collative studies. This is especially true of Hui Lin’s Sounds and Meanings, which ‘is

as vast as the sea, embracing numerous streams and therefore profound, and is as

bright as a mirror, reXecting tirelessly the objects in the world’ (from the Preface to

Sounds andMeanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures). It is commented upon by Yang

Shoujing (杨守敬), a contemporary scholar, as follows: ‘It is where philological

studies reside and a diamond in the academic forest’. In The Dictionary of Buddhist

Studies (<佛学大辞典>) by Ding Fubao, many comments are cited from this

book, which shows its wide-ranging and profound inXuence.


13

CLASSIFIEDDICTIONARIES – THE

ENCYCLOPEDICDICTIONARY INANCIENT CHINA

ACCORDING to The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Chinese-English

Edition, 2002), 类书 (classiWed dictionaries) is deWned as ‘reference books

with materials taken from various sources and arranged according to subjects’.

A comparison between classiWed dictionaries and modern encyclopedic diction-

aries will reveal that there is quite a lot in common between the two, in terms

of mega-conWguration, information organization, and interpretation of words

and phrases. Therefore, classiWed dictionaries are treated as one type of encyclo-

pedic dictionary in this chapter.

13.1 the historical background to thebirth of classified dictionaries

In ancient China the classiWed dictionaries were usually supervised by the

government in their compilation. They were compiled to meet both the political

and academic needs of the time. From the political perspective, the large-scale

compilation of classiWed dictionaries in a dynasty serves as a manifestation of its

‘academic success in a peaceful reign’. For instance, the Wrst Emperor in the Tang

Dynasty, Li Yuan (李渊), gave the imperial edict to compile classiWed dictionaries

on a large scale. In the same year when he gave the order to compile The ClassiWed

Collection of Art and Literary Works, he ordered the history of the period prior to

the Tang Dynasty to be written. Some staV members working on The ClassiWed

Collection of Art and Literary Works were also involved in this history book

compilation. Ouyang Xun was summoned to write The History of the Chen

Dynasty (<陈史>), Chen Shuda (陈叔达) and Linghu Defen (令狐德棻) to

write The History of the Zhou Dynasty (<周史>), and Pei Ju (裴矩) to write

The History of the Qi Dynasty (<齐史>). The ClassiWed Collection of Art and

Literary Works was completed within a quite short period of time, while the

history book projects lagged far behind. Another reason why a large number of

classiWed dictionaries had come into being was that some emperors took advan-

tage of compiling classiWed dictionaries to mitigate conXicts within political

groups. For instance, Emperor Zhao Guangyi (赵光义) seized the crown from

his brother. In order to appease the oYcials of the late Emperor, he gave imperial

edicts to compile classiWed dictionaries on a large scale.

From the academic perspective, the compilation of classiWed dictionaries is

principally motivated by academic retrieval, dogmatic guidance, and imperial

examinations. ClassiWed dictionaries are Wrstly used for citation and ready access.

Once, when Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty was preparing to travel in

order to inspect, an oYcial asked him whether he wanted to carry some books

with him in case he might need to consult. The Emperor replied, ‘No need. Yu

Shinan is in our company, and he is a walking dictionary’. At that time the

oYcials serving the Emperor had to be familiar with various books and stories in

order to answer the spontaneous questions from the Emperor. So the oYcials

and servants around him had to be learned scholars with good memory. They

should also have been well armed with reference books so as to reply promptly.

The ‘invisible walking book’ of Yu Shinan is the classiWed dictionary he compiled –

The Beitang Collection of Copied Books. The Emperor himself and othermembers of

the imperial family made use of classiWed dictionaries to get to know the feudal

culture while the feudal oYcials turned to those classiWed dictionaries to familiar-

ize themselves with feudal dogma. Since the time of the Tang Dynasty, imperial

examinations have become the chief way for selecting scholars to Wll government

oYcial positions, and classiWed dictionaries soon became the necessary reference

tools for preparing examinations.

Some feudal scholars also compiled classiWed dictionaries to collect and

accumulate data, to sort what they learned, and to summarize the achievements


of civilization with the purpose of facilitating the task of writing compositions

and taking examinations. In feudal times, the poems and compositions were

usually full of literary quotations and writers had to turn to these classiWed

dictionaries in the course of poetry writing. The Beitang Collection of Copied

Books, The Six Writing Models (<六帖>) by Bai Juyi (白居易), and The ClassiWed

Collection (<类聚>) by Yuan Zhen (元稹), among others, were compiled to serve

such purposes. The classiWed dictionaries compiled by book houses were chieXy

used for consultation and examination preparation. Sometimes, classiWed dic-

tionaries were also compiled for everyday purposes. Understandably, the ultimate

purpose of the classiWed dictionaries by book houses was to make money.

13.2 the emergence of classified dictionaries

The methodology adopted in the compilation of classiWed dictionaries in ancient

China diVers from the principles guiding the compilation of encyclopedias in

modern times. For each entry in a modern encyclopedia, a text is composed,

rather than merely a collection of the original data. ClassiWed dictionaries in

ancient China, however, are reference books in nature, integrating the features of

an encyclopedia and a language corpus. The encyclopedic nature of the classiWed

dictionary was, nevertheless, distinctive when it was initially compiled. Between

220 and 222, Cao Pi (曹丕), the Emperor of the Wei Dynasty, summoned a group

of Confucian scholars to compile a then-completely-new type of dictionary: The

Imperial Survey (<皇览>). It was the prototype of the classiWed dictionary in

ancient China. In format and style, ancient classiWed dictionaries were heavily

inXuenced by The Ready Guide and other works towards the end of the Warring

State Period and adopted the macrostructure of The Ready Guide as its mega-

structural conWguration, i.e. explicitly labelled classiWcations and sections, and

the microstructure of The Lu Survey (<吕览>) as the prototype of its micro-

structure.

In the period from the Sui to the Yuan Dynasties, classiWed dictionaries

developed very quickly and there appeared a series of such dictionaries with

high sophistication and quality. The Pearl Collection (<编珠>) is the earliest

classiWed dictionary presently available. It was compiled byDuGongzhan (杜公瞻)

on the order of Emperor Yangdi of the Sui Dynasty. It originally consisted of

fourteen sections in four volumes, but only Wve sections of the Wrst two volumes

are available today. A statistic from these Wve sections shows its citations from 194

emergence of classified dictionaries 225

books. In The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four

Branches of Literature, it is listed in the top place for classiWed dictionaries. The

Beitang Collection of Copied Books is the earliest classiWed dictionary that is available

today almost in its original shape, consisting of 173 volumes in eighty parts. The

presently available version has 160 volumes, nineteen parts in 851 categories. It is a

collection from the ancient books of literary quotations, words and phrases, and

verse and prose for writing poems and compositions. The books quoted are those

written before the Sui Dynasty. According to statistics, there are about 800 kinds of

books that were quoted from, in addition to those from other sources. Those

sources were mainly written before the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and

approximately eight out of ten are lost today. Thus, this book has a very important

literary value. The Sources of Rhyme Ocean by Yan Zhenqing of the Tang Dynasty is

the earliest classiWed dictionary arranged by rhyme order. In the early TangDynasty,

there existed The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works (100 volumes) by

Ouyang Xun; during the reign of Emperor Taizong there existed The Essentials

of Literature and Thoughts (<文思博要>, 1,200 volumes) by Gao Shilian (高士廉);

during EmpressWu Zetian’s reign there existed The Pearl Collection of Three Religions

(<三教珠英>) by Zhang Changzong (张昌宗); and in Mid and Later Tang

Dynasty there existed Xuanzong’s Collection of Things and Events (<玄宗事类>,130 volumes, also called The Star Collection of Things and Events <明星事类>)and The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners (thirty volumes) by Zhang Yue, Xu Jian,

and others.

The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners was completed in 725. It has 23

sections and 313 subsections. It was commented in The General Catalogue and

Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature that ‘among

the classiWed dictionaries compiled by the Tang Dynasty scholars, it [The

ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners] is next to The ClassiWed Collection of Art

and Literary Works in broadness but superior to it in depth.’ The Bai’s Collection

of Classics, Histories and Events (<白氏经史事类>, thirty volumes) by Bai Juyi

was a classiWed dictionary compiled for private consultation of idioms and

stories. It was not divided into sections, but each volume had its own table of

contents.

There was further development of classiWed dictionaries in the Song and Yuan

Dynasties. The feudal government selected a team of scholars led by Li Fang and

HuMeng to compile two large-scale classiWed dictionaries – The Imperial Records

of the Taiping Reign and The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign. The former was

completed in 978, the third year of the Taiping (literally ‘peaceful’) Xingguo

period. It collected short note-style stories from the Han to the Northern Song

Dynasties. Its sources involve unoYcial history, miscellany, stories, and Buddhist


and Taoist scriptures. It is classiWed into 500 volumes and it is the Wrst general

collection of stories. The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign will be discussed

later in detail. During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong in the Song Dynasty, Wang

Qinruo and Yang Yi began to compile The Historical Records of Cefu (100

volumes). It was Wnished in 1013 and had 10,000,000 characters in size. It brought

together the stories about kings and emperors and their oYcials from remote

times to the Five Dynasties (907–960), including the histories of seventeen

dynasties. In addition, there are also a number of other important classiWed

dictionaries, such as The Jade Sea by Wang Yinglin of the Song Dynasty,

The Miscellanies of Argumentations Concerning ClassiWed Dictionaries by Wang

Mingshou, and The Grand Dictionary of Classics (<经典大典>) by Zhao Shiyan

(赵世延) in the Yuan Dynasty.

There appeared specialized dictionaries in the period from the Sui to Yuan

Dynasties. Between 650 and 655, on the orders of Emperor Gaozong, Li Ji

(李勣) and Yu Zhining (于志宁) began to revise An Annotated Collection of

Materia Medica (<本草经集注>) and renamed it The Yinggongtang Materia

Medica (<英公唐本草>). And later, it was further revised under the editorship

of Su Jing (苏敬) and Zhangsun Wuji (长孙无忌) and renamed again as The

Newly Revised Materia Medica (<新修本草>). It has Wfty-three volumes with

numerous illustrative diagrams. It is a collectively compiled medical dictionary.

In the Tang Dynasty, there were also a number of other medical dictionaries,

such as One Thousand Golden Medical Prescriptions (<千金方>) by Sun Simiao

(孙思邈) and The Waitai Collection of Secret Prescriptions (<外台秘要>) by

Wang Tao (王焘). There was also a special dictionary of family names, that is,

The Yuanhe Dictionary of Family Names (<元和姓纂>) by Lin Bao (林宝) in

the Tang Dynasty.

A number of special dictionaries were also compiled in the Song and Yuan

Dynasties, such as Archaeological Diagrams (<考古图>) by Lu Dalin, and

Xuanhe Collection of Archaeological Artefacts (<宣和博古图>), which was an

oYcial compilation. They were both dictionaries on ancient objects and vessels,

illustrated with excellent pictures. Records of Ancient Coins (<泉志>, Wfteenvolumes) by Hong Zun (洪遵) was a dictionary of ancient coins. It recorded

more than 300 kinds of ancient domestic and foreign coins before the Five

Dynasties. The coins were classiWed into nine types, such as oYcially made

ones, fake ones, knife-form ones, etc. It recorded various opinions and made

detailed textual research on them. The Botanic Compendium (Wfty-eight vol-

umes) by Chen Jingyi in the middle of the thirteenth century was the earliest

botanic dictionary in the world. There also existed in this period some classiWed

dictionaries of other kinds, such as The Language Assistant by Lu Yiwei in the


Yuan Dynasty, and The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes by Yin Shifu at the end of

the Song Dynasty. The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes is an important dictionary

of literary quotations.

13.3 a brief analysis of some importantclassified dictionaries

ClassiWed dictionaries are generally divided into Wve categories. First, in terms of

the nature of the content, they can be divided into general classiWed dictionaries

and special classiWed dictionaries. The former is a collection of all knowledge

concerning nature and human society, such as The Imperial Digest of the Taiping

Reign, whereas the latter is concerned with a speciWc Weld of knowledge, such as

The Historical Records of Cefu, involving only politics and history.

Second, in terms of compilation style, some classiWed dictionaries record events

only, some a combination of recording events and collecting the verses of poems;

some are arranged in rhyming order, some on the basis of diagrams, and others are

an integration of all of the above. The category of event recording is the earliest

form of classiWed dictionary and the most popular one. The Imperial Survey

belongs to this group; The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works is a

combination of event recording and collection of poems; and The Pearl Collection

deals with diction, wording, and useful expressions in the lexicon.

Third, in terms of the method of compilation, some are classiWed according to

the categories that things and events fall into, some according to rhyming

categories, and others are numerically classiWed. The Wrst categorization is the

major type of compilation. Since the time of The Imperial Survey, the majority of

the classiWed dictionaries have fallen into this group.

Fourth, in terms of the organization of the dictionary project, some are

oYcially organized, some privately compiled, and others compiled by book

houses. The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign was oYcially compiled. The

Beitang Collection of Copied Books was compiled by scholars themselves; and The

Broad Records of Things and Events (<事林广记>) was published by book

houses. The last did not come into being until the Southern Song Dynasty

when engraving and printing technology was invented and widely applied and

bookstores were accordingly mushrooming.

Fifth, in terms of the functions and social eVects of the dictionaries, some are

intended for general consultation, such as The ClassiWed Collection of Art and


Literary Works and The Imperial Survey; some are for poetry working, such as The

Extensive Miscellany of Minute Things (<海录碎事>); some are for imperial

examinations, such as The Jade Sea; some are for beginners’ enlightenment,

such as The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners; and others are for everyday

use, such as The Complete Guide to How to Do (<万用正宗不求人>), which is

similar to the encyclopedic dictionary of modern times.

In the Wfth year of Wude in the early Tang Dynasty, i.e. 622, Emperor Gaozhu

ordered Ouyang Xun et al. to compile The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary

Works. As a reference work, it has more in commonwith a comprehensive encyclo-

pedic dictionary – more comprehensive in its content and more speciWc in its

classiWcation. ClassiWed dictionaries are the product of their time and naturally

manifest the values and ideology of the mainstream social classes. The ClassiWed

Collection of Art and Literary Works is no exception and bears the characteristics of

feudal culture in the organization of its content. It has forty-six sections, namely

heaven, year and time, earth, states, shires, mountains, water, omens and incarna-

tions, emperors and kings, queens and princess, crown prince, human beings, rites,

music, positions and oYcials, investiture, politics, criminal law, scribble, military,

armsandweapons, settlements, industries,garmentsandhats,ceremonialornaments,

clothingornaments, ships and carts, food, vessels, craftsmanship, arts of necromancy,

domestic ceremonies, supernatural, Wre, medicine, fragrant smells, herbs, precious

stones, grains, cloth, fruit, woods, birds, beasts, Wshes, worms, auspicious signs,

calamity, etc., which are further classiWed into 727 subsections. For each subsection,

the stories are given at theWrst place, followedby theme-relatedpoems.Theworks are

arranged chronologically; for each story quoted, the title of the source book is given

and for each poem, its time, author, and title are given in the notes and they are

variously labelled according to their styles, such as ‘poem’, ‘fu-poem’, ‘compliments’,

etc. The sources quoted are enormous, amounting to 1,431 kinds, nine out of which

are lost. Unfortunately, there was no rigorous classiWcation criterion established in

that the author never grasped the attributes of things to be described. As a result,

the classiWcation is ‘neither justiWable in deciding whether to deal with it in detail or

in brief nor appropriate in deciding whether to deal with it separately or in combin-

ation’ (from The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four

Branches of Literature). For instance, in the ‘Mountain’ section, no mention was

made of Taishan Mountain and Hengshan Mountain. And papers, writing brushes,

and ink stones weremistakenly categorized into the ‘Scribbles’ section.

As to the style of compilation, The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works

also made some innovations, which is best shown by the principle that ‘the things

and events are classiWed according to the categories they fall into, and, in the

meantime, the poems, comments, and articles quoted from past literature are


listed following each section’, which makes it distinct from previous classiWed

dictionaries and unique in the classiWed dictionary format and style. The paradigm

of classiWed dictionaries has been changed by combining ‘things and events’ with

‘related texts’. Moreover, its use of co-reference is also noticeable in the study of

compilation style.

The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners was compiled by Zhang Yue and Xu Jian

on the orders of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty to help the royal

children to learn literature – to quote literary works and consult the things and

events important in history or literature. It comprises twenty-three sections,

namely heaven, year and time, earth, states and shires, emperors and kings,

inner palaces, crown princes, imperial relations, positions and oYcials, rites,

music, human beings, administration, civil and military, Taoism and Buddhism,

settlements, utensils, dressing and food, precious stones and artefacts (attached

to Xowers and grasses), fruits and woods, animals, birds (attached to Wshes and

insects), which are further classiWed into 313 subsections. Within each subsection,

the order of arrangement is ‘narration’ (叙事), ‘antithesis’ (事对), and ‘poetry

and prose’ (诗文). ‘Narration’ is quoting relevant stories from ancient books so

as to give a general introduction to the subsection; ‘antithesis’ is condensing the

story and quotations into antithetical sentences; and ‘poetry and prose’ are direct

quotations from poems and articles. The materials of The ClassiWed Dictionary for

Beginners are taken from the classic works of diVerent schools of thought

throughout the Pre-Qin Dynasties, the poems and other rhyming articles of

each foregoing dynasty, and the neo-classic works of the early Tang Dynasty. As

to its format and style, it followed the example of The ClassiWed Collection of Art

and Literary Works. It cited widely and organized the citations into a coherent

text. All the materials centre around the title and elaborate on it, which bears

some features of an encyclopedic dictionary but contains richer information.

In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, society became more stable and

peaceful. In 977, i.e. the second year of the Taiping reign, Emperor Taizong ordered

Li Fang to compile The General Digest of the Taiping Reign (<太平总类>). Thebook was Wnished in 983 and the Emperor made it a rule to read three volumes a

day and Wnish the whole book in a year. It was thus granted the imperial title The

Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign and was sometimes shortened to The Imperial

Digest. It was chieXy based on and modelled after The Imperial Survey of Xiuwen

Palace (<修文殿御览>), The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works, The

Essentials of Literature and Thoughts, and various other imperial collections. It has

1,000 volumes and 500million characters in size. The book was classiWed into Wfty-

Wve parts – heaven, time sequence, earth, emperors and kings, chiefs of feudal

princes, imperial relations, states and shires, residences, feudal systems, positions


and oYcials, soldiers, personnel, hermits, relatives of the same clan, rites, music,

culture, study, administration, criminal law, Buddhism, Taoism, ceremonies, dress-

ing badges, dressing utensils, arts of necromancy, diseases, arts and crafts, imple-

ments, sundries, boats and ships, carts, supplies, messengers, minorities, jewellery,

clothing, properties, grains, drinks and food, Wre, truces, punitive expeditions,

gods and ghosts, evil spirits, beasts, birds, Wshes, insects, woods, bamboos, fruits,

vegetables, fragrant grasses, herbal medicine, and Xowers. Each part can be further

divided into several subcategories, and some of these subcategories have some

subsections attached. Altogether there are 5,426 categories (5,474 according to

another version) and attached subsections. Each volume is prefaced with a cata-

logue of classic works and historical books, from which the book cited. According

to the catalogue, the source books total 1,690 (actually 1,989) diVerent kinds. There

are also a great number of poems, fu-poems, didactic literary compositions, etc.,

whose titles have not been listed. According to Ma Nianzu (马念祖), the sources

amount to 2,579 diVerent kinds. The format of The Imperial Digest of the Taiping

Reign follows this pattern: coming after the title of each category is the title of a

book, then comes the original text cited. All of these are arranged chronologically

with no comment from the compiler himself.

Zhao Heng (赵恒), Emperor Zhenzong of the Song Dynasty, also wanted to

compile a massive book to match The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign, which

was compiled during his father’s reign. In 1003, he orderedWang Qinruo, Yang Yi,

and others to start to compile The Stories of Emperors and Their OYcials in

Previous Dynasties (<历代君臣事迹>). It was Wnished in 1013 and the Emperor

wrote a Preface to it and renamed it The Historical Records of Cefu, the body of

which consists of 1,000 volumes, ten volumes of tables of contents, and ten

volumes of sounds and meanings of its terms and expressions. Presently available

are the main body and the table of contents. The volumes covering sounds and

meanings are lost. The currently popular version is the one printed in the Ming

Dynasty. It has thirty-one parts, namely emperors and kings, illegal succession,

usurping, monarchs of various countries, crowned princes, imperial clans, ma-

ternal relatives, prime ministers, generals, central oYce and provincial oYcers,

foreign nations, constitutional oYcials, remonstrance, judicial oYcials, national

history, ritual oYcials, schooling, criminal law, oYcial supervision, royal guard-

ian, oYcial selection, civil examinations, oYcial messengers, domestic ministers,

county magistrate, court oYcials, assistants, general recorders, external oYcials.

For each part, there is a general preface at the front, introducing the history of this

part. The thirty-one parts are further divided into 1,104 sections, and for each

section, there is also a short preface to introduce that section. The Historical

Records of Cefu is a classiWed dictionary on the administrative history and


a large-scale collection of historical data in the light of their categories, recording

the stories about the emperors and their oYcials from Early Ancient Times to the

Five Dynasties and arranged on the basis of a general classiWcation of people and

events. The data are mainly cited from the histories of seventeen dynasties, in

addition to Confucian classics and classics of other schools but excluding novels

and non-oYcial histories. The presently available version is the photocopied one

by Zhong Hua Book Company in 1960.

The Historical Records of Cefu has two major diVerences from The Imperial

Digest of the Taiping Reign in format and style and with respect to other classiWed

dictionaries: Wrstly, the sources from which the data are cited have not been

directly indicated; secondly, they not only cite and record but also ‘express’ – for

each part there is a ‘general preface’ to describe its organization, and for each

section there is a short preface for its content – what they designate. There are

thirty-one ‘general prefaces’, each about 1,000 characters long, but there are

exceptions; for instance, the preface for ‘central oYcials and provincial oYcers’

has 12,000 characters. There are 1,116 ‘short prefaces’, each about one or two

hundred characters in size. These general and short prefaces are excellent com-

positions in themselves.

The Broad Records of Things and Events was a popular classiWed dictionary of

ancient times, being of the nature of an encyclopedic dictionary for everyday use.

It was compiled by Chen Yuanjing (陈元靓) at the end of the Southern Song

Dynasty. It comprised four collections: the Wrst one had thirteen volumes in-

volving sixteen categories, the second thirteen volumes involving nineteen cat-

egories, the third, also called the follow-up collection, ten volumes and ten

categories, and the miscellaneous collection eight volumes and eight categories,

altogether forty-two volumes and Wfty-one categories. It was compiled to meet

everyday needs, thus keeping a large amount of data concerning the everyday life

of the time. For instance, the sixth, seventh, and eighth types in the follow-up

collection were about the arts and literature, recording a variety of methods and

modes of entertainments, involving diVerent games for drinking at banquets,

chess games, ball games, talk shows, and magic. In the judicial type of the fourth

volume of the miscellaneous collection, there were records of diVerent proced-

ures of lawsuits: a military man on beheading, title-granting, and equipment;

a widow without an oVspring on appropriation or remarriage, etc., which give a

picture of the reality of that time. The Broad Records of Things and Events set

a good example for various classiWed dictionaries in ancient times. As to the

macrostructure, it was the Wrst one to provide pictorial illustrations, depicting

the marketplaces and social life of ancient times. In the period of the Tang and

Song Dynasties, there were no pictorial illustrations in the majority of classiWed


dictionaries, and it should be Chen Yuanjing who is accredited with such an

innovation. The Broad Records of Things and Events had a variety of illustrative

diagrams, such as charts, tables, maps, pictures and paintings. For instance, in the

calendar category, there were ‘diagrams of weights and measurements’, ancient

and contemporary ‘lotus water clocks’; in the ritual category, there were ‘learning

genuXection diagrams’; in the agriculture and sericulture category, there were

‘farming and gathering’ diagrams, ‘fair trade’ diagrams, and ‘silk weaving’ dia-

grams; in the schooling category, there were ‘the king’s Wve kinds of learning’

diagram, ‘the king’s practising opening ceremonial music’ diagram, ‘schools of

feudal princes’ diagram; in the literature category, there were ‘River Diagram’ and

‘Luo River Book’ diagram; in the clothing category, there were diagrams of various

caps and hats and diVerent clothes; in the implement category, there were

diagrams of weights and measurements, sacriWcial utensils, cart-making, Xag-

making; in the musical category, there are diagrams of diVerent musical instru-

ments; in the martial arts category, there were diagrams of infantry shooting and

cavalry shooting, etc. These diagrams are quite straightforward and can greatly

increase the readability and interest of the book. The innovations of The Broad

Records of Things and Events in its format and style have been widely adopted by

later dictionaries, such as The Yongle Compendium (<永乐大典>), which was

oYcially compiled in the Ming Dynasty and The Compendium of Ancient and

Contemporary Books (<古今图书集成>), which was oYcially compiled in the

Qing Dynasty, both having given great prominence to the role played by illus-

trative diagrams.

There is one scholar whose name and whose works cannot be neglected in the

discussion of ancient classiWed dictionaries in China. This scholar is Shen Kuo,

known as Cunzhong (存中). He was born in Qiantang (Hangzhou, Zhejiang

Province) and was an outstanding scientist, reformist, diplomat, Wnancier, and

strategist. He was an expert in a variety of disciplines, such as astronomy,

geography, chemistry, biology, temperaments and calendars, music, medicine,

and decrees and regulations. His works include The Everlasting Prosperity Collec-

tion (<长兴集>), The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues, etc. The Mengxi

Collection of Written Dialogues was written in his late years when he lived at

Dream Stream (Mengxi) Garden in Run Zhou (today’s Zhenjiang, Jiangsu

Province). It was a classiWed dictionary of a rather sketchy nature, completed

in 1091. It consisted of twenty-six volumes, in seventeen categories, namely

stories, dialectics, temperaments, astronomical phenomena, human life, admin-

istration, empowerment, arts and literature, calligraphy, crafts, utensils, miracles,

alien things, falsehood, humour, jottings, medicine, etc. In his Introduction to

the book, he stated:


since I retired I have lived a simple life in the woods; I have had the time to recall my

conversations with friends and to jot them down. It seems that I have begun to

understand things deeper and better and in so doing time has passed quickly. With

whom have I conversed? – the writing brushes and the ink stones. That is why it is

entitled ‘written dialogues’.

What had been discussed and reXected upon in The Mengxi Collection of

Written Dialogues was what Shen Kuo observed and thought about while he

travelled extensively around the country and talked with friends. Its content was

exceptionally broad and involved numerous domains – historical events, biog-

raphies, administrative schemes and regulations, examination systems, philoso-

phy, music, painting, calligraphy, involving almost every aspect of social life.

Three-Wfths of its content, however, was ‘on nature and on rigorous science,

containing information, description, and theoretical explorations on engineer-

ing, technology and inventions.’ ‘The excellent dissertation of the author’s

rational inquiry into physical phenomena has increasingly caught the attention

of modern scholars. He was the leading Wgure in the scientiWc world of his

time’ (Hu Daojing, 1981).

The Song Dynasty also saw the birth of the Wrst botanic dictionary in the

history of human civilization – The Botanic Compendium. It was compiled by

Chen Jingyi, a Song Dynasty poet. It extensively collected the names of Xowers,

grasses, and trees, exhaustively collected and attested their relevant data, and

inquired into their sources. The book had two collections, which were further

divided into eight parts and Wfty-eight volumes. The Wrst collection had only one

part – on Xowers, coming to twenty-seven volumes; the second collection had

seven parts, namely fruit, small grasses, grasses, trees, agriculture and sericulture,

vegetables, and medicine, amounting to thirty-one volumes. For each part,

further division was made into classes and there were 400 classes altogether.

Each entry was for one speciWc plant, and each entry consisted of three ‘sources’.

The Wrst source was ‘the factual source’, which was further divided into ‘fragment

records’, ‘summary’, and ‘miscellaneous’, centring around scientiWc knowledge,

stories and legends about the plant. The second was ‘the composing source’,

seventeen types in all, such as prosaic sentences, antithetical couplets, classic

poems, eight lines, four lines, which were all poems. The third was ‘the diction

source’, which listed only verses, sentences, or expressions of a speciWc type of

classic poetry. The book gave about 307 kinds of plants and the data were not later

than the Song Dynasty. The Botanic Compendium boasted remarkable character-

istics in its content and style and came 300 years earlier than the Wrst book on

botanic history in the West.


13.4 the social and academic influence

ClassiWed dictionaries are the repository of knowledge and information. They are

compiled mainly to record and transmit knowledge. As one type of ‘encyclopedic

dictionary’, classiWed dictionaries have the following four aspects of social and

academic values. First, as ‘encyclopedic dictionaries’, classiWed dictionaries have

fulWlled the role of textbooks for the people of the time. To turn new information

into knowledge is the work of the compilers and to popularize the knowledge

into common knowledge for the people is the function of classiWed dictionaries.

Thus, ancient classiWed dictionaries have played key roles in popularizing scien-

tiWc knowledge and culture and in transmitting the civilization of a nation.

Second, ancient classiWed dictionaries have played an important part in

educating the people. While introducing knowledge to the people, classiWed

dictionaries have also introduced the ideology and values of the dominant

class. The general public has been subtly inXuenced when using these books. In

other words, these classiWed dictionaries have functioned as a means of governing

and shaping the thoughts of people and have transformed their way of thinking.

Third, these classiWed dictionaries can be used to collate the ancient books

and literatures that have been lost for reasons unknown. The role of classiWed

dictionaries is closely related to their nature – a categorized accumulation of data.

When they were compiled, the majority of the data had been directly cited from

their original sources with explicit labels. They are mostly reliable in that they are

faithful to the originals though there might be occasional deletions or revisions.

As early as in the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Mai (洪迈) had noticed there

were quite a few ancient books no longer available although fragmentary cit-

ations could be found in The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign.

Fourth, classiWed dictionaries have the function of ‘indexing’ for scholars to

retrieve relevant sources in the course of their research. The data in classiWed

dictionaries are mainly second-hand and they need to be checked against the

original sources. ClassiWed dictionaries collect relevant data under one cover and,

to a large extent, narrow down the scope of information retrieval. Searching via

classiWed dictionaries is much more convenient and eYcient than browsing in

the endless sea of sources. For instance, The Data Corpus of Ancient Chinese

Musical History (<中国古代音乐史料辑要>, 1962) was motivated and initiated

as a result of the study of classiWed dictionaries in the course of a general survey.

The general principle for its compilation lies in taking advantage of the ancient

classiWed dictionaries that have individual parts or volumes on music and


following the threads they oVer for doing further research. When the original

sources are not available, the data from the classiWed dictionaries will be quoted

directly and labelled accordingly. Another instance is The Probe into Ancient

Novels (<古小说钩沉>) by Lu Xun (鲁迅), in which such ancient novels are

mentioned as The Peizi Language Forest (<裴子语林>), which is lost and the

entries on them are almost all taken from The ClassiWed Collection of Art and

Literary Works. The literature quoted by The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign

is enormous and today only about 10% is available. From this book, however,

thousands of books lost from the time of the Qin and Han Dynasties could be

traced. There is every reason to rank The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign

above all the other ancient classiWed dictionaries in China.

The compilation of classiWed dictionaries has greatly facilitated the process of

composing essays and adding notes to books. However, there may be a tendency,

if they are improperly used, to bring out in users the bad habits of learning by

rote without reading the original books and exploring the original sources. The

negative eVects of using classiWed dictionaries can implicitly be found in the

ideology, objectives, training procedures, or assessment criteria of education–or

even going beyond education into other aspects of socio-political life.


14

RHYME DICTIONARIES – ASPECIAL DICTIONARY TYPE

IN ANCIENT CHINA

IN the field of lexicographical studies in China, rhyme books are likely to be

considered book-like in characters, thus overlooking the features they share in

common with language dictionaries. As the investigation into the attributes of

rhyme books goes further, more and more scholars have come to the consensus

that rhyme books, which later develop into rhyme dictionaries, should fall into

the ‘dictionary’ category and be classiWed as one type of special dictionary. The

most representative view of this school is expressed in the deWnition of 韵书

(rhyme dictionaries) in The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (2002): ‘diction-

aries of characters with the same rhymes or with the same pronunciations for

writing literary composition in rhyme, such as The Dictionary of Rhymes, The

Rhyme Dictionary, and The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes, etc.’

Yong Heming (2003), according to the ‘subject domains’, classiWes dictionaries

into two types – ‘general dictionary’ (普通词典) and ‘special dictionary’ (专门

词典). The latter can be further classiWed into ‘specialized dictionary’ (also

‘special-subject dictionary’) and ‘special-aspect dictionary’. ‘Specialized dic-

tionary’ deals with the terms of a speciWc subject Weld, such as agriculture,

law, and medicine. Since the words collected are mainly conWned to a certain

subject Weld specialized dictionaries are classiWed according to the subject Weld

they belong to, such as law dictionary, medicine dictionary, and economics

dictionary. ‘Special-aspect dictionary’ deals with the lexicon or part of

the lexicon of a language, or one aspect or theme of language use. It can be

further classiWed according to the types or aspects of the lexicon or the themes

of language use. From this point of view, rhyme books should be regarded as

one type of special dictionary – the ‘special-aspect dictionary’ in the ‘special

dictionary’ category.

14.1 the historical backgroundto the birth of rhyme dictionaries

The period from the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasties was subject to

great upheavals which lasted for about four centuries. In the Sui and Tang Dynas-

ties China was blessed with reuniWcation and great sense of unity: social stability,

national prosperity, and the order of feudalism being greatly strengthened. In

addition to the further development of exegetic and philological studies, a new

discipline was established – phonology – a major event in the history of linguistic

studies in China. Since that time, phonological studies have been exceptionally

remarkable in traditional linguistic study in China until the early Qing Dynasty.

There are four reasons why phonological studies evolved into an independent

discipline after the period of the Wei and Jin (晋) Dynasties. First, constant

warfare in the period of the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasties brought

about the largest and longest migration of the Chinese population. Meanwhile,

quite a number of ethnic groups conquered the Central Plains in rapid succes-

sion. Consequently, there was a melting pot of people from diVerent nations.

There were more opportunities to communicate in diVerent languages or dia-

lects, and these would inevitably exert inXuence upon each other. As pointed out

by Yan Zhitui, a scholar of the Northern Qi Dynasty, the common language was

‘contaminated by the Wu and Yue dialects from the South and mixed with the

language of Yi State and the language of the Hu people from the North’ (from

The Teachings of the Yan Family). With diVerent languages and dialects, the Wrst

thing that people perceive is a diVerence in phonetics. Such a diVerence stimu-

lates an interest in the study of phonetics.

Second, the period of the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasties was

also a time in which the Han Dynasty Literature transformed into a new type, i.e.

the Tang Dynasty Literature. The literary forms, Ci-poem of Chu State (楚辞)

and Fu-poem of the Han Dynasty (汉赋), evolved Wrstly into Pai Fu (俳赋) and

then into Lu Fu (律赋); the form of prose changed from a half-rhythmical style to

a wholly-rhythmical style, marked by parallelism and magniWcence; and the style


of poetry changed from the ancient style into the Tang Dynasty ‘modern style’. In

a word, the literary works of this period emphasized the beauty of linguistic form,

pursuing the Xamboyance of words and the harmony of prosody. As Shen Yue

(沈约, 441–513) stated:

The dazzling brilliance of the Wve colours and the harmonic Xuency of the eight sounds

are due to the laws and patterns regulating the mixing of colours and the matching of

sounds. Thus, they can Wnally harmonize with the objects in speciWc surroundings. In

order to change the pitch of a sound, e.g. from Gong (宫) to Yu (羽) or from low pitch

to high pitch, or to adjust the mutual restriction of high and low pitches, it must be

observed that, if there is a Xoating sound in the front, then the following one must be a

loud falling tone. Within one bamboo’s clip, the loudness of the sound and the corre-

sponding rhyming should be diVerent; whereas, between two adjacent sentences, the

degree of loudness, i.e. light or heavy, should be totally diVerent. Only when such a tenor

is reached can it be considered gorgeous. (from The Book of the Song Dynasty, <宋书>)

The development of literature promoted the study of language, especially studies

in phonetics and phonology.

Third, as early as in the period of Pre-Qin Dynasty, some knowledge had

already been gained of the analysis of speech sounds and was complete by the

time of the Han Dynasty. As Zhou Zumo stated:

By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, scholars were already good at speech sound

examination and analysis. As to the position of articulation, there is a distinction

between diVerent positions of the tongue in the mouth and diVerent ways of lip

movement; as to the pitches of rhyming, there is discrimination between internal and

external, and between hasty and slow; as to the opening and closing of rhymes, there is a

diVerence between lax and tense, and between lip-rounded and lip-unrounded; as to the

opening and closing of end vowels, there is lip opening and lip closing; as to the length of

tone, there is the diVerence between long and short. The analysis has reached such a

degree of a precision and accuracy and revealed the underlying patterns . . . I once

attempted to discourse on this and I contend that the study of speech sound examination

in China started from as early as the Han Dynasty.

Phonological study in China has evolved from such a basis and progressed

rapidly.

Fourth, from the Wei to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Buddhism

underwent a period of huge growth and development. In the Tang Dynasty

Buddhismwas Xourishing. With the introduction of Buddhism, Chinese scholars

took the opportunity to learn Sanskrit and the phonetics and grammar of

the Indian language. Because of the great diVerences between Sanskrit and

Chinese in their grammars, it was very diYcult for Chinese scholars to adopt

emergence of rhyme dictionaries 239

the methodologies used in studying the grammar of Sanskrit but it was relatively

easier for them to accept and learn from phonological studies. The phonetic

knowledge of the Indian language had a very strong and positive inXuence on the

establishment and development of Chinese phonology.

Chinese phonology started from the invention of fanqie and the discovery of the

four tones of classical Chinese. Fanqie is a method for giving phonetic notation to

Chinese characters in ancient China. It makes use of the pronunciations of two

characters to indicate the pronunciation of a third one. For instance, in The

Dictionary of Rhymes: Rising Level Tone (<广韵·上平声·一东>), the phonetic

notation of the Chinese character东 goes like this:东,德红切. The pronunciation

of东 can be obtained by means of fanqie, that is, through the combined pronun-

ciations of the initial consonant德 and the vowel红. For the Chinese language, the

syllable of a Chinese character can be segmented into two components: the initial

consonant and the coda vowel. In applying the method of fanqie, the pronunciation

of a new character, such as东, is obtained by combining the two components – the

initial consonant of the Wrst known character,德 in this case, and the vowel of the

second known character, 红 in this case. The birth and wide circulation of fanqie

was concomitant with the introduction and development of Buddhism in China,

which is not a sheer coincidence. The Book of the Sui Dynasty states:

From the time of the popularization of Buddhism in the Central Plains in the Eastern

Han Dynasty, we have also seen the introduction of the language of Hu and its writing

system from the Western Regions, which has made it possible to invent a phonetic

system to indicate all the speech sounds by using only fourteen characters. It is very

simple but profoundly signiWcant and it is called the Brahmin writing style. This

writing system is totally diVerent from the eight scripts and the six styles of calligraphy

in ancient China.

It is evident that the Sanskrit letters and their phonetic notations were intro-

duced into China at the same time as Buddhism was introduced. The birth of the

method of fanqie was after the revelation of the phonetic principles of Sanskrit.

The establishment of fanqie bears great signiWcance to the progress and

development of lexicographical culture in China. First, fanqie provided the

most advanced method of the time for phonetic notation. Before its invention,

there were various forms of phonetic notation, but they were all relatively

disadvantageous by comparison with fanqie. Yan Zhitui states:

Only after Zheng Xuan’s adding notes to The Six Classics (<六经>), Gao You’s (高诱)

interpreting The Lu Survey and Huai Nan (<淮南>), Xu Shen’s creating An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and Liu Xi’s writing The Dictionary of Chinese Charac-

ters and Terms, were there established the methods of analogy and phonetic loaning to


attest the characters and their pronunciations. As for the diVerences between ancient and

contemporary languages, and the diVerences in their degree of stress and their possessing

of voicing, there is no way for us to know. As for the labels, such as ‘internal or external

articulation’, ‘hasty or slow articulation’, and ‘read as’, they have caused much confusion.

(from The Teachings of the Yan Family)

Chen Li (陈澧, 1810–1882) states:

In ancient phonetic books, ‘read like . . .’ or ‘pronounced in the same way as . . .’ are often

employed to indicate the pronunciation. But where there is no character found with the

same pronunciation, this method does not work. When a character is found with the same

pronunciation but it is a diYcult character with very low frequency of use, then this

method does not work either. When Sun Shuyan (孙叔言) initiated fanqie, two characters

are used to indicate the pronunciation of a single character. This method is workable in all

conceivable situations. This method has surpassed its predecessors.

The advantages of fanqie made it likely to be employed to provide phonetic

notations for Chinese characters by later lexicographers.

Second, fanqie is an important prerequisite for the birth of rhyme dictionaries

and phonetic alphabets. Yan Zhitui says, ‘Sun Shuyan’s writing Sounds and

Meanings of the Ready Guide (<尔雅音义>) illustrates the Wrst knowledge of

fanqie. Fanqie became very popular in the Wei Dynasty . . . since then, rhyme

books have begun to come out’ (from The Teachings of the Yan Family). As Chen

Li explained:

As to ‘since then, rhyme books have begun to come out’, Sun Shuyan was referring to Li

Deng’s compilation of The Dictionary of Initial Consonants, which was the Wrst rhyme

book in the history of Chinese lexicography. When the method of fanqie was invented, it

was possible to group together characters with the same rhymes, and consequently,

rhyme books came into being.

In other words, a rhyme book can be compiled if the second characters, that is,

characters sharing the same vowel, are grouped together. Similarly, when the Wrst

characters, that is, characters sharing the same initial consonant, are grouped

together, rhyme books of a diVerent type will be compiled. As a further step,

when the characters sharing the same initial consonant are grouped together and

one character is chosen as a representative, the alphabetical system can be

established. Thus, with the establishment of fanqie and the sorting into phonetic

data, Chinese rhyme books (and eventually, phonology) came into use, and this

exercised profound inXuence on the development of linguistics in later periods.

Tone is an important suprasegmental quality in the Chinese language. It was

Zhou Yong (周颙,?–485) and Shen Yue in the Southern and Northern Dynasties


who discovered tones in the Chinese language and identiWed them as having four

scales, i.e. level, rising, falling, and entering. The scaling of the four tones came

about mainly for practical purposes. As stated in The History of the Southern

Dynasty (<南史),

it was a time for writing prose. Some scholars, such as Shen Yue, Xie Tiao (谢脁), and

Wang Rong (王融), are scrupulous with the mood and eVect of characters in diction.

And Zhou Yong is good at recognizing the prosodic features of rhyming. For parallelism

they employ the musical notes, such as Gong and Shang, and further identify four

phonetic tones, i.e. level, rising, falling, and entering. Thus the rhyming system is

established: level head, rising tail, bee waist, and crane knee. In a Wve-character poetic

line, the rhymes of the Wve characters are totally diVerent; in the two lines of an

antithetical couplet, the musical scales of Jue (角) and Zhi (徵) should be diVerent.

And this should be kept constant, without any deletion or addition. This is called

Yongming style (永明体).

In this quotation, Gong, Shang, Jue, and Zhi, though originally referring to

musical notes, are here employed to designate phonetic tones. In other words,

these scholars had already made use of the tones in analysing the patterns of Wve-

character-line poems. As to antithetical couplets, the two lines, which must

match semantically and phonetically, are called the given sentence (出句) and

the corresponding sentence (对句) respectively. For these two lines, if the Wrst

two characters of both lines have ‘level tones’, they will be called ‘level head’; if the

last characters have ‘rising tone’ in both lines, then they will be called ‘rising tail’;

if the third characters in both lines have ‘falling tone’, then they will be called ‘bee

waist’; and if the fourth characters in both lines have ‘entering tone’, then they

will be called ‘crane knee’. As Shen Yue states:

In order to change the pitch of a sound, e.g. from Gong to Yu or from low to high, or

adjust the mutual restriction of high and low pitches, we have to observe that if there is a

Xoating sound in the front, then the following one must be a loud falling tone. Within

one bamboo’s clip, the loudness of the sound and the corresponding rhyming should be

diVerent; whereas, between two adjacent sentences, the degree of loudness, i.e. light or

heavy, should be totally diVerent. Only when such a tenor is reached can it be considered

gorgeous. (from The Book of the Song Dynasty)

Here, ‘Gong’, ‘high’, ‘Xoating sound’, and ‘light’ generally refer to level tones,

whereas ‘Yu’, ‘low’, ‘loud falling’, and ‘heavy’ refer to oblique tones. It is obvious

that the four phonetic tones identiWed by Zhou Yong and Shen Yue are employed

for studying and establishing the patterns of Wve-character-line poems. The

alternation of level and oblique tones in one line and the oppositeness of level

and oblique tones in the two lines in an antithetical couplet have laid the basis for


the principles and patterns of ‘modern style’ poetry in and after the Tang

Dynasty. Moreover, when they are employed in the rhythmical prose style, the

musical beauty of poetic language is greatly enhanced.

The establishment of the four-tone system also has great signiWcance in the

lexicographical history in China. The phonetics of the Chinese language consists of

initial consonants, coda vowels, and tones. Fanqie diVerentiates initial consonants

from coda vowels in the syllable of a character. The identiWcation of the four tones

separates the tones from the syllables and thus the internal structure of Chinese

syllables is revealed. The discovery of phonetic tones in the Chinese language has

made it possible to compile rhyme dictionaries on the basis of phonetic tones as

the framework of the dictionaries. The earliest rhyme dictionaries had already paid

attention to the diVerentiation of phonetic tones. For instance, The Dictionary of

Initial Consonants and The Collection of Rhymes are both arranged according to the

Wve-tone (i.e. Gong, Shang, Jue, Zhi, and Yu) system adopted from musical notes.

The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes is arranged on the basis of the four tones (level,

rising, falling, and entering) for each rhyme section. The mainstream format and

style of rhyme dictionaries in ancient China is best represented by the arrangement

according to diVerent rhyme sections and on the basis of the four-tone system,

which has also made up the theoretical underpinnings for the standardization of

the format and style of dictionary making in China.

14.2 the burgeoning growthof rhyme dictionaries

Rhyme dictionaries were compiled for examining pronunciation and diVeren-

tiating rhymes. The Dictionary of Initial Consonants is the Wrst rhyme dictionary

in China, which distinguished between voicing and voiceless and between Gong

and Yu, as stated below:

Books, such as Three Cang Primer and The Instant Primer, had hardly any discussion of

the writing of sentences and texts; books like An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and The Character Forest focused on the diVerentiation of the formal features

of Chinese characters. The phonetics and rhymes of Chinese characters had long been

confusing and puzzling. Research on either the ancient or contemporary phonetics had

not achieved much success. Only after the compilation of The Dictionary of Initial

Consonants and The Rhyme Dictionary can voicing be identiWed from voiceless and

Gong be diVerentiated from Yu.


Asmentioned in The Book of the Sui Dynasty, The Dictionary of Initial Consonants

originally consisted of ten volumes. According to Characters (<文字>), the secondvolume of The Feng’s Records of Things and Events (<封氏闻见记>), ‘in the Wei

Dynasty there is a scholar called Li Deng, who compiled The Dictionary of Initial

Consonants. It has ten volumes and contains 11,520 characters. It is arranged accord-

ing to the Wve tones without further division into sections’. Possibly, for each tone,

there should be two volumes. Its arrangement diVered from An Explanatory Dic-

tionary of Chinese Characters, which was based on the sections of radicals. Ma

Guohan (马国翰), a Qing Dynasty scholar, collected about 200 quotations of The

Dictionary of Initial Consonants from diVerent sources, which shows it had already

made use of fanqie in phonetic notation and there were deWnitions in the dictionary

(from The Collection of Lost Books in Yuhanshan House, <玉函山房辑佚书>).Subsequent to The Dictionary of Initial Consonants came The Collection of

Rhymes. According to The Book of the Wei Dynasty, ‘Lu Jing, the brother of Lu

Chen, took examples from The Dictionary of Initial Consonants by Li Deng

and compiled The Collection of Rhymes (Wve volumes). Each tone makes up a

volume.’ The Collection of Rhymes and The Dictionary of Initial Consonants

were consistent in format and style. Unfortunately, The Collection of Rhymes

was lost again. According to Yan Zhitui, ‘The Collection of Rhymes has

combined 成, 仍, 宏, and 登 into two rhymes and divided 为, 奇, 益, and

石 into four chapters . . . , which is not reliable’ (from The Teachings of the

Yan Family). In recent decades, three versions of Wang Renyun’s RectiWcation

on the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes (<王仁昀刊谬补缺切韵>) were found.

There were brief notes on the rhyme sections, which pointed out the simi-

larities and diVerences of the previous rhyme dictionaries in the diVerentia-

tion of rhyme sections, such as The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes by Lu Fayan

and The Collection of Rhymes by Lu Jing. For instance, in the second section

of 冬, there is ‘Lu is diVerent from Zhong (钟) and Jiang (江)’; in the sixth

section of 脂, there is ‘Lu is in contradiction with Zhi (之) and Wei (微)’. It is

obvious that The Collection of Rhymes, like many later rhyme dictionaries, had

diVerentiated various rhyme sections. Since The Collection of Rhymes took The

Dictionary of Initial Consonants as its model for compilation, rhyme sections

must have already been classiWed in The Dictionary of Initial Consonants, and

under each tone those rhyme sections must have been diVerentiated from

each other.

Obviously, later rhyme dictionaries were, as a rule, organized according to the

rhyme sections on the basis of the four-tone system, with phonetic notations via

fanqie and deWnitions. These stylistic features were basically present in The

Dictionary of Initial Consonants and The Collection of Rhymes. Eventually, The


Dictionary of Initial Consonants started a new era of compiling special diction-

aries – rhyme dictionaries, and established the format and style for rhyme

dictionaries and other dictionaries to follow.

14.3 a brief analysis of someimportant rhyme dictionaries

Rhyme books originated in the period from the Wei to the Jin Dynasties,

established themselves in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and prospered in the

Song and Yuan Dynasties. Their birth and development were closely related to

social need, cultural development, and political stabilization. Since that period,

the compilation of rhyme dictionaries developed steadily until the period of

the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In this section, we will brieXy introduce some

important early rhyme dictionaries and explore how rhyme dictionaries evolved.

The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes was written by Lu Fayan, a Sui Dynasty

scholar, and it was completed in 601. The original book was lost and today we

can onlyWnd some remnant volumes andpages in revised editions. It is known that

the book consisted of 193 rhymes: Wfty-four rhymes in level tone, Wfty-one rhymes

in rising tone, Wfty-six rhymes in falling tone, and thirty-two rhymes in entering

tone. Its coverage is 11, 558 characters. The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes, following

on from and summarizing the previous achievements in this Weld, is generally

regarded as amilestone in the history of rhyme dictionary compilation. It was very

popular and, after its publication, the rhyme books and dictionaries compiled

during the Six Dynasties began to fade out of the lexicographical scene. Many

rhyme dictionaries compiled in the Tang and Song Dynasties weremodelled on it.

In the Tang Dynasty, Zhangsun Neyan (长孙讷言) and Guo Zhixuan (郭知玄)

started to revise it and the revisionwas Wnished in 677. Then,WangRenxu (王仁煦)

revised it again by augmenting and enlarging its coverage, adding more notes and

renaming it RectiWcation on the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes (<刊谬补缺切韵>).His work was Wnished in 706. Later, Sun Mian initiated a larger-scale revision and

augmentation and changed its name toTheTangDictionary of Rhymes. The revision

was Wnished in 751 but unfortunately it was later lost. In the Song Dynasty, Chen

Pengnian and Qiu Yong, on the orders of Emperor Zhenzong, started to revise it

and it was renamedThe Revised Dictionary of Rhymes of the SongDynasty (<大宋重

修广韵>), shortened to The Dictionary of Rhymes.


As mentioned above, The Dictionary of Rhymes was compiled on the basis of

The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes with extensive revision, adjustment, and

expansion. The motivation behind this was a desire to broaden The Dictionary

of Chinese Rhymes in coverage; it comprised Wve volumes, covering 26, 194

characters with a large number of notes, 191, 692 characters altogether. There

were 206 rhyme sections: Wfty-seven rhymes in level tone, Wfty-Wve rhymes in

rising tone, sixty rhymes in falling tone, and thirty-four rhymes in entering tone.

Among these 206 rhyme sections, 193 were adopted from The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes, two from Wang Renyun’s RectiWcation on the Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes or the Kaiyuan version of The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes, eleven

from the Tianbao version of The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes. The arrangement of

the rhyme sections and their correspondence with the four tones mainly followed

the pattern of The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes by Li Zhou (李舟). Since the

level-tone characters were so numerous, they were divided into two volumes:

twenty-eight rhymes were in the upper-level tone and twenty-nine rhymes were

in the lower-level tone. The other three tones were treated in separate volumes.

In the light of the feature of phonetic similarity meaning semantic similarity,

The Dictionary of Rhymes collected the pictophonetic characters with the same

initial consonants and arranged them in such a way as to help reveal the

adjacency of the spatial relationships of the meanings of pictophonetic charac-

ters. It made the best use of the phonetic sequencing in adopting the comparative

approach to the similarities and diVerences of character meaning, which were

identiWed and diVerentiated on diVerent levels and from diVerent perspectives:

(a) With diVerent objects: For instance, 训 (scold) is deWned as 戒 (forbid).

When it is applied to a man it is 教 (to teach), whereas it will be 训 (to

scold) when it is applied to a woman.

(b) With diVerent focuses: For instance, 讼 is about 狱 (jailing) when one

argues about whether someone is guilty; when it is for money and

property, then it is about讼.

(c) With or without certain attributes: For instance, 虫豸: when it has feet, it

is 虫 and when it has no foot it is 豸.

(d) With diVerent degrees: 疾 means 病. In An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters,病 (disease) is interpreted as疾加 (serious illness).

(e) With diVerent scopes of domain:卒 (die) means终 (to end). In An Explana-

tory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, 薨 is explained as ‘the death of the

monarch member’.

(f) With diVerent sizes of an area (or capacity, volume): for 鼗, the bigger

ones are called 麻 and the smaller ones are called料.


(g) With diVerent dimensions: for衣 (clothes), for covering the upper part of

the body, it is called衣; whereas, for covering the lower part, it is called裳.

(h) With diVerent spatial relations: for离 (to leave), when the target place is

near, it is called离 and when the target place is far away, it is called别.

(i) With diVerences in shape:篚means ‘bamboo vessels’. When it is square it

is called 筐; whereas, when it is round, it is called 篚.

Examined from its macrostructure and microstructure, the phonetic sequencing

in The Dictionary of Rhymes reXected from diVerent dimensions and on diVerent

levels the semantic relations of characters, and the semantic information and

linguistic knowledge embedded in such sequencing were of high density. Such

macrostructural conWguration itself implicated the diVerentiation and interpret-

ation of character meanings. As for its format and style, The Dictionary of Rhymes

normally gave the deWnition of a character in theWrst place, followed by its phonetic

notation. For those characters with the same pronunciation, they are arranged in

one group. If a character has pronunciation variants, they will be notated accord-

ingly. The variant characters are usually attached to the standard character. For each

section, there will be notations like独用 (use independently) or同用 (co-use). For

instance, in the upper-level tone, in the rhyme sections东,鱼,江, and微, there is

the annotation独用; in the section支, there is the annotation脂之同用 (co-used

with脂), and in真, there is the annotation谆臻同用 (co-usedwith谆 or臻).独用

means that the characters in this section should only be used individually. 同用

means that they can be used with the characters in the relevant sections.

The Dictionary of Rhyme has a variety of methods for deWning characters,

Wfteen altogether, according to Zhu Jiansong (朱建颂, Zhu Jiansong, 1988):

(a) Description (描叙): to use reWned words to describe what the character or

word designates through abstraction. For instance,锻 (forge) is deWned as

打铁 (strike iron);赧 is deWned as 惭而面赤 (regret with a red face).

(b) Simulation (摹拟): to capture the feature of an object by imitating its

sound or picturing its shape. It is usually indicated with labels like 声

(sound), 貌 (appearance), 状 (shape). For instance, 嚇 is 笑声 (sound of

laughing); 涵 is水泽多貌 (the appearance of having lots of marshes).

(c) ClassiWcation (归类): to use the generic term to deWne a subcategory. The

labels are名 (name), 类 (genus), and 属 (family). For instance, 蒯: 茅类

(one type of thatch grass); 蚶: 蚌属 (belong to the mussel family).

(d) Alias (别名): to use a diVerent name, i.e. to use the known to introduce

the unknown. For instance, 笏 (sceptre): more widely known as 手板

(hand tablet).


(e) Synonyms (同义): to use a simpler word with the same meaning to help

understand a more diYcult word. For instance,禧:福也 (blessing),吉也

(lucky);仆: 倒也 (fall over).

(f) Reversing exegetic interpretation (反训): to use a collocation of two

opposite characters to explain one of them. For instance, 寒: 寒暑也

(cold and hot weather). 浊:不清也 (not clear).

(g) Conjunctive word (联词): to use multi-syllabic words or phrases to

explain the monosyllabic word or morpheme (character). For instance,

从:从容 (leisureliness).什: 篇什 (verse, poetry), or什物 (sundries)也.

(h) Conjunctive sentences (联句): to use sentences bearing the headword to

explain the monosyllabic word or morpheme (character). For instance,笄

(woman’s large-sized hairpin): 女十有五而笄也 (When a girl is Wfteen,

she will wear a special hairpin.).应 (correspondence): 物相应也 (things

that are in correspondence).

(i) Vulgarism (俗语): to use colloquial material to explain. For instance, 站

(stand):俗言独立 (colloquially means to be independent).

(j) Dialects (方言): to make use of characters with dialectal diVerences in

sound and meaning to explain. For instance,苡:苤苡, in the region to the

east of the River, it is called 虾蟆衣 (frog’s clothes), and in the region to

the east of the Mountain, it is called 牛舌 (bull’s tongue).

(k) Archaic word (古语): to make use of the diVerences in sound and

meaning between contemporary and archaic characters and to explore

through comparison the etymological relationships and trace the path of

evolution. For instance,哥: it was 歌 in ancient times but today it is used

to refer to兄 (brother).

(l) Loan word (异语): for those words borrowed from foreign countries,

explain them from diVerent perspectives, such as sound, meaning, or

even etymology. For instance, 氏: 月氏, 国名 (country name). 阏氏: 匈

奴皇后也 (the queen of the Hun ethic).

(m) Citation (引证): to make use of citations. For instance,空鸟:怪鸟 (bizarre

birds),出 <字统> (from The Orthographical Manual of Characters).载:年

(year),出 <方言> (from The Dictionary of Dialectal Words).

(n) Character decomposition (析字): to analyse and compare the formal

structure or diVerent spellings of characters. For instance, 品: 二口则生

讼, 三口乃能品量 (Two mouths, mouth in Chinese is 口, here referring

to a person, i.e. two persons will give rise to argument and three mouths,

i.e. three people, may guarantee a fair assessment).

(o) Grammar (语法): to point out the grammatical meaning, i.e. parts of

speech, usage, etc. For instance, 只: 专辞 (specifying term). 盖: 又发语

端也 (again, used at the initial position of a sentence).


In 1037, Ding Du, Li Shu, and a number of others were summoned to revise

The Dictionary of Rhymes because its citations were taken mainly from the old

rhyme books and dictionaries of the Tang Dynasty, and its content lacked a

balance in information distribution. The revision was Wnished in 1039 and the

outcome was renamed as The Rhyme Dictionary. It had ten volumes: four

volumes in level tone and each of the other three tones had two volumes. It

covered 53,525 characters, which was 27,331 characters more than in the original

version. The revised version and the original version had the same number of

rhyme sections, but some changes were made to the rhyme section titles and their

order. Some of the characters with the same rhyme were regrouped and the

pronunciations were notated in fanqie according to contemporary pronunci-

ations. The dictionary gave equal attention to the form, sound, and meaning of

the entry character. The principle of coverage for The Rhyme Dictionary was

‘make sure to be broad and brief ’. For each character, diVerent spellings were

collected when there was suYcient data to support it no matter whether it was

standard, archaic, variant, or vulgar style. It contained as many as 22,000 variant

characters. The principles for its rectiWcation were as follows:

(a) For those ancient characters that can be veriWed, ‘some are retained, and

some abandoned’;

(b) The original form of a character is given in the Wrst place and the other

(variant) forms are given in a group;

(c) If a part (or parts) of a character has been mutually exchanged in spelling,

the variant form will be given but with an indicative label such as或书作

某字 (or written in the form of certain characters).

(d) As for the colloquial or vulgar form, there will be direct stylistic glosses

like俗作某 (colloquially as . . . ) or 非是 (not standard, substandard).

The principle of form rectiWcation and arrangement for The Rhyme Dictionary

pushed forward the tradition of formal treatment of characters in An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and established the theory of formal interpret-

ation for large- and medium-size character dictionaries.

The Rhyme Dictionary also modiWed the methods of presenting fanqie in The

Dictionary of Rhymes. In addition to integrating some fanqie expressions, it added

598 more phonetic sounds, which were excluded from The Dictionary of Rhymes,

increasing the total number to 4,473. The number of the upper characters in

fanqie expressions was increased from 452 in The Dictionary of Rhymes to 869 in

The Rhyme Dictionary. The Rhyme Dictionary also put forward two points

concerning the principle of phonetic notation in arranging the rhyme sections:

when there are several readings in the classic works they will be treated together


now in order to end the diVerent sayings, that is, for a character with several

sounds and meanings, they will all be recorded; when a character is treated with

‘overpass’ fanqie, such as 武 being used to substitute 某 and 亡 being used to

substitute 茫, also called 类隔 (diVerential categorization), the characters used

will be the original ones. They indicate substantial progress in understanding the

mechanism of sound change and the patterns of phonetic sounds and appropri-

ate adjustments in equal exhaling and intonation types between the upper fanqie

character and the character to be notated. The Rhyme Dictionary adopted the

traditional style of ‘fanqie Wrst and deWnition second’, which made the phonetic

notation system in a character dictionary more standard and more rigorous.

The Rhyme Dictionary, based on the revised version of The Dictionary of

Rhymes, diVers from it in the following respects (赵诚, Zhao Cheng, 1980):

(a) The Dictionary of Rhymes has Wve volumes while The Rhyme Dictionary

has ten;

(b) The principle of coverage for The Rhyme Dictionary is ‘make sure to be

broad and brief ’. For each character, the diVerent spellings are collected

when there is suYcient record no matter whether it is standard, archaic,

variant, or vulgar style. Thus, the variants of an entry character can go

from two to as many as nine;

(c) In general, the explanatory notes inTheDictionary of Rhymes aremore lengthy

and redundant while The Rhyme Dictionary, as a rule, makes some pruning.

Something needs to be added if the notes are too brief in The Dictionary of

Rhymes. Its notational style is to quote Wrst from An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters, then from other character books and exegetic books as

supplements. Clear indications are given concerning the sources.

(d) The Rhyme Dictionary has the same number of rhymes as The Dictionary

of Rhymes, but discernible diVerences exist in the characters used in rhyme

entries, the order of some of the rhyme sections and the labels for notes

under each rhyme entry (i.e. ‘co-use’, ‘use independently’).

(e) In terms of sound coverage and rhyme classiWcation, The Rhyme Diction-

ary has some modiWcations with respect to The Dictionary of Rhymes.

(f) When a character is pronounced in diVerent ways, The Dictionary of

Rhymes usually gives indicative labels like 又音, whereas The Rhyme

Dictionary gives no such labels.

(g) The Rhyme Dictionary establishes quite a number of new fanqie expres-

sions and revises some adopted from The Dictionary of Rhymes.

As far as the Song Dynasty is concerned, there are two other books worth

mentioning. One is The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes (Wve volumes), compiled


by Qiu Yong et al., especially for those preparing for imperial examinations. The

characters dealt with in that dictionary are extracted from The Dictionary of

Rhymes. The other is The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites

(Wve volumes), compiled by Ding Du et al. for the use of the Ministry of Rites in

regulating imperial examinations. The classiWcation of the rhyme sections and

the style of notational labelling for ‘use independently’ and ‘co-use’ are the same

as in The Rhyme Dictionary. Its coverage is considerably narrowed down to 9,590

characters in common use and the other rarely used ones are deleted. Subse-

quently, a new version of The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of

Rites was compiled by Liu Yuan (刘渊) and was published in 1252.

The dictionary family of The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes includes The Dic-

tionary of Chinese Rhymes, The Dictionary of Rhymes, The Rhyme Dictionary, and

The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites. The rhyme classiWca-

tion in these books kept an increasing distance from the actual situation of

language use, which called for a reform of rhyme dictionaries already in popular

use. As a result, there appeared The Comprehensive Five-sound Rhyme Dictionary

by Han Daozhao, a Jin (金) Dynasty scholar, and The Essential Dictionary of

Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes (thirty volumes) by Xiong Zhong, a Yuan

Dynasty scholar. Both dictionaries were the result of direct reformation on The

Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes. The Comprehensive Five-sound Rhyme Dictionary

regrouped the rhyme sections into 160 and abandoned the format and style of The

Dictionary of Rhymes and The Rhyme Dictionary, but, in each rhyme section, the

characters were arranged in groups according to the thirty-six-alphabet order.

Such a practice took into consideration the initial consonant types. The characters

with the same initial consonant were arranged in an independent order, according

to the diVerences in opening and closing, and, Wnally, labels were given as to their

degrees. The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes had 107

rhyme sections and, for each section, the characters were further arranged accord-

ing to the seven sounds, four degrees, and the thirty-six-alphabet. The classiWca-

tion of rhyme sections and initial consonant types are all based on the actual

situation of language use at that time. Themost representative dictionary that can

reXect the real situation of the phonology of the Chinese language system is The

Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes and this diVers in format and style

from The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes. Firstly, it was compiled according to the

phonological system of the Northern Dialects whereas The Dictionary of Chinese

Rhymes embraces the phonetic system of both the North and the South and both

the ancient and the contemporary; secondly, it totally abandons the format and

style, the classiWcation of rhyme sections, and the four tones and bases itself on the


real situation of the phonology of a dialect in examining its pronunciations and in

identifying its rhymes.

The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes had two major parts. The

Wrst part was a rhyme family (韵谱). It listed 5,866 characters, which were

frequently used as rhyme feet in qu (a type of verse in popular singing during

the Yuan Dynasty) and in ci-poem (a type of classical poetry conforming to a

conventionalized pattern popular in the Song Dynasty) and further classiWed

according to their pronunciations, building up into a rhyme dictionary family.

The 106 rhyme sections were condensed into nineteen according to their use in

the Northern qu in the Yuan Dynasty. According to the real situation of language

use in the North, the rhyme sections of the entering tone were removed. For each

rhyme section, the characters were arranged according to the four tones, namely,

the high-level tone, the rising tone, the falling-rising tone, and the falling tone.

The characters with the entering tone were distributed between the high-level

tone, the falling-rising tone, and the falling tone. This is what is commonly called

‘the level tone dividing into the high-level tone and the rising tone; the entering

tone being distributed between the high-level tone, the falling-rising tone, and

the falling tone’. The nineteen rhyme sections in this dictionary were:东钟,江阳,

支思, 齐微, 鱼模, 皆来, 真文,寒山, 桓欢,先天, 萧豪, 歌戈,家麻,车遮,庚青,

尤侯, 侵寻, 监咸 and 廉纤. In terms of format and style, The Central Plains

Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes diVers essentially from The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes. Fanqie is no longer employed in phonetic notation. Rather,

the characters sharing the same pronunciations are put in one group with a

commonly used character in the front as a signpost, and a circle is employed to

separate these groups. There is no deWnition in The Central Plains Dictionary of

Sounds and Rhymes. The second part entitled Standard Words for Composing Ci-

poems with Examples (<正语作词起例>) speciWes the format and style of the

rhyme family and the principles for examining pronunciations and expounds the

scheme of Northern qu, patterns of sound, language, and the methodologies of

composing qu and ci-poems.

14.4 the social and academic influenceof rhyme dictionaries

Rhyme dictionaries, as one type of special dictionary, were principally used to

guide and help to compose poetry, rhythmic prose, etc. They played an active and


important role in standardizing and facilitating Chinese literary production, but

their role was much neglected both as part of and as a propeller for lexicograph-

ical culture. First, the format and style of rhyme dictionaries in the Wei to Yuan

Dynasties, especially the innovations, formed not only a paradigm for the

compilation of later generations of rhyme dictionaries but also the theoretical

sources and motivation for reforms and innovations in their development.

Second, the steady progress and development of rhyme dictionaries exerted

considerable inXuence on the development of other dictionary types, the selec-

tion, organization, and presentation of various kinds of information in an entry,

and the methodological standardization in phonetic notations. Thirdly, rhyme

dictionaries, like other types of dictionary, were closely related to the historical

promotion of contemporary and future academic activities. For instance, the

rhyme dictionaries of the Wei to Southern and Northern Dynasties are the

products of the inquiry into fanqie and the discovery of the four-tone theory;

the rhyme dictionaries in the Tang and Song Dynasties were the products of the

studies on alphabets and rhyme tables. Moreover, the rhyme dictionaries of

the Wei to Yuan Dynasties served as the initiator for and made great impact

on linguistic inquiries in the Qing Dynasty and even in modern times, involving

methodologies and technologies, research Welds, and data collection.

Let us take two speciWc rhyme dictionaries and look into them in some detail.

The Wrst one is The Dictionary of Rhymes, the Wrst oYcially compiled and the

earliest relatively completely preserved among those presently available. Its social

and academic values are manifold and wide-ranging.

To begin with, it investigated into and sorted the rhyme sections classiWed in

previous rhyme dictionaries. It eventually made the decision to Wrst divide the

rhymes into volumes according to the four tones, and then further divide them

into 206 rhyme sections. It is the most comprehensive in The Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes family and the most representative as well.

Second, it is a Chinese character dictionary by nature, with its macrostructure

set up according to the initial consonants, by the rhymes, and by the tones of

Chinese characters. It identiWed the character variants as archaic ones, colloquial

ones, and those in general use. It is also a dictionary of homophones, listing

characters sharing the same initial consonant, rhyme, and tone in one group.

Third, it is of important referential value to the study of phonetics and rhyme

and to the compilation of rhyme dictionaries. It plays a signiWcant role in

studying the compilation of rhyme dictionaries of later generations and in

studying dialects at diVerent times and in diVerent regions. It preserves valuable

data for studying the phonetic system in the period of the Wei to Song Dynasties,

which also proves important for the investigation into middle ancient phonetics


and rhymes. It can also be used as a frame of reference for studying late ancient

and modern phonetics of the Chinese language. For instance, the following

works, which are all mainly based on the study of The Dictionary of Rhymes,

oVer some clear thoughts for future phonetic research: The VeriWcation of the

Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes (<切韵考>) and Additional Notes on the VeriWca-

tion of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes (<切韵考外篇>) by Chen Li, a Qing

Dynasty scholar,Notes on the RectiWcation of the Jade Chapters and The Dictionary

of Rhymes (<玉篇广韵校刊札记>) by Deng Xianhe (邓显鹤), a Qing Dynasty

scholar, Studies on the Dictionary of Rhymes (<广韵研究>) by Zhang Shilu

(张世禄), a contemporary scholar, andNotes on the RectiWcation of the Dictionary

of Rhymes (<广韵校勘记>) by Zhou Zumo, a contemporary scholar.

Finally, an enormous amount of data is preserved with extremely abundant

citations from The Cangjie Primer, The Augmented Cangjie Glossary, The Broad

Cangjie Primer (<广苍>), The Character Forest, The Character Designator

(<字指>), The Character Models, The Orthographical Manual of Characters, The

Character Garden (<字苑>), The Garden of Variant Characters (<异字苑>), TheClassiWed Characters (<字类>), On Composition (<纂文>), The Exegetic Interpret-ation of New Characters (<新字训解>), The Sounds and Meanings of Characters

(<文字音义>), The Essential Collection of Words (<文字集略>), The Ultimate

Designators of Words (<文字指归>), The Dictionary of Popular Words, The RectiW-

cation of Popular Words (<证俗文>), The Dictionary of Initial Consonants, The

Essential Dictionary of Rhymes, The Sound Family (<音谱>), etc. Those citationshave built up a wealthy treasure house for preserving the materials concerning the

evolution of the Chinese language. The Dictionary of Rhymes is an important

reference book for studying ancient lexicographical history and for reading the

classic works that appeared prior to the Song Dynasty. It is widely regarded as an

important milestone in Chinese lexicographical history.

The second one is The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes, which

was based on the speech sound of the spoken Chinese language in the North

regions and the rhyme systems used in the qu, a type of singing verse popular in

the Yuan Dynasty. It made brave reforms and innovations and abandoned the

tradition of The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes, which had long been followed. It

simpliWed the classiWcation of the rhyme sections and renewed the four-tone

theory, which is an unprecedented feat in the history of rhyme dictionary

compilation. It is the Wrst book based on the sounds and rhymes of the language

spoken in the Northern regions. And it is also the Wrst work whose focus changed

from the study of ancient to that of contemporary phonetics. The book faithfully

reXected the pronunciation system of its time, which is signiWcant for the study

of the formation and development of the standard oYcial language. The book


listed many groups of characters with the same rhymes, which is very helpful for

writing songs, operas, and dramas in rhythmic verse. It can also be used as a

reference book for consulting the feet in rhyme. The phonology reXected in it is

the basis of the phonetic system of the modern Chinese language. It faithfully

recorded and reXected the real situation of the speech sounds used in North

China and is therefore important for the study of both the history of phonology

and the phonetics of Mandarin Chinese in modern times.



p a r t i v

THE REFORM AND

SHAPING OF

LEXICOGRAPHY

IN CHINA

(from the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644to the Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911)


15

AN INSIGHT INTO CHINESELEXICOGRAPHICAL

CULTURE IN THE MING ANDQING DYNASTIES

THE Ming and Qing Dynasties were a special period in China’s social

development, during which China saw great economic prosperity and weak-

ness, political stability and turbulence, and domestic military troubles and

foreign aggressions. During these two dynasties, Chinese lexicography also took

on a new lease of life, having witnessed a surprisingly great variation in the type,

scale, content, function, and compilation levels of dictionaries and an increas-

ingly evident expansion in the social, cultural, and academic inXuence diction-

aries exerted. All this highlights the distinctively conspicuous features of the

evolution in dictionary compilation, research and style.

15.1 the historical background to the reformand shaping of chinese lexicography

Printing in the prosperous period of the Ming DynastyWith the printing of the former dynasties well grounded, the printing industry in

the Ming Dynasty underwent rapid development. Apart from engraving, some

other printing technologies also came into being, likewood type, copper type, lead

type, register printing, biconcave printing, wax printing, copy printing, and photo-

lithograph printing. In the Wanli period (1573–1619), wood type was used for

printing books among vassals, academies of classical learning, bookshops with

printing houses, and individuals. Among the folklores, there was a tradition of

using wood type for printing family trees. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty,

copper type, widely used for printing books in Jiangsu Province, spread to such

places as Jian’an of Fujian Province and Guangzhou of Guangdong Province.

According to the historical records, workshops using lead type for printing books

appeared in Changzhou of Jiangsu Province in the period of Hongzi (1488–1505) of

the Ming Dynasty. Register printing, chromatography to use the shortened form,

refers to the way in which one presswork is printed with diVerent colours on the

same page. In the seventh year of Tianqi (天启, 1627), Shizhuzai’s Chart of Painting

and Calligraphy (<十竹斋书画谱>) was printed by means of chromatography by

Hu Zhengyan (胡正言) and enjoyed a high reputation for printing with Wve

diVerent colours. Biconcave printing is the way inwhich uneven decorative patterns

are pressed and printed on a page with no colour applied after carving. This type

of printing is suitable for drawings without colours. In the seventeenth year of

Chongzhen (崇祯, 1644), Hu Zhengyan, by means of biconcave printing, printed

Shizhuzai’s Chart of Painting and Calligraphy,whichwas exquisite beyond words. In

wax printing, wax is spread on the wood type and cannot be carved or printed

before it cools, dries and becomes hardened. Copy printing is similar to tracing in

black ink over the printed red characters when learning towrite with a brush, with a

piece of transparent paper spread on the Song Dynasty block-printed models and

depicting every stroke, with a view tomaking it look almost the same as the original

one. This was also called Song Dynasty photolithography by later generations. Both

the Xourishing printing industry and the invention of new printing technology

paved theway for the development and spread of dictionaries in theMing andQing

Dynasties and created favourable conditions for the transformation of Chinese

dictionaries from hand-making to machine-making, which marks a signiWcant

innovation in the printing technology of dictionaries.

The oYcial education system in the Ming and Qing DynastiesOYcial education in theMing and Qing Dynasties was divided into two categories:

central and local education. On the central government level, there were the

Imperial College (国子监, approximating to universities and colleges of modern

times, the highest level of education and education administration), the Royal

School (宗学, for children of royal and noble origin) and the National Martial

Arts School (武学). On the provincial level and below, the education bodies

260 reform and shaping of lexicography

included province-owned schools (府学), state-owned schools (州学), prefecture-

owned schools (县学), Siru schools (司儒学), Xingdu Siru schools (行都司儒学),

Weiru Schools (卫儒学), Duzhuanyun Siru schools (都转运司儒学), Xuanwei

Siru schools (宣慰司儒学), and Anfu Siru schools (按抚司儒学), which all fell

into the category of the third-level education, approximating to middle and high

schools. In addition, there weremedical schools (医学),martial arts schools (武学),

and Yin Yang (Astronomy) schools (阴阳学), which undertook vocational educa-

tion, the secondary level of education, and community schools (社学), which

approximated to primary schools.

The oYcial education in the Ming Dynasty can be described in the following

way. First, the Imperial College, as the top national education body, underwent a

period of somewhat faster development than before, lessening its restrictions on

the qualiWcations for enrolment. Second, the local oYcial education experienced

unprecedented development. Third, the primary school system was becoming

more and more specialized and professionally mature. And Wnally, a complete

education system on both central and local levels was established. The oYcial

education system in the Qing Dynasty was basically the same as that of the Ming

Dynasty and also categorized into central and local levels. The central oYcial

education was mainly represented by the Imperial College. Moreover, there were

also the Jueluo school (觉罗学), Baqi (Eight Banners) oYcial school (八旗官学),

Jingshan oYcial school (景山官学), Xian’angong oYcial school (咸安宫官学),

arithmetic school (算学), and the Russian school (俄罗斯文馆). On the local

level, there were the province-owned school, state-owned school, prefecture-

owned schools, and the Wei school (卫学, also called the Confucian school).

Apart from the above, there were also the community schools, Yi school (义学),

and Jing school (井学), etc. The oYcial education of the Qing Dynasty, during its

long development, also had its own characteristics. Close attentionwas paid to the

education of children of Baqi (the Eight Banners) and Qi (Banner) schools of

various types were set up. A six-rank education system for evaluationwas adopted

for schools on provincial, state, and prefectural levels in order to have a dynamic

administration of students so as to associate their upgrading and degrading closely

with their academic performance. The system of oYcial education in the Ming

and Qing Dynasties functioned as a political safeguard for the normalized admin-

istration of education and intensiWcation of the role of education. The develop-

ment and popularization of education created social needs for dictionaries.

Academies of classical learning in the Ming and Qing DynastiesThe academies of classical learning in the Ming Dynasty started to thrive from

the period of Zhengde (正德, 1506–1521) and prospered in the period of Jiajing

lexicographical culture from ming to qing 261

(嘉靖, 1522–1566). There were several justiWcations for the Xourishing academies

of classical learning after the middle of the Ming Dynasty. First, the eunuchs

held all the court powers, which caused the scholar-oYcials to lose their power

to give lectures and lampoon the court administration and other persons

concerned. Second, oYcial education had become a vassal to the imperial

examinations. As a result, many learning-oriented scholar-oYcials set up a

selection of academies of classical learning to impart knowledge to their students.

Third, the advocating of famous scholars such as Zhan Ruoshui (湛若水) and

Wang Shouren (王守仁), was directly responsible for the rapid development of

academies of classical learning. Donglin Academy, among all the academies of the

Ming Dynasty, enjoyed the highest reputation and exerted the most profound

inXuence on the nation. Donglin Academy possessed a unique position in the

history of ancient Chinese academies, for it worked both as a signiWcant centre

for academic studies and as a centre for political activities. The academies in the

Qing Dynasty, based on the content of lectures oVered, were categorized into

four types, focusing on: Neo-Confucianism; stereotyped writing (eight-part

essays); practical technologies; or ancient classical studies. Among the four

types, the second was the most popular, while the fourth, though few in number,

had deeper inXuence on academic studies and stimulated the development of

academic thought in the Qing Dynasty. As far as the fourth is concerned, the

Exegetic Academy (诂经精舍) and the Xuehai Academy (学海堂) were the best-

known to people at that time. The academies of classical learning in the Ming

and Qing Dynasties created the academic atmosphere for dictionary compilation

and research.

The organization of book collections in the Ming and Qing DynastiesAs of the middle of the Ming Dynasty, private collections of books had become a

fashion. The most famous bibliophiles were Fan Qin (范钦), the owner of Tianyi

Library (天一阁) in Zhejiang Province and Mao Jin (毛晋), the owner of Jigu

Library (汲古阁) in Jiangsu Province. Bibliophiles of theMing Dynasty produced

catalogues of collected books and their selections for recommended use, printed

books from their selections, and wrote books while preparing collections.Many of

the bibliophiles were themselves writers and compliers. The bibliophiles of the

Ming Dynasty played a signiWcant part in conserving ancient Chinese books,

particularly rare books. Nevertheless, private book collections might give rise to

themonopolization and loss of books. The institutions for book collection located

in the capital citywere generally called ‘CourtCollectionofBooks’ (内廷藏书), the

biggest ofwhichwas theWenyuanLibrary (文渊阁). All the oYcialsworking in the


Wenyuan Library were chosen from among those who had passed imperial exam-

inations, particularly those who had served as oYcials in the Imperial Academy.

Those institutions of high reputation outside the capital were theWenhui Library

in Yangzhou, the Wenzhong Library in Zhengjiang, and the Wenlan Library in

Hangzhou, which were known as the ‘Three Libraries outside the Capital City’.

Moreover, there were places for both preserving Wles and collecting books, such as

The Library of General Strategies (方略馆), The Library of Imperial History

(皇史宬) and The Universal Library of the Cabinet (内阁大库). The Library of

General Strategieswas in the chargeof theMinistryofMilitary andPoliticalAVairs.

The Library of Imperial History specialized in collecting records of the former

dynasties, oYcial documents of emperors, and prescripts and other information

from emperors, while The Universal Library of the Cabinet collected ‘red books’

(红本) and ‘honest records’ (实录) in thebeginningyearsof theQingDynasty. ‘Red

books’ refer tomemorials to the throne, whichwere read through and commented

on by the Emperor using redwriting brushes. ‘Honest records’ are the books on the

histories of former emperors. The organizations for book collection in the Ming

andQingDynasties provided precious literature andmaterials for the compilation

and study of dictionaries of the time.

The reform of the educational system in the Qing DynastyOriginating from the Western learning (西学) movement, the reform of the

educational system in the Qing Dynasty created new-model schools, translated

Western books, and sent students overseas for further education. The schools of

foreign studies were quite diVerent from the traditional educational bodies such as

the oYcial institutions, academies of classical learning, and old-style private

schools. The educational goal of the latter was to cultivate specialists in foreign

aVairs, whichwas diVerent from that of preparing people for imperial examinations

and to be government oYcials. The content of teaching mainly focused onWestern

culture and technologies and the courses were closely combined with practical

work, very diVerent from focusing on classical learning and eight-part essay writing.

Regarding the teaching methodology, the content was arranged step by step in

conformity with the regular patterns of learning. Students’ understanding was

emphasized while memorizing by rote was discarded. The widely-adopted teaching

frameworks included the school-year system and the class teaching format, which

overcame the limitations of individual teaching and diVerent teaching arrange-

ments. In Western learning movements, Zhang Zhidong (张之洞) proposed the

guiding principle of ‘keeping Chinese learning as the fundamental basis and

Western learning for practical use’, which greatly boosted the diVusion of Western


culture and technology in China. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the system of the

Imperial Examinations, which lasted for more than a thousand years, was Wnally

abolished and at the same time new-model schools were founded. Modern intel-

lectuals represented by teachers and students of new-model schools and students

back from abroad, on the one hand, promoted the revolutionary thought of

overthrowing the Qing Dynasty, and, on the other, made preparation for the later

New Culture Movement. The reform of educational systems, regulations, and

concepts in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, to a great degree, paved the way for the

diVusion of advanced science and culture, and prepared social and cultural motiv-

ations for the development of dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

15.2 the academic background to the reform andshaping of chinese lexicography

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Liu Ji (刘基), who had rendered

outstanding service in founding the state, took an active and direct part in drawing

up the system of imperial examinations, which revived Neo-Confucianism and

consolidated the dominating position of Zhu Xi thought. Apart from the Four

Books and the Five Classics prescribed as the scope of examinations, the variorum

edition of the Four Books completed byZhuXiwas designated as the authoritative

reference. Since the promulgation of A Complete Collection of the Four Books

(<四书大全>), A Complete Collection of the Five Classics (<五经大全>), andAComplete Collection of Philosophical Essays (<性理大全>) revised by the oYcial

scholars, the academic spirit came to be guided by the ideas of ZhuXi thought, and

the oYcial Confucian study moved from the age of the study of Confucian classics

to that of Neo-Confucianism.

The fundamental reform of the academy and Neo-Confucianism in the Ming

Dynasty owed a lot to Wang Yangming (王阳明). As Zhu Xi thought became ever

more ossiWed, the theory founded by Wang Yangming, also known as the

Yangming Theory, appeared as typical of a pagan school. Yangming Theory

could be summarized as a theory of conscience. Conscience, as the theoretic

basis of the ontology of mind, was manifold, such as truth and falsehood, right

and wrong, good and evil, as well as ‘mind-retarded’. There were a variety of

reasons why the Yangming Theory had become widespread, the most essential

being the social needs of the time. Wang Yangming, for the Wrst time, settled the

confusion between ‘learning from the facts’ and ‘learning from the books’, which


helped scholars free themselves from the shackles of books. Second, he trans-

formed the realm of the sages from being both sacred inside and royal outside

into the realm of being sacred only, which greatly promoted scholars’ self-

conWdence. Furthermore, the rising of the folklore’s ideology brought the entire

world of thought and academy to developing an inclination towards novelty,

uniqueness, and transformation, providing the psychological basis for the diVu-

sion of Yangming Theory.

The other driving force for academy in the Ming Dynasty came from practical

learning. The social crises, from the time of the mid-Ming Dynasty, tended to get

worse and worse, so the scholar oYcials, for the purpose of riding out such crises,

devoted their attention to those concrete aVairs and technologies which prepared

externally for practical learning. However, the inherent causes propelling practical

learning lay in the following. First, from the inner part of Neo-Confucianism

arose the idea that opposed those unpractical theories and endeavoured to

transform Neo-Confucianism so as to make it practical. Luo Qinshun (罗钦顺)

and Wang Tingxiang (王廷相) were the earliest advocates of practical learning.

Second, the introduced Western technologies served as the frame of reference for

the development of practical learning in that Western learning Wrst brought to

China by Western missionaries provided a brand-new thinking mode and some

advanced technologies that were beneWcial to China at the time. As a matter of

fact, with the development of such practical aVairs as revising the calendar and

resisting the Later Jin Dynasty, the new mood of studying natural sciences was

sanctioned by the court and was becoming popularized. The representatives were

Xu Guangqi (徐光启, 1562–1633), Li Zhizao (李之藻), Wang Zheng (王征), and

Fang Yizhi. Thirdly, there were other scholars who, on the one hand, inherited

previous achievements, and, on the other, made new accomplishments in sum-

marizing and integrating previous attainments. Li Shizhen (李时珍, 1518–1593),

Song Yingxing (宋应星, 1587–1662), and Xu Xiake (徐霞客, 1586–1641), for

instance, made remarkable contributions to medical science, geology, and geog-

raphy respectively.

In the transition from the Ming to the Qing Dynasty, political conXicts were so

Werce and intricate that scholars’ minds were heavily aVected by them. Under

such circumstances, Neo-Confucianism, as a hugely important heritage, experi-

enced inXuences from numerous sources. Thereupon, Neo-Confucianism as

a trend in practical learning became divided into three schools, namely the

Innovative School (理学创新派), the Orthodox School (理学正统派), and the

Decadent School (理学末流派). Gu Yanwu (顾炎武, 1613–1682), Huang Zongxi

(黄宗羲), and Wang Fuzhi (王夫之), the representatives of the Innovation

School, infused the steady and conservative Neo-Confucianism with the spirit


of practice and paid suYcient attention to new research in social customs, the

vicissitudes of systems and pursuit of practical beneWts, which improved

the appearance of Neo-Confucianism from the time of the mid-Ming Dynasty.

The Decadent School was characterized by such demerits as being limited to

books only, devoting their whole life to those classical readings and taking books

as their only guiding doctrine. Another demerit of the Decadent School consisted

in indulging in empty talk on temperament and contemplation with no action.

The representatives of the Orthodox School were Sun Qifeng (孙奇逢), Lu Shiyi

(陆世仪), Zhang Luxiang (张履祥), Li Yong (李颙), and so on. Actively involved

with Neo-Confucianism, they considered its revival as their own responsibility

and made rigid demands on themselves. Moreover, they had the courage to

develop Neo-Confucianism in the course of adoption rather than innovation

in the course of animadversion, improving themselves and society by bringing

beneWt to the people. It follows from the above comparison that the Innovation

School was the most vigorous in that it impregnated the traditional Confucian-

ism with strong energy and smoothed the way for traditional culture to be

transferred from the ancient period to modern times. The Orthodox School

enjoyed the utmost power and highest reputation, for it was the main school

that not only summarized and reconstructed traditional Confucianism but also

played a predominant part in adjusting Neo-Confucianism to the oYcial stand-

ards at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. The Decadent School, discarded due

to the trends of a new era, however, deteriorated into a target for criticism from

the other two schools and came to an end.

In the early years of Qianlong (乾隆), the Qing Dynasty, founded upon almost

one hundred years of social progression of Shunzhi (顺治), Kangxi (康熙), and

Yongzheng (雍正), took on a new look in its social stability and economic

prosperity. In the reign of Qianlong and Jiaqing (嘉庆), textual research, by

degrees, came to dominate all of the academic circles with its profound inXuence

on the study of Confucian classics, historiography, philology, lexicology, and the

like. The essential principles of the textual research consisted in being practical

and realistic and having faith in ancient scholars. Qian Daxin, for example, held

that ‘not everything ancient could be taken seriously, not that ancient scholars are

not reliable, but that sages existed before those ancient scholars; the ancient sages

did not make such remarks, but the scholars closer to us made those remarks,

and I would rather follow the former.’

All in all, textual research at the time of Qianlong and Jiaqing, by means of its

spirit of being practical and realistic, discarded the objective of academic studies

serving politics, strengthened to a considerable extent the independency of

academic studies, and broke away from the role of academic studies being


subordinate to politics, which was positively signiWcant for the history of ancient

Chinese learning and leavened the process and direction of Chinese dictionary

history.

The activities of oYcial academics tend to be the mainstream of academic

studies of an epoch. The activities of oYcial learning in the Qing Dynasty were

carried out mainly in the time of Kangxi and Qianlong. The compilation

of character dictionaries and classiWed (encyclopedic) dictionaries were the

important components of oYcial learning and culture in the years of Kangxi.

As early as April 1673, Kangxi made a proposal that a dictionary of the Manchu-

rian language be compiled and entitled The Dictionary of the Manchurian Lan-

guage (<清文鉴>). In the forty-ninth year of Kangxi, Kangxi began to take

charge of compiling a Mandarin dictionary of the Chinese language, which

was not completed until 1716, called The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi. In the

time of Kangxi, many types of classiWed dictionary were compiled, including

The Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary (<渊鉴类函>), A Dictionary of

Rhymes and Styles (<佩文韵府>), A Dictionary of Synonyms (<骈字类编>),A Categoric Dictionary of Chinese Words (<分类字锦>), some of which are still

of practical value even now. Among those classiWed dictionaries, The Compen-

dium of Ancient and Contemporary Books was the most important and the

largest in size, consisting of 10,000 volumes; The Imperial Collection of Four

Branches of Literature (<四库全书>) was the most magniWcent oYcial compil-

ation at the time of Qianlong, for it was the largest hand-copied series so far.

A large number of celebrated scholars took part in its compilation. A number of

scholars who contributed to the popularity of the study of textual research at the

time were trained in this work. China’s academic and cultural studies entered

into a ‘sum-up’ stage in the early years of the Qing Dynasty. With the joint eVorts

of both oYcial and individual forces, those summed-up academic accomplish-

ments culminated in a period of greatness in the history of ancient Chinese

learning.

The term ‘Western learning’ was widely used in the late Qing Dynasty, when

the initial introduction of the concepts and contents of Western science started

with the translation of Western academic books. The translators, who were the

main body for diVusing Western learning in the late Qing Dynasty, were essen-

tially Western missionaries and those Chinese scholars versed in extremely old

Chinese learning. Scholars brought up on the old Chinese learning constituted

the main body for the study of ‘Western learning’. Those scholars, in any event,

would not abandon Chinese traditional culture as they assimilated Western

learning. They merely complemented their original structure of knowledge by

absorbing what they needed from Western learning. Natural science, therefore,


was introduced into China with little obstruction. With regard to social sciences,

it was Yan Fu (严复) who Wrst introduced Western concepts, brought in the

division of politics and learning, and ameliorated the atmosphere of learning in

the late Qing Dynasty. Yan Fu, in the light of modern Western science, advanced

the question and the method of learning, emphasized the veriWcation, induction,

and classiWcation of facts, and proposed that the conclusion of learning, for the

sake of consolidating learning, should be veriWed and conWrmed. Thereafter,

there appeared some scholars who were expert in both Chinese and Western

culture, like Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao (梁启超), Zhang Binglin, and Hu Shi

(胡适). The direct eVect of introducing Western learning into China upon the

history of Chinese dictionaries could be seen from the presence of specialized

dictionaries and the initial Xourishing of bilingual dictionaries.

The renovation of learning in the late Qing Dynasty was mainly guided by the

transformation of inner factors of traditional Chinese learning. Even in the course

of introducing Western learning into China and initiating the academic trans-

formation in the late Qing Dynasty, the learning of the Qing Dynasty still func-

tioned as groundwork. The scholars in the lateQingDynasty, resorting tomethods

ofmodernWestern sciences, tidied up the Chinese academic heritage, and came to

replace the dominant Neo-Confucianism with the rising historiography.

15.3 a survey of dictionaries in the mingand qing dynasties

Stimulated by Western learning, the compilation of dictionaries in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties was in secret competition with its Western counterpart, which

was a noticeable characteristic of the history of Chinese dictionary compilation

over that period, aiming at dictionaries being as bulky and comprehensive

as conceivable. It was taken as the ultimate goal to take in multitudinous

characters, explicate words and characters in multiple ways, and indicate various

sources cited, as shown in the compilation of The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters or of The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi. A new dynasty of Chinese

history is generally marked by its representative dictionary, which makes it

diVerent from and superior to the former dynasties. It is safe to say that the

Ming and Qing Dynasties could be reckoned as the summarization period of

Chinese dictionary compilation over previous dynasties in the sense that the

lexicographical achievements could be appreciated in such grand compilations as


Chinese character dictionaries, Chinese word dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries,

special dictionaries (including special-subject dictionaries and special-aspect

dictionaries) and encyclopedic dictionaries (i.e. classiWed dictionaries).

Representative Chinese character dictionariesThe compliers of character dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties not only

adopted the merits of the preceding wordbooks and dictionaries but also man-

aged to innovate the style and format. The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, compiled by Mei Yingzuo in the Ming Dynasty, was inXuential in the

compilation of Chinese character dictionaries. The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, composed by Zhang Zilie at the end of the Ming Dynasty, remedied

the Xaws and corrected the mistakes of A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters. In the Qing Dynasty, The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi, compiled by

Zhang Yushu, Chen Tingjing et al., was an important dictionary still in popular

use today.

Representative word dictionariesThe dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties could be approximately seg-

mented into four strains, that is, the Erya dictionary type (dictionaries following

the pattern of The Ready Guide), dialect dictionaries (dictionaries following the

pattern of The Dictionary of Dialectal Words), exegetic dictionaries, and diction-

aries of function words.

Dictionaries of The Ready Guide type mainly consist of The Rhythmical Ready

Guide (<骈雅>) written by Zhu Mouwei (朱谋玮) of the Ming Dynasty,

The General Ready Guide by Fang Yizhi of the Ming Dynasty, The Contrastive

Ready Guide by Hong Liangji of the Qing Dynasty, The Distinctive Ready Guide

(<别雅>) byWu Yujin (吴玉搢) of the Qing Dynasty, and The Alternating Ready

Guide (<叠雅>) by ShiMenglan (史梦兰) of theQingDynasty.TheReadyGuide is

the Wrst word dictionary of the Chinese language in the history of Chinese

lexicography, annotated time and again during later dynasties, especially during

the Qing Dynasty. The RectiWcation of the Ready Guide (<尔雅义疏>) by Hao

Yixing was the most detailed version of the annotation.

The dialect dictionaries, developed rapidly in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, are

mainly categorized into two types: dictionaries elucidating, emending, and replen-

ishing The Dictionary of DialecticalWords and new compilations. The dialect diction-

aries of the Ming Dynasty include The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words <方言

据> byYueYuansheng (岳元声),ACategoricDictionary ofDialectalWords (<方言类

聚>) by ChenYujiao (陈与郊), and The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect. The more


Xourishing dialect dictionaries in the Qing Dynasty can be divided into three types.

The Wrst type comprises dictionaries elucidating and emending The Dictionary

of Dialectal Words, such as The RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words

by Dai Zhen, The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words with New RectiWcations

(<重校方言>) by Lu Wenshao (卢文绍), The Annotated Interpretation of the

Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Qian Yi, and Supplements to the RectiWcation of

the Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Wang Niansun. The second type comprises

those replenishing The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, such as The Augmented

Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Hang Shijun, Supplements and RectiWcations to

the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<续方言补正>) by Cheng

Jisheng, New Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<续方言又补>) by Xu Naichang (徐乃昌), The Broadly Augmented Dictionary of

Dialectal Words with Supplements (<广续方言及拾遗>) by Cheng Xianjia (程先甲) as well asNew Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary

of Dialectal Words by Zhang Shenyi. The third type consists of the newly

compiled dialect dictionaries. Some of the new dictionaries of the Qing Dynasty

collected dialectal words from various works, such as The Dialectal Dictionary of

Literary Embellishments (<方言藻>) by Li Diaoyuan (李调元), The Dictionary

of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect by HuWenying, and An Explanatory

Dictionary of the Yue Dialect (<越言释>) by Du Xuxu (杜煦序).

During the late Ming and the early Qing Dynasties, scholars advocated practi-

cality and emphasized the exegesis of ‘name’ and ‘essence’, which gave rise to the

revival of Neo-Confucianism. Ruan Yuan (阮元, 1764–1849), meeting the needs for

studying the classics, was in charge of the compilation ofThe Exegetic Interpretations

of Ancient Classics (<经籍纂诂>), which incorporated words from the classic

literature, philosophical works, and history books under one cover.

The rapid development of dictionaries of function words in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties was characterized by their great number, immense size, and enviable

quality, which formed a well-deWned feature of dictionary compilation at the time.

The dictionaries of function words during this period included The Interpreta-

tive Dictionary of Function Words (<助字辨略>) compiled by Liu Qi (刘淇), The

Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies (<经传释词>) by Wang

Yinzhi, and The Studies in Function Words (<虚字说>) by Yuan Renlin (袁仁林).

Bilingual dictionariesThe Ming and Qing Dynasties witnessed the early Xowering of bilingual diction-

aries in China. There appeared a large number of Chinese bilingual dictionaries

and specialized dictionaries, including not only the medium-sized dictionary


series like A Chinese–Foreign Language Vocabulary (<华夷译语>) and lists of

Chinese–foreign technical terms, but also large-size dictionary series like The

Dictionary of the Manchurian Language, The Compendium of the Manchurian

Language (<清文总汇>), and A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing

Dynasty (<大清全书>), and there were even large-scale bilingual dictionary

series. The introduction of Western learning into China and the arrival of

Western missionaries contributed to an unprecedented boost in the compilation

of bilingual dictionaries, particularly combinations of Chinese dialects with

English, Latin, and other major European languages.

Specialized dictionariesIn the Ming and Qing Dynasties, great achievements were made in science and

technology owing to the new factors of economic development and the advanced

ideas Europeanmissionaries brought with them. Therefore, specialized dictionaries

in the modern sense appeared in the Ming Dynasty and accelerated into a boom,

and the major ones are the 32-volume The General Survey of Currencies (<钱通>)by Hu Wokun (胡我琨) in the Ming Dynasty, the 16-volume The Dictionary of

Currencies (<钱录>) by Qian Longchi (乾隆敕) in the Qing Dynasty, and the

64-volumeADictionary of Ancient Currencies (<古泉汇>) by Li Zuoxian (李佐贤).

Wang Xiangjin (王象晋), who was born in Shandong Province in the reign of

Emperor Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, composed the 30-volume AComplete Collec-

tion of All Beauties (<群芳谱>), which was rectiWed, supplemented, and extended

into the 100-volume The General Dictionary of All Beauties (<广群芳谱>) byWang

Hao (汪灏) in the reign of Emperor Kangxi of theQingDynasty. TheQingDynasty

also brought forth such specialized dictionaries as A Contemporary Dictionary of

Ancient Names of Places in All Dynasties (<历代地理志韵编今释>), which was

compiled by Li Zhaoluo (李兆洛) in theQingDynasty andwas the earliest to check

and inquire into historical place names of previous dynasties, The Compendium

ofMateriaMedica (<本草纲目>),The Compendium of Agriculture (<农政全书>),and The Book of Nature’s Engineering (<天工开物>), which are well known to

the world.

Encyclopedic dictionariesThe compilation of encyclopedic dictionaries (mainly classiWed dictionaries) was

an especial boom area in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The Ming and Qing

dynasties were generally politically stable and economically well developed, so it

was possible to organize large-scale dictionary compilations. The Yongle Compen-

dium, a classiWed dictionary, was well known around the world. The Compendium


of Ancient and Contemporary Books, compiled successively by ChenMenglei (陈梦

雷) at the time of Kangxi and Jiang Tingxi (蒋廷锡) at the time of Yongzheng in

the Qing Dynasty, is the largest classiWed dictionary now available in China. The

Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary (450 volumes), compiled in the charge

of ZhangYing (张英) andWang Shizhen (王士祯) in 1701, is a classiWed dictionary

with abundant information. In addition, Chen Yuanlong (陈元龙, 1652–1736) also

composed The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences (<格致镜原>).

Representative rhyme dictionariesThe phonologists who came to the fore of Chinese philological studies in the

Ming and Qing Dynasties advanced the study of rhyme dictionaries and studies

in phonology. In this Weld, there appeared quite a number of magna opera. In the

Ming Dynasty, for example, there were Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes

(<洪武正韵>) written by Yue Shao (乐韶) and Song Lian (宋濂), An Interpret-

ative Dictionary of Rhymes (<韵略易解>) by Lan Mao (兰茂), and A General

Introductory Dictionary of Rhymes (<韵略汇通>) by Bi Gongzhai (毕拱窄),

while in the Qing Dynasty, there were An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and

Rhymes (<音韵阐微>) by Li Guangdi (李光地, 1642–1718) and Wang Lansheng

(王兰生), and A Diachronic Dictionary of Chinese Rhyme Studies (<韵史>) by He

Xuan (何萱).

The stylistic rules and layout of dictionary compilation in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties were basically standardized and stabilized, which can be

shown in the following. First, the standards for dictionary compilation were

essentially established and conventionalized. At the early stages, very little

mention was made in the front matter of the dictionary with respect to

stylistic rules and format. But in the Ming and Qing Dynasties there were

separate parts or sections devoted exclusively to stylistic rules and formats.

The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi included the most comprehensive and best-

developed stylistic rules and formats for Chinese character dictionary compil-

ation, which comprised eighteen rules covering its arrangement of entries,

character types, pronunciations, citations, deWnitions, and lexical coverage.

The establishment of the standardized stylistic rules and formats is a sign-

iWcant indication of the conventionalization and standardization of dictionary

compilation.

Second, the arrangement of headwords and dictionary layout were innovated,

and ease of retrieval of information was greatly enhanced. The arrangement of

lemmatas and the layout of the dictionary in this period were founded on a more

scientiWc and user-friendly basis, which was shown in the further adjustment


and re-categorization of the radicals in Chinese characters. The Comprehensive

Dictionary of Chinese Characters not only reduced the number of radicals in An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters to only 214 but the arrangement of

radicals was sequenced in the light of the number of strokes. The later dictionaries,

such as The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and The Imperial Dictionary

of Kangxi, basically adopted the same stylistic rules and layout, which broke

through the conventional dependence upon the formation and structure of the

Chinese characters for the arrangement.

Third, the method of phonetic notation was improved. The phonetic notation

of former dictionaries was carried out mainly by means of fanqie or direct

phonetic notation. The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters amelior-

ated the traditional method of phonetic notation in that the level, rising, falling,

and entering tones would be used for phonetic notation if no corresponding

character could be found for its direct phonetic notation. The character判 /pan/,

for instance, was phonetically annotated below it as half-pronunciation of the

character普 /pu/ with the falling tone of 潘. However, there were some charac-

ters whose pronunciations could not be indicated by means of four tones and had

to be annotated as ‘pronunciation is close or similar to’ a certain character. For

example, the character 作 /zuo/ was phonetically annotated as 徒 /tu/ being

inXuenced by conXuent consonants and its pronunciation similar to 淡 /dan/,

with the rising tone.

Furthermore, if a character had a change in its phonetics or had a lateral sound,

it would be annotated by semitone Wrst and then transferred sound or lateral

sound. For instance, the character化 /hua/ was annotated as ‘pronounced with

the consonant of 呼 and the vowel of 话, as in 造化, and then an indicative

label○was used to denote diVerences in pronunciation andmeaning’, as in ‘○又

叶居为切,音归 . . . . . .○又叶禾切,音讹 . . . . . .○又叶许既切,音戏 . . . . . .○又

叶呼卧切, 音货 . . . . . .’. This method set a precedent for modern dictionaries to

list headword characters in separate entries.

Fourth, the methods of deWning characters were improved, which was

mainly reXected in simple and clear explanations, explanations in terms of

phonetic sounds, which related sounds more closely to meanings, and clarity

of hierarchical meaning explanation. There were even meaning explanations

on diVerent layers, segmented with indicative characters like 又 (also), which

meant dividing the meaning of the character into various segments. This

practice set a precedent for sense division and diVerentiation in later diction-

aries.

Fifth, illustrative citations were to a large extent improved and strengthened.

The previous character glossaries and dictionaries contained no illustrative


materials. Even though there was such evidence, it was not the illustrative citation

in the modern sense because what was provided was merely book titles, chapter

and volume titles, or only an indication of quotations from a certain author,

which turned out to be almost of no utility to dictionary users. Furthermore, it

was extremely diYcult to check the sources indicated. Throughout The Imperial

Dictionary of Kangxi, illustrative citations can be found coupled with names

of books and volumes, which prove helpful in tracing sources. The character

茵 /yin/, for example, is illustrated with 乘茵步辇 from Ode to the Western

Capital (<西都赋>) written by Ban Gu. Another example, the character 蜜

/mi/, is accompanied by the illustration瑶浆蜜勺 from The Songs of Chu written

by Qu Yuan (屈原).

Finally, indexation was basically brought forward and appended for the Wrst

time to the dictionary. The ancient dictionaries contained practically no indexing

and were not easy to look up and check. It was not until the Ming and Qing

Dynasties that indexes were designed and appeared as part of the end matter of

the dictionary. In The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters, each

volume was preWxed with an index of page numbers of each and every part of

the volume and an indication of the number of characters that each radical

section covered, followed by Character Index (<检字>) sequenced according to

the number of strokes the character contains. In the front matter of The Imperial

Dictionary of Kangxi, the section Character Index was also given, but it was no

more than an elementary index, for this sort of word index was not a complete

list of all the characters included but an index for those characters which were

diYcult to categorize into a certain radical section and which were listed here on

the basis of the number of strokes they were made up of. The Character Index in

The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi included no more than 4,000 characters,

accounting for only one tenth of the dictionary’s total coverage. Although this

sort of index was far from perfect, it was a more convenient and easier way for

retrieval of information in the main body of the dictionary and thus greatly

enhanced its utility and practical value. It set a precedent for later dictionaries to

compile and include indexes for easier access to dictionary information, thus

bringing the mega-conWguration of Chinese dictionaries one step further to

perfection.

To sum up, the compilation of dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

was remarkable for its great variety, large scale, rich content, and more scientiWc

methods and sophisticated techniques than ever. In the Ming and Qing Dynas-

ties, Chinese dictionary making was basically conventionalized and standardized

both in macrostructural and microstructural conWguration, leaving a huge and

profound mark upon dictionary compilation ever since.


15.4 the characteristics of dictionary makingin the ming and qing dynasties

In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, through a long period of exploration and

historical heritage, we Wnd distinctive features in Chinese dictionary making, as

evident in format and style and in the compilation scheme.

First, dictionary making in ancient China was guided by theories of philology,

without which Chinese character dictionaries and word dictionaries would

not have been born. Nevertheless, no coherent and integrated lexicographical

theories had been developed and established although the practice of dictionary

making had gone on for more than two millennia during which Chinese dic-

tionary making had experienced a transformation from its gradual emergence to

Wnal embodiment. The main body of lexicographical works in ancient China was

made up of character primers, exegetic books, and rhyme books, from which

later character and word dictionaries were derived. The compilation of those

lexicographical works was interwoven with ancient Chinese philology, exegetic

research, and rhyme studies. Likewise, the lexicographical methods and theories

in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were also formulated within the framework of

ancient Chinese philology and came under the direction of ancient Chinese

philological principles. This forms a clear and sharp contrast with modern

dictionary making inside and outside China, represented by the apparent incon-

gruity between contemporary lexicography and modern linguistics.

Second, lexicography in the Ming and Qing Dynasties saw a gradual process

of reformation in format and style and conWguration in macro- and microstruc-

ture. In the period from the Xia to the Qin Dynasty, lexicography was in its

infancy and no dictionary in its strict sense was produced. In the period of the

Han Dynasties, there appeared the Wrst character dictionary, i.e. An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, the Wrst word dictionary, i.e. The Ready Guide,

the Wrst dialect dictionary, i.e. The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, the Wrst dic-

tionary of folk words, i.e. The Dictionary of Popular Words, and the Wrst etymo-

logical dictionary, i.e. The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms. The major

dictionary types in contemporary lexicography had all come into being in the

Han Dynasties, indicating the ending of the period of birth and initiation. In

the period of the Wei to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, lexicography in

China entered the stage of exploration and development. There were more new

dictionary types coming into being and discoveries were waiting to be made in

format and style, in mode of deWnition, and in phonetic notation. There


appeared the Wrst classiWed dictionary, i.e. The Imperial Survey, the Wrst rhyme

book, i.e. The Dictionary of Initial Consonants, and the Wrst specialized dictionary

of family names, i.e. Records of Names of the Same Family Names (<同姓名录>).We can see the preliminary formation of three streams of dictionaries, repre-

sented by The Ready Guide, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and

The Dictionary of Rhymes respectively, indicating three clear-cut paths of evolu-

tion and development in Chinese word, character, and rhyme dictionaries,

although these dictionaries were small in scale, incomplete in format and style,

with numerous noticeable defects in content and in structure. In the period from

the Sui to the Yuan Dynasties, bilingual dictionaries, further rhyme dictionaries,

and classiWed dictionaries came into use, and the rapid development of these

dictionaries laid a solid foundation for theoretical explorations. There was great

progress made in lexicography in the period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The

dictionaries compiled in this period had expanded enormously in size. For

instance, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters had a coverage of

9,353 characters, or 10,515 characters if the variants were taken into consideration,

and it was approximately 200,000 characters in size. The Imperial Dictionary of

Kangxi, however, had a coverage of 47,035 entry characters (including addendum

and those for reference, but excluding 1,995 ancient characters), and it was more

than three million characters in size. The dictionary types were practically

complete and the major types, such as character dictionaries, word dictionaries,

special dictionaries, and encyclopedic dictionaries, had all appeared on a large

scale and formed their own series. These dictionaries were rich in content, well-

conceived in format and style, and excellent in quality. For instance, The Ready

Guide dictionary family saw new developments, such as The Rhythmical Ready

Guide, which interpreted the rare and diYcult words and expressions collected

from various books, The General Ready Guide, which exegetically interpreted and

discriminated the lexical words or names of objects, The Distinctive Ready Guide,

which concentrated on characters sharing the same meanings but with diVerent

spellings or pronunciations, and The Alternating Ready Guide, which dealt

speciWcally with the use of reiterative locations. Moreover, The Yongle Compen-

dium of the Ming Dynasty, The Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary,

A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles, and A Dictionary of Synonyms of the Qing

Dynasty were all dictionaries of immense size. Their grandness in size and their

richness in content were all unprecedented.

Third, in the light of modern lexicographical standards, the dictionaries

compiled in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were basically good but there

remained a great deal of room for improvement. All dictionaries are required

to be informative, succinct, precise, standardized, and user-friendly. If measured


by such criteria, ancient dictionaries were inevitably considered defective. For

instance, the phonetic notation for philological dictionaries was not scientiWc

and free of defects, and was not even treated with consistency – some without

phonetic notation, some notated with ‘read as . . .’, and others employing direct

notation or fanqie. As a result, if the pronunciations of some characters were

unknown to the user, it would be impossible to gain access to the entry character,

to say nothing of getting to the correct pronunciation of the target character. In

terms of deWnition, sense demarcation, though fairly well managed in modern

lexicography, was still in its primitive stage. For instance, An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters deWned 感 as ‘动人心也。从心，感声’ (to

move the heart of a human being, belonging to the radical of 心 ‘heart’,

and pronounced as 感), while The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Chinese–

English edition, 2003) identiWes six senses, among which there are at least three

senses belonging to ‘heart moving’. In other words, the deWnitions in ancient

dictionaries were normally general and superWcial, while those in modern dic-

tionaries were more speciWc and substantial. There were usually no citations in

dictionaries compiled in ancient times and, if there happened to be any, they were

usually too simple and curtailed out of context. There were usually no such forms

as entries in special dictionaries and encyclopedic dictionaries, and for those few

with such a form of character entry, the entries were normally incomplete in

constitution. The ancient dictionaries were also feeble for consultation purpose.

Many dictionaries contained no indexes for retrieval, and the retrieval system was

too rigid and diYcult to have access to, even if there was one. The exegetic

dictionaries were arranged in semantic order and were rather diYcult for re-

trieval. In rhyme dictionaries, the characters were arranged on the basis of the

rhymes they shared. For those who have little or no knowledge of phonology,

they are also very diYcult to use. Serious attempts were made to ease the pain of

information retrieval in a few dictionaries, such as The Comprehensive Dictionary

of Chinese Characters, The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and The

Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi, in which entry characters were arranged in the

order of simpliWed radicals. These few dictionaries were relatively easy to retrieve

for information. When these ancient dictionaries are reprinted, new indexes or

other information retrieval systems are generally developed to help modern

users. For instance, when Zhong Hua Book Company reprinted An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, the stroke index is attached as an appendix. The

Rhyme Dictionary printed by the Shanghai Ancient Works Press includes an

appendix of a new kind of retrieval system – ‘four corner code’ system. The

megastructure of all major dictionary types of modern times, particularly Chi-

nese character dictionaries and word dictionaries, was formulated during the


Ming and Qing Dynasties, though there were still many defects in the format and

style and in the content of the dictionaries compiled over that period.

Fourth, ancient Chinese lexicography was closely linked to the study of

Confucian classics but in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, however, dictionary

making was drifted away from the ‘hard-word’ tradition. As part of ancient

Chinese civilization, the Confucian works are read, recited, and studied in the

world. To read and study these classics scholars had to get rid of lexical diYcul-

ties, and ancient Chinese dictionaries were compiled to meet such needs. Con-

sequently, lexicography in ancient China had to start from the ‘hard-word

tradition’, which is true of all lexicographical cultures in the world. In the period

from the Sui to the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism was introduced to China and

an enormous number of Buddhist works were translated into Chinese. Against

this background, numerous dictionaries were compiled to help interpret the

Buddhist scriptures. In Pre-Qin China, books were generally classiWed into four

major categories: Classics, Histories, Philosophy, and Anthology. Dictionaries

used to fall into the Weld of ‘Little Learning (philological studies)’ and classiWed

into the category of ‘Classics’. There was an inherent relationship between

dictionary making and the interpretation of ancient classics. In the Ming and

Qing Dynasties, there appeared a tendency for dictionary making to be divorced

from such a relationship, which paved the way for Chinese lexicography to set

out on the road to modernization and to acquire a more scientiWc and stand-

ardized basis.

Fifth, the format and style of classiWed dictionaries had been steadily improved

and had reached an unprecedented level in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The

general principle governing the format and style of such dictionaries was ‘to

follow the categories they belong to in compiling the collection of classics and the

commentaries on classics’. The earliest attempt to generalize and classify the

knowledge of ancient Chinese classics was The Imperial Survey. Over the Wfteen

centuries from The Imperial Survey to A Continual to the General Survey on

Ancient Literature (<续文献通考>), the format and style of classiWed dictionar-

ies had undergone a process of gradual improvement – from being primitive and

simple to being consistent and sophisticated, and the identiWcation of categories

was becoming more speciWc and better-grounded. The format and style of The

Imperial Survey of Xiuwen Palace were designed by Yan Zhitui of the Northern Qi

Dynasty. Its classiWcation and structural arrangement were rather speciWc and

precise, and its format and style rather consistent. There were Wfty-Wve sections

and 240 classes. Such an emphasis on dictionary format and style exerted a direct

inXuence on the compilation of The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign. In the

Tang Dynasty, an important breakthrough was made on the format and style in


The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works, guideposting the design of

format and style in the history of ancient Chinese classiWed dictionaries. The

features of its format and style are summarized as follows: ‘the event comes Wrst

while the relevant literature collected follows’. In other words, the chronicles and

the collection of literature are combined into one, which is a deviation from the

paradigm set for classiWed dictionaries from the Three Kingdoms period – ‘the

literature is assembled into collections and the things are categorized into

classiWed dictionaries’. The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works displays

practically all the features of the format and style of a modern encyclopedia. The

well-known classiWed dictionaries in the Song Dynasty, such as The Imperial

Records of the Taiping Reign and The Historical Records of Cefu, had evolved and

progressed in the direction of an encyclopedia of a specialized nature. The

Imperial Records of the Taiping Reign had extensively collected the novels, notes,

and non-oYcial historical books from the Han Dynasties to the early Northern

Song Dynasty. The Historical Records of Cefu had recorded the stories of the

monarchs and their oYcials from remote times to the Five Dynasties. In the Ming

and Qing Dynasties, further classiWed dictionaries were published and in greater

varieties and sizes and with more sophisticated styles and formats. The format

and style of The Yongle Compendium was ‘to govern the characters with the

rhymes they share, and the events are related to the characters by which they are

designated’, and that dictionary became quite notable for being enormously rich

in data and grand in scale. The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books

went one step further in the design of its format and style by adding a classiWca-

tion of subjects. It had six volumes, thirty-two folios and 6,119 sections, which

could be further divided into subsections. The whole book was well structured

and properly presented. The data were exhaustive, embracing almost all know-

ledge in every subject in the late feudal period in China. Its format and style was

the most rigorous, setting a good example for the compilation of modern

encyclopedias.


16

THE FORMATION OFCHINESE CHARACTER

DICTIONARIES

THE Chinese language ranks among the oldest languages in the world, with a

peculiarly abundant vocabulary, compared to that of other languages, which

is the quintessence of the 5000-year evolution of Chinese culture and language.

In terms of quantity, there were only around 4,600 Jiaguwen characters but the

number ascended to 47,035 in the Qing Dynasty when The Imperial Dictionary of

Kangxi was compiled. Its publication marks an unparallelled peak in the history

of Chinese dictionaries.

16.1 the social and cultural backgroundin the ming and qing dynasties

The reason why the Chinese language possesses such a rich vocabulary lies not

only in the long history of the Han culture but also in the assimilation of the

linguistic components of other ethnic languages through cultural exchange and

language interaction. The Chinese language has gone through three distinct

phases of vocabulary augmentation in its long development. During the Qin

and Han Dynasties, the enhanced political and economic links between nation-

alities led to the comprehensive development of the cultural undertaking, which

in turn greatly accelerated the political union and social stabilization. The

Chinese cultural development in the 2000 years since the Qin and Han Dynasties

reveals the interaction between politics and culture. Such interaction enables

word absorption from Xiongnu (the Huns, an ancient nomadic people in North

China) and Xiyu (the Western Region, a Han Dynasty term for the region west of

Yumenguan Pass, including present-day Xinjiang Province of China and Central

Asia) into the Chinese language in the Period of Warring States and the Qin and

Han Dynasties. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the

political setting was dark and society was in chaos. However, if perceived the

other way round, the cultural pattern, which had been focusing solely on

Confucianism since the Western Han Dynasty, was shattered in this period,

thus providing room for an overall cultural development and people’s free and

vigorous thoughts. Religions began to Xourish on the grounds of the then

prevailing metaphysics. The word ‘Taoism’ Wrst appeared in the Southern and

Northern Dynasties. In almost the same period, Buddhism was brought into

China from India and gradually penetrated Chinese culture. The Sui and Tang

cultures reXected the hayday of Chinese feudal society. The grand and all-

inclusive Tang culture had an impact even on global culture. The Tang Dynasty

practised liberal politics, advocating the coexistence of the three ideologies of

Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The broadness of Tang culture was also

illustrated by cultural exchanges with diVerent parts of the world: for example,

there were the Buddhist paintings from South Asia; music and dance from

Central Asia; and Islam, architecture, and the game of polo from West Asia.

Such liberal governance and open policies brought about a mass introduction of

foreign words, especially Buddhist terms of Sanskrit origin, into the Chinese

language.

The Ming and Qing cultures were experiencing the decline of traditional

Chinese culture and the transition towards modern culture, which started with

the Opium War in 1840. A distinct feature of the Ming and Qing cultures is

cultural autocracy, which is clearly illustrated by the extremely cruel literacy

inquisition. Meanwhile, these two dynasties were in the process of introducing

Western learning into the East, which brought into the Chinese language a

Xock of words of Western origin. Perceived from the angle of civilizational

progression, the Ming and Qing Dynasties can be regarded as the representative

period for the achievements of traditional Chinese civilization. Solid proof of this

lies in the fact that in these two dynasties a great amount of manpower and

material resources were collectively utilized for the compilation of The Yongle

Compendium, The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books, and The

Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature, which assembled and classiWed

a tremendous number of ancient books. Considering their impressive size and

formation of character dictionaries 281

systematic dictionary format, these encyclopedic dictionaries are not only unpar-

allelled in the history of Chinese culture but also among the exceptional few in

the history of global culture. In keeping with the Chinese tradition of compiling

books and records in times of prosperity, the dictionaries of the time are

supposed to be impressive in size, ample in content, and systematic in format.

This accounts for the grand publications of The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, which ‘embodies the essence of the study of Chinese characters’ (from

The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters; Author’s Preface), and The Imper-

ial Dictionary of Kangxi, which ‘can be valued as an unchanging norm’ (from the

Preface to The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi). Both books are the crystallized

product of traditional Chinese lexicographical cultures. Emperor Kangxi com-

mented that the dictionaries compiled before ‘may be imbalanced in terms of

lexical coverage and density; may be either excessive or insuYcient in illustrative

citations; may be scant in deWning words of multiple meanings or pronunci-

ations’ and that there is ‘not a single dictionary that embodies both beauty and

completeness so as to be valued as an unchanging norm’, (from the Preface to The

Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi). It should be admitted, however, that without the

contributions of generations of ancient scholars and the unprecedented Xourish-

ing of the academic spirit, there would not have been the appearance of such

immense historical literature in times of social stability and prosperity, let alone

dictionaries of such impressive sizes.

16.2 the development of character dictionarycompilation in the ming and qing dynasties

Dictionary compilation in the Ming and Qing Dynasties far surpassed that in the

preceding dynasties both in macrostructural and microstructural conWguration.

Such excellence was directly related to the highly sophisticated studies of Chinese

characters of the time, a representative research Weld of which was the study of An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. There were a multitude of scholars

involved in such studies. Among the most famous were Duan Yucai, Gui Fu,

Wang Yun, and Zhu Junsheng, who were called the ‘Four Masters’ for their

leading role and their outstanding works that embodied accomplishments in

both practical and theoretical aspects of Chinese lexicography.

Duan Yucai, the student of Dai Zhen, who ranked Wrst in the ‘Four Masters’

list, was accomplished in philology, metrics, and exegetic interpretation of


ancient books. In his book The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, Duan Yucai fully expounded the interrelationship between the form,

pronunciation and meaning of Chinese characters and proposed many original

views. Gui Fu’s The RectiWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (Wfty

volumes) dealt primarily with the principles for exegetic interpretation of

ancient books. Wang Yun stated in the Preface to The ExempliWed Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文释例>, twenty volumes):

Gui Fu’s work contains a huge number of citations, which are well organized and

consistent. InsuYciencies in preceding books are supplemented in Gui Fu’s book

and errors rectiWed. Whatever quotations are cited are all organized in a certain sequence

and selected only to help illuminate Xu Shen’s ideas. As a result, it is not his personal

intention to select exclusively from ancient classics.

Gui Fumerely collected quotations from ancient classics without expressing his

own. Actually, Gui Fu’s own intentions and viewpoints could be ascertained if note

was taken of his thoughtfulness when he was selecting objective materials to be

listed in his book. Plainness and a refusal to impose his views were important

features of The ExempliWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, giving

readers room for their own analysis and judgement. Wang Yun’s The ExempliWed

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters was divided into two parts: the Wrst

fourteen volumes explain the structure of the six categories of Chinese characters

and the format and style of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters; the

remaining six volumes list some doubts about An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters. There are ‘Supplements’ at the end of each volume, referring

to ancient books and records, such as inscriptions, to support the explanation of

the forms of Chinese characters in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Charac-

ters. For instance, although Wang Yun had not seen the character 折 (zhe) in

Jiaguwen, his explanation about the form of the character accorded with what it

actually was like in Jiaguwen. Duan Yucai made several discoveries in accent

metrics; Gui Fu was adept at deWning principles; Zhu Junsheng clariWed the

interchangeability of characters, while Wang Yun showed his remarkable achieve-

ments in diVerentiating various forms of Chinese characters. Among the ‘Four

Masters’, DuanYucai andZhu Junshengwere undoubtedly themost distinguished.

Duan Yucai, whose courtesy namewas Ruoying withMaotang as his other alias,

was born in Jintan, Jiangsu in 1735 and died on 8 September 1815, aged eighty-one.

He was born with such great intelligence that he could recite Chinese classics such

as The Book of Songs, The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty, and The Book of Rites at the age

of thirteen. He was granted the title of Juren (the title of a successful candidate in

the imperial examination at the provincial level) in the twenty-Wfth year of


Qianglong, appointed magistrate of Yuping County, Guizhou Province and later

transferred to Sichuan Province as the magistrate of Wushan and other counties

for a total of ten years. He devoted himself to academic study in his spare time. At

the age of forty-six, he quitted his oYcial position and concentrated on reading

and writing until his last years. Duan Yucai had spent decades studying

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and had written The Annotated

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The Rhyme Diagram of Six Categor-

ies of Chinese Characters (<六书音韵表>), A Collection of Classic Rhyme House

(<经韵楼集>), Rhymes of the Book of Songs (<诗经韵谱>), Rhymes of Various

Classics (<群经韵谱>), The Book of Songs and the Philological Studies (<诗经小

学>). The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters made sign-

iWcant contributions to the research of lexicographical theories. The dictionary

was Wnished in 1807 but was not completely printed until 1815. Duan Yucai started

his annotations by Wrst collating its Song Dynasty versions, on the basis of which

the late Ming Dynasty versions were rectiWed, and wrote the one-volume The Jigu

Library Revision to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<汲古阁说文订>). Then, based on the format of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, the interpretation of Chinese characters in The Jade Chapters and

The Rhyme Dictionary and annotational quotations from An Explanatory Diction-

ary of Chinese Characters in ancient books, Duan Yucai compared and emended

Xu’s version, and wrote the voluminous A Guide to Reading An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters (<说文解字读>). Extracting the essence of

previous phases, he Wnally Wnished The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters, which had extensive references to Classics, Histories, Philoso-

phy, and Anthology and gave a complete and careful collation, annotation, and

elucidation of Xu’s book. Moreover, centring on the study of An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, Duan Yucai had carried out holistic research on

ancient Chinese lexicology, examining the form, pronunciation, and meaning in

an integrated approach. The rectiWcation and textual research of The Annotated

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters not only rendered the book readable

but proposed some initial answers to a series of important theoretical questions

regarding Chinese metrics, philology, lexicology, and the interpretation of ancient

books. From a historical and developmental perspective, Duan Yucai studied

linguistic phenomena with some scientiWc methodology. His research made a

thorough summary of the general principles about previous scholars’ works and

enriched the traditional theories of the study of the interpretation of ancient

books and Chinese lexicography.

Zhu Junsheng, whose courtesy name was Fengqi and alternative name Yun-

qian, was born in Wuxian County, Jiangsu Province in 1788 and died in 1858.


Brought up in a scholarly family, he topped all the candidates in the prefectural

screening exam at fourteen, became a doctoral candidate at Wfteen, and was

granted Juren at thirty-one in 1818. He was appointed Instructor in Jinde, Anhui

Province. Zhu Junsheng ‘read whatever books he could get, was accomplished in

whatever subjects he learned, immersed himself in and apprehended the teach-

ings of the Ten Classics, and recited all the books from the Three Annals and Ten

Literary Writings’ (from An Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds, Preface <说文通训定声�序>). Being a proliWc writer, he had written several books and devoted

most of his life to the study of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

An Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds (<说文通训定声>) was completed in

1833 and published in 1870. It has eighteen volumes in all, together with Jian

Rhymes (<柬韵>, one volume), Studies in the Ready Guide (<说雅>, one

volume, including nineteen pieces of writing), Ancient and Modern Rhyme

Standards (<古今韵准>), and Addendum (<补遗>, two volumes). The front

matter of the book includes ‘Memorial to the Throne’, ‘Imperial Sanction’, ‘The

Author’s Preface’, ‘Preface’ by Luo Dunyan(罗惇衍), ‘Epilogue’ by Zhu Jingrong

(朱镜蓉) and ‘Postscripts’ by Xie Zeng (谢增). The book is actually a homo-

phonic companion to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, mainly

including: (a) explanation of Chinese Characters, that is, clarifying the relations

between forms, meanings, and pronunciations of characters, and expounding the

original meanings of the words mainly through word forms; (b) interpretation of

ancient books, mainly by mutually explanatory formations and phonetic loans.

The former refers to the extension of the meaning, while the latter the inter-

changeability of homophonic Chinese characters. This part of the book functions

as a dictionary of interchangeable Chinese characters, and is extremely useful for

researching words of interchangeability in the ancient books of the time; and

(c) Wxation of the pronunciation: Based on over 9,000 characters from An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters and an additional 7,000, the dic-

tionary abstracts from the pictophonetic characters 1,137 phonogramic radicals,

divides them into eighteen parts in terms of ancient rhymes and arranges all the

words according to ancient rhymes and phonogramic signs. The book shows a

complete abandonment of Xu Shen’s traditional indexing system of 540 radicals,

inaugurating a new indexing system for Chinese dictionaries. In writing An

Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds, Zhu Junsheng made a thorough alteration

to Xu Shen’s An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters in both content and

structure, and at the same time a comprehensive probe into the semantic system

of ancient Chinese. He was the Wrst to make a strict distinction between the

literal, extended, and phonetically loaned meanings of words, laying the theor-

etical foundation for polysemic studies and the theoretical basis for the detailed


classiWcation of meaning items in Chinese dictionaries. He proposed Mutual

Explanation–Meaning Extension Theory (转注-词义引申说), initiating the

view that mutual explanation equals meaning extension and that compilers can

‘extend the meaning from the form’ of a character. He also further clariWed the

features of mutual explanation from the perspective of the form, the pronunci-

ation and the meaning of the word. Moreover, he advanced the Word Meaning

Loaning Theory (词义假借说), suggesting that, among phonetically loaned

characters, only those with identical pronunciations but diVerent meanings

were the phonetically loaned characters in the real sense. He proposed three

standards for identifying phonetic loans: (a) A word originally not possessing a

certain meaning loans the meaning from another word only because of their

sameness or similarity in pronunciation; (b) The original meaning of the word

has no connection with the meaning of the loaned word, but the relation between

the loaned word form and its meaning can be traced and identiWed; (c) The

meaning cannot be ascertained from the form of the loaned word but can be

explored by observing the principle of homophonic interchangeability in certain

contexts. After analysing the three causes of phonetic loans, he classiWed them

into four types in terms of phonetic representation and eight forms in terms of

word use. All this enriched the theoretical discussions of Chinese dictionaries in

aspects of dictionary format, word entry, semantic deWnition, phonetic notation,

etc., and strengthened the theoretical foundation for Chinese lexicography.

16.3 the development of format and stylein the ming and qing dynasties

The dictionaries prior to the Ming Dynasty were mostly modelled on An Ex-

planatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters in terms of format, with such a

numerous and complicated classiWcation of radical sections which were not

readily accessible to ordinary users. In order to make the dictionary’s format

popular and practical, Mei Yingzuo in the Ming Dynasty compiled The Compre-

hensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters with extensive innovations in its format,

which was representative of Chinese character dictionaries. Mei Yingzuo sim-

pliWed the radicals in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, estab-

lished the principle of ‘judging only from forms instead of meanings to avoid

ambiguity arising from deciding radicals from meanings’ (from Style Guide).

This important principle about dictionary format design made the classiWcation


of Chinese characters in regular scripts more reasonable and promoted ease in

consulting the dictionary. In A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters,

Mei Yingzuo simpliWed the number of radicals in An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters into 214 in the form of regular scripts, and divided the main

body of the dictionary into twelve volumes categorized in the light of the twelve

earthly branches, in addition to the Wrst volume (the front matter) and the last

volume (appendices). Each volume began with a diagram, where each line was

divided into ten grids. In the grids were all the radicals in the volume and their

page numbers in the dictionary. The diagram served as a reference guide to

the volumes, which made consultation of information items more convenient

than in the previous dictionaries. The number of radicals in The Comprehensive

Dictionary of Chinese Characters was about two-Wfths of that in An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. Moreover, the radicals and the characters in

each radical section were arranged in the sequence of the number of strokes so

that users could consult the dictionary according to the number of strokes for

each character. A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters included 33,179

entry characters, most of which were from Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard

Rhymes, with reference to some other books, such as An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters and The Comprehensive Dictionary of Ancient and Contem-

porary Rhymes. The entry characters included common characters in ancient

books and some colloquial characters, contemporary and ancient. Odd and

unusual characters were not included in the book. Each entry comprised Wrst

the phonetic notations by fanqie, then, by direct phonetic notation, the deWnition

afterwards. In the deWnition, basic meaning items were put Wrst, followed by

other meaning items. DeWnitions were pellucid and readily understandable.

Examples were given afterwards, mostly from ancient books and partly from

spoken and colloquial language. Its innovations in dictionary format, such as the

arrangement of meaning items, the use of plain language, the employment of

examples from informal language, rendered the book exceptional at the time.

The front matter of A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters in-

cluded the preface by the compiler, the style guide, and the general contents,

and appendices like ‘sequences of strokes’, ‘ancient forms’, ‘prevailing forms’,

‘ancient-prevailing interchangeable words’ and ‘index of diYcult characters’. In

‘sequences of strokes’ were listed seventy-one characters of various forms, with

each character being given an indication of the sequence of writing the charac-

ter, which was a very instructive method for literacy education in old-style

private schools. The ‘ancient forms’ listed 179 ancient characters that were

adopted, accompanied by their explanations to help understand the theory of

the six Chinese character categories. In ‘prevailing forms’, Mei Yingzuo included


109 words in their then-prevailing forms together with their ancient forms to

remind users that they should follow the prevailing forms and not constrain

themselves by the ancient ones. Altogether 135 characters were included in

‘ancient-prevailing interchangeable words’ in the form of comparison to show

the interchangeability of each pair. ‘Index of diYcult characters’ listed charac-

ters whose radicals were diYcult to identify. At the beginning of each volume

are listed the radicals included in the volume and the corresponding pages of

each radical. Under each entry of The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, the pronunciation is given Wrst, followed by the explanation of the

meaning of each character in the order of basic meanings, common meaning,

and extended meanings. Common characters used in ancient classics, together

with informal characters, were included in the book, whereas odd characters

were excluded. The archaic forms or the variant forms were placed below the

standard form. At the end of the book were appendixes such as ‘DiVerentiation’,

‘RectiWcation’, and ‘Rhyming’. In ‘DiVerentiation’, 473 characters with similar

forms but diVerent pronunciations and meanings were listed and distinguished

to help acquire literacy. All the characters in this part were divided into 225

groups, most of which comprised two characters, such as刺 and剌,段 and叚.

In ‘RectiWcation’, sixty-eight characters commonly used in the civilian block-

printed books were selected, the errors of which were rectiWed by means of

comparing the wrong with the right. ‘Rhyming’ consisted of vertical diagrams

and horizontal ones, with the aim of illustrating the four tones and fanqie. From

the perspective of modern dictionary format, A Comprehensive Dictionary of

Chinese Characters is relatively complete and self-contained, and comprehensive

and integrated in function, hence a role model for the ancient Chinese diction-

ary format.

Zou Feng (1983), a contemporary Chinese scholar, remarks:

The prolonged history of Chinese dictionary compilation can be divided into three

stages: Wrstly, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, as a prelude to dictionary

compilation, can be seen as an embryo for large-scale dictionaries; secondly, The Jade

Chapters is representative of dictionary compilation during the growing time; thirdly, A

Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters assimilates the essence and experience of

all previous dictionary compilations, discards unreasonable elements, establishes a set of

principles for the compilation of large-scale dictionaries, and consequently the whole set

of principles of dictionary compilation takes shape. These immutable principles have

been followed generation after generation.

Zou Feng sums up four major renovations in A Comprehensive Dictionary of

Chinese Characters from the perspective of the dictionary format. First, both


formal and informal characters are covered, and the latter carries more weight

than previously. Such an attitude towards dictionary coverage not only opposes

the selection of odd characters, but also rectiWes the traditional prejudice of

‘attaching much more importance to formal characters than to informal ones’.

The principle of covering both formal and informal characters is thus established.

Second, the meaning item system is basically established. Various measures

are employed to Wnalize the meaning-centred Form–Pronunciation–Meaning

system, improving the phonetic notation by combining fanqie and direct phon-

etic notation. In terms of deWnition, the dictionary integrates and improves the

traditional deWning methods of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters,

laying emphasis on simple and plain deWnition. The dictionary initiates a more

scientiWc format for displaying meaning items, which starts with original mean-

ings followed by extended meanings. The dictionary also creates the patterns for

arranging meaning items of characters with multiple pronunciations, that is,

listing various pronunciation and meaning items of a character in accordance

with its various pronunciations, using the label * to show their divisions.

Another feature of The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters in the

treatment of meaning items is the revelation of multiple parts of speech and

multiple meanings of each entry character. This dictionary sets a precedent for

multiple parts of speech of a character to be presented in large-scale dictionaries,

and its profound inXuence can still be found in similar practices in modern

dictionaries. The dictionary brings into play a trinity of rhyme exempliWcation,

literature citation and annotation rectiWcation as well as a unity of deWnition and

exempliWcation. The facilitation of deWnition by means of exempliWcation makes

this dictionary distinct from its precedents.

Third, radicals are classiWed in a more logical manner. Two principles of

radical innovation are established in A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters. One is the radical Wxing principle. Radicals should be Wxed through

a combined consideration of form and meaning and priority should be given to

form when a balanced attention to both form and meaning is not achievable. The

other is the principle of radical sequencing and character sequencing within

radical sections. Both arrangements should follow the sequence of the number

of strokes in the form of the regular script. This dictionary simpliWes and

condenses the 540 radical sections of An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, the 542 of The Jade Chapters, and the 517 of The MagniWcent Chapters

into 214. This simpliWed radical system was in continuous use until the publica-

tion of the new edition of Ci Hai, which is an obvious manifestation of the

profound inXuence of the principle.


Finally, appendices are utilized in the dictionary to enhance eYciency. It was

from A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters that Chinese dictionaries

began to integrate the main body and the appendices into one whole. That

practice, boosting the utility of the dictionary, has been carried forward and

continues in present-day dictionaries.

16.4 a brief introduction to the masterpiecesof character dictionaries

Not only did Chinese character dictionary compilation in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties assimilate the quintessence of previous works and make outstanding

theoretical achievements but there also appeared in this period such important

lexicographical works as The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The

RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi.

The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters was compiled by Zhang Zilie of

the Ming Dynasty. Zhang Zilie, with Ergong as the courtesy name and Qishan as

the alternative name, was born in Lichen, Jiang Province in the Ming Dynasty

and died in the Qing Dynasty. As a member of the Naming Imperial Academy in

the late Shenzhen regime, he wrote a number of books, including The RectiWed

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. He declined many oYcial appointments from

the beginning of the Qing Dynasty and lived a secluded life in the Lucian

Mountain. He died at the age of eighty-six without descendants. There are varied

historical records regarding who wrote The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Char-

acters. One story claims that the dictionary was compiled either by Liao Wenying

(廖文英) or Zhang Zilie. According to the relevant accounts in The General

Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature,

the original version of The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters was attrib-

uted to Zhang Zilie, or Liao Wenying, or both of them. Another story claims that

the dictionary was Wrst compiled by Zhang Zilie, then purchased by Liao Weny-

ing, and put under Liao’s name. (See The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the

Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature, Volume 43, 1965). It can be

concluded with some justiWcation that Zhang Zilie was the author of the original

version of the dictionary.

The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters (twelve volumes) covered 33,000

Chinese characters. The classiWcation of radicals and the arrangement of charac-

ters were improved and enhanced in the light of the format of The Comprehensive


Dictionary of Chinese Characters, dividing the characters into 214 radical sections

and arranging them in accordance with the number of strokes in each radical

section, but it added 360 new headwords and 119 variant characters in the

‘Explanation’ part to the 33,179 original entry characters in The Comprehensive

Dictionary of Chinese Characters. Moreover, the dictionary cited new examples

and added new meaning items. Much emphasis was laid on the collection of

vulgar, dialectal, and neological meanings, including those of both content and

function words. The improvement made in The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters upon The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters comprised

the supplementation of characters as well as the rectiWcation of headwords, forms,

pronunciations, and meanings. As pointed out in its Style Guide, the dictionary

rectiWed many errors in The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters, such

as misspelled characters, characters mistakenly considered as being from ancient

prose or as informal characters, identical characters with diVerent annotations,

and diVerent characters with similar or contradictory annotations, etc., which

could either be mutually explained or be supported by reasonable examples. For

example, the word 刏 was described in A Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters as ‘pronounced as鸡 /ji/, the same as刲 and刺.* also pronounced as

脍 /kuai/, the same as脍’, but was described in The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters as ‘. . . in the old sound description,刽 and刏 are pronounced as the

Wrst sound /kuai/, whereas刏 and畿 the second sound /ji/’. In The Comprehensive

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, a character might have several indications of

fanqie in accordance with diVerent views held by scholars, while in The RectiWed

Dictionary of Chinese Characters, one character had only one indication of fanqie

and one pronunciation, which made the dictionary concise and explicit. As its

compilation was intended to supplement and rectify The Comprehensive Diction-

ary of Chinese Characters, The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters was

blemished for its failure to provide the titles of some reference books and for its

complicated and inaccurate citations.

In 1710, Emperor Kangxi assigned the compilation of The Imperial Dictionary

of Kangxi to a team of thirty scholars including Zhang Yushu and Chen Tingjing.

The dictionary was completed and published in 1716, with the preface written by

Emperor Kangxi. The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi was based on the revision

and enlargement of Mei Yingzuo’s The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and Zhang Zilie’s The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters. It

was the Wrst oYcial dictionary with the title字典 (zidian, character dictionary)

in the history of Chinese dictionary making. The 42-volume dictionary covered

47,035 entry characters, all of which were grouped into 214 radical sections. The

dictionary was divided into twelve parts, each denoted by the twelve earthly


branches and comprising three volumes. Both the 214 radicals in the dictionary

and the characters in each radical section were arranged in the sequence of the

number of strokes. The dictionary was prefaced with a style guide, general table

of contents, indexing, diVerentiation and rhyme diagrams, each of which occu-

pies one volume. ‘Indexing’ was designed for searching characters whose radicals

were not easily identiWable, and ‘diVerentiation’ for distinguishing groups of

characters with similar forms but diVerent meanings. The back matter included

‘Addendum’, which was used to collect unusual characters, and ‘Supplement’,

which was designed to cover characters without meanings or those whose

pronunciations and meanings are unknown.

The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi included in the front matter two rhyme

tables – The Techniques for Segmenting Rhymes (<字母切韵要法>) and The

Guidelines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds and Rhymes (<等韵切音指南>).The rhyme table referred to the diagram made on the basis of equivalent

rhyme studies, or, in other words, the diagram analysing rhymes and fanqie by

means of equivalent rhymes. The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi included the two

representative and inXuential rhyme tables with a view to facilitating users’

comprehension of various forms of fanqie in the dictionary. The Techniques for

Segmenting Rhymes mainly presented the actual pronunciations of the Chinese

characters at the time, while The Guidelines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds and

Rhymes reXected their pronunciations in earlier times, retaining the rhyme

patterns in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. The Techniques for Segmenting Rhymes

comprised two rhyme diagrams – The Internal Four-tone Rhyme Diagram (the

combination of consonants and vowels) and The Explicit Four-tone Equivalent

Rhyme Diagram (the combination of consonants, vowels, and tones). The Guide-

lines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds and Rhymes, with sixteen parts and twenty-

four rhyme diagrams, was a revision of A Guide to the Dictionary of Chinese

Rhymes (<切韵指南>) written by Liu Jian (刘鉴) in the Yuan Dynasty. Entries

in The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi start with phonetic notations, followed by

deWnitions. Under each entry the variants of the headword character in ancient

prose were listed Wrst, followed by the phonetic notations by means of fanqie in

the ancient dictionaries, such as The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes, The Dictionary of

Rhymes, The Rhyme Dictionary, ACollection of Rhymes (<韵会>), The Dictionaryof Standard Rhymes (<正韵>), etc. As a principle of phonetic notations and

deWnitions, the original pronunciations and meanings were given before the

variant pronunciations and extended meanings. The extended and loaned mean-

ings beyond the original meaning were both indicated by又 (in addition), after

which come deWnitions and explanations, coupled with citations from the

ancient classics.注 (Annotation) and疏 (Commentaries, Detailed Annotation)


below citations generally referred to those from the original books. The textual

research on the classics from which citations were taken were attached at the end

of the entry, indicated by 按 (Remark).

Zhou Zhongfu (周中孚) in the Qing Dynasty commended The Imperial

Dictionary of Kangxi as ‘the fruit of the philological studies in both ancient and

modern times and the peak of culture through all previous dynasties’ and ‘none

of the succeeding scholars involved in the study of Chinese characters could go

beyond The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi’. Naturally, The Imperial Dictionary of

Kangxi has remained a prominent and extensively used dictionary until the

present time. However, just like other dictionaries, this dictionary is by no

means impeccable. Its deWciencies mainly include incompleteness and inaccuracy

of interpretation, numerous errors, exclusion of most vulgar and colloquial

words, and Wnally defects in dictionary format design and lack of ease in

information retrieval.

16.5 the academic value and influence ofcharacter dictionaries of the ming and qing

dynasties

The period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties is a representative period of the

achievements in the development of Chinese civilization. The character diction-

aries of this period not only represent a conclusion of previous philological

studies but also exert a direct inXuence on the development of later character

dictionaries. Among them are The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Charac-

ters, The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and The Imperial Dictionary of

Kangxi, all of which are still held in high academic esteem and are commended as

models for Chinese character dictionaries.

The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters, a character dictionary of

great popularity in the Ming Dynasty, excels previous dictionaries in providing a

uniWed format, a scientiWc classiWcation of radicals, convenient indexing, plain

interpretations, rich content, and abundant citations. Practical and innovative,

the dictionary exerts a considerable inXuence on the history of Chinese diction-

ary compilation. It is, however, not free from deWciencies and errors, many of

which are rectiWed in The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters is intensively prescriptive, either

rectifying errors or conWrming the correct usage of vulgar forms, pronunciations,


and meanings illustrated in other dictionaries or collected from common ex-

amples of usage. The dictionary assimilates the latest achievements of traditional

linguistics and philology, for example the achievements of epigraphy, studies in

inscriptions on ancient bronzes and stone tablets from the time of the Song

Dynasty, and new insights into ancient Chinese phonology from the time of

Chen Di (陈第, 1541–1617) of the Ming Dynasty, to name just a few. In the

dictionary, the practice of notating far-fetched labial sounds has been discarded,

a wider coverage of language materials adopted, and the scope and content of the

reference books for interpretation have also been extended. It is noted in its Style

Guide that citations and references in the dictionary, especially those from the

classics, have been selected via a comprehensive search of the Buddhist and Taoist

Canons. Supplements have also been given to the illustrations in the old version

by selecting and editing materials from medical science to various other Welds.

Such approaches could best illustrate its extensiveness in language data collec-

tion. Zheng Zhenduo (郑振铎, 2000) reckons that The RectiWed Dictionary of

Chinese Characters surpasses The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters

in various respects. For instance, in the treatment of the variant forms of a certain

character, the latter puts them and their explanations in diVerent parts of the

dictionary according to their respective radicals, while the former not only

inherits such a method of arrangement but informs users of all the variant

forms in the entry of the regular form by listing them under the most commonly

used form.

When dealing with pairs of words that have the same meaning but diVerent

pronunciations, The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters gives

repeated interpretations in both entries of such words, whereas The RectiWed

Dictionary of Chinese Characters explains the similarities and diVerences of the

twowords in one entry and notes ‘see also . . .’ in the other to save space and eVort.

As for words with more than one pronunciation, The Comprehensive Dictionary of

Chinese Characters gives repeated interpretations in every entry whileThe RectiWed

Dictionary of Chinese Characters merely deWnes the word in one entry. When it

comes to phonetic notation, The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters

lists excessive variations and various methods of phonetic notation in pronunci-

ation, leaving the readers rather confused. The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters, however, provides only one pronunciation so as to reduce dissension.

Concerning deWnition and exempliWcation, The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters shows considerable improvements in that it polishes the deWnitions

in The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters to render them plain

and pellucid and enhances the completeness and preciseness of exempliW-

cation by paying greater attention to the integrality of quoted examples and


rectifying some errors in the examples in The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters. Although The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters was far from

Xawless, it laid the foundation for the compilation of The Imperial Dictionary of

Kangxi and exercised extensive and profound inXuence upon dictionary compil-

ation with respect to dictionary format, data collection, deWnition style, phonetic

notation, and theoretical generalization.

The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi remains a landmark monument and holds

an exceptionally important position in the history of Chinese dictionary com-

pilation. To begin with, this dictionary is most often noted for its grand coverage

of Chinese characters. It collects a total of 49,030 characters, including 1,995

repetitions of ancient characters, exceeding the 33,179 characters in The Compre-

hensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters and the 33,549 characters in The RectiWed

Dictionary of Chinese Character. According to the statistics put forward by the

Coverage Research Group of The Great Chinese Character Dictionary (<汉语大字典>), the number of characters in The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi amounts

to 49,174, with 46,128 entry characters and the rest non-entry characters. Another

account says that the number totals to 46,975.

Second, the dictionary is abundant in its collection of phonetic notations and

deWnitions. It initiates the approach of summarizing the similarities and diVer-

ences of the fanqie notations from diVerent rhyme dictionaries for the readers’

reference. It Wrst deals with the original pronunciations and meanings, then the

variant pronunciations and meanings, and, if any, the extended meaning and

interchangeable characters, both indicated by又 (also). The coverage of meaning

items is extremely complete. As shown in the preface, ‘the collection of pronun-

ciations and meanings is based primarily on An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and The Jade Chapters, supplemented by The Dictionary of Rhymes,

The Rhyme Dictionary, A Collection of Rhymes, The Dictionary of Standard

Rhymes. No pretermission is made of any adoptable pronunciation or meaning

in other character dictionaries.’

The dictionary not only collects plenty of meaning items from previous rhyme

dictionaries but also attaches great importance to new word meanings or those

emerging from the middle ancient period from the third to the ninth century AD

and loanwords borrowed into the Chinese language.

Third, the dictionary is remarkable for its aZuence of exempliWcation

accompanied by indications of citation sources. It is indicated in the preface of

the dictionary that ‘the absence of exempliWcation in various books is remedied by

extensive citations ranging from ancient classics to works of literati dating back to

the Han Dynasty to make the examples well-founded.’ All the examples in the

dictionary are listedwith the titles of the texts and arranged in chronological order.


Fourthly, this dictionary carries on the inheritance and development of pre-

vious character dictionaries. Emperor Kangxi once commented in his edict to

Master Scholar Chen Tingjing that ‘The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters is overly simple while The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters is,

by contrast, excessive.’ He commanded that a new dictionary should be compiled

to ‘amend the above two dictionaries and establish an everlasting paradigm for

dictionary compilation’. In this sense, The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi inherits

and advances the distillate of The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters

and The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters. On the one hand, it integrates

the merits of the two dictionaries by adopting their format and the 214 radicals

therein. On the other hand, improvements are made and new content is added to

make it more precise, more substantial, and better grounded than The Compre-

hensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters and The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters. In The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi, supplements are given for the

deWciencies and pretermission in The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Char-

acters, and these are summarizations and simpliWcations in The RectiWed Dic-

tionary of Chinese Characters. Moreover, rectiWcations are made of the errors in

the forms of characters in both books, adjustments to the inappropriate radical

sorting, and correction of the mistakes in stroke calculation.

Finally, importance is attached to the analysis of character structure and the

diVerentiation of meanings. The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi analyses the

structure of Chinese characters on the basis of An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and includes discussions in later dictionaries to help the

explanation of the form of the character and the clariWcation of strokes. In

addition to that, the dictionary possesses a wide coverage of variant forms of

characters. Another point worthy of attention is its brilliant discrimination of the

meanings of characters.

Over the 200 years since its publication, The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi has

exerted such a profound and far-reaching inXuence that there has been wide

adoption of the pronunciation, meaning, and examples of the characters in the

dictionary and the format of the dictionary has been repeatedly adopted in

subsequent compilations. As a large-scale character dictionary, The Imperial

Dictionary of Kangxi is, both practically and theoretically, a prominent achieve-

ment exerting a profound inXuence on succeeding dictionary compilers and

embodying the quintessence of classical and historical works, various schools

of thought, and a diverse literature. It is a driving force in the study of Confucian

classics, textology in the Qing Dynasty, especially in the academically Xourishing

age of the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods. As a handy reference work, the

dictionary exerted a subtle inXuence on various scholars engaged in academic


research in the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods. The achievements and inXuences of

The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi can be traced back to their source in the

compilers’ pragmatic understanding of dictionary compilation. The principles

of compilation established in the dictionary have been inherited and further

developed by dictionary compilers in modern times. The Imperial Dictionary of

Kangxi has continued the compilation tradition from An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters to The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters and

learned extensively from the merits of various previous lexicographical practices.

Meanwhile, it explores new paths towards the systematization, standardization,

and modernization of dictionary compilation.


17

THE FORMATION OFCHINESE WORDDICTIONARIES

THE character dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties occupy a sign-

iWcant position in the history of Chinese dictionary making. The period of

the Ming and Qing Dynasties is also reckoned to be a crucial time for the

development of Chinese word dictionaries. It is no exaggeration to say that

Chinese lexicography in the twentieth century would not be as glorious and

thriving without the attainments of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Word dic-

tionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties consist of four major extensions – the

derivatives of The Ready Guide, those of The Dictionary of Dialectal Words,

dictionaries of exegetic interpretations and explanations, and special-aspect

dictionaries (mainly dictionaries of function words and dictionaries of lexical

expressions).


With China confronting an earth-shattering transformation in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties, ancient Chinese knowledge, ideas, and beliefs in this new context were

subjected to a reform of their value systems. In response to such tremendous

changes, the Chinese intelligentsia who possessed long and abundant traditional

resources would customarily take the approach of reinterpreting the ancient

classics. Thus, Confucius’ classics were the Wrst to bear the brunt of re-interpretation

since, for a considerably long period in ancient China, Confucius’ classics had

been the most familiar mode of interpretation of knowledge, ideas, and beliefs for

Chinese intellectuals. The concept of ‘interpretation’ could be taken as a metaphor

for ‘transformation’ to depict the relationship of transference, interpretation, and

comprehension between the old learning and the new. The interpretational resources

that are easy to identify when one comes across incomprehensible learning are the set

of knowledge and value systems constructed through childhood readings and

examinations during adulthood. Such familiar and comprehensible old learning

and ideas would assist the imagination and reconstruction of the unfamiliar new

learning and recondite ideas. Besides, such a process of interpretationwould ease the

psychological shock arising from the encounter of new knowledge and ideas. In this

sense, the ancient Chinese classics and their relevant studies take on the dual

responsibilities of reserving and extending various forms of old knowledge and

ideas as well as ensuring the apprehension, acquisition of rationality, and validity

of new knowledge, ideas, and beliefs. It was in this historical context that textual

research gradually gained prevalence, turning the studies of classics into a laboratory

for textual research. The research methods for classic interpretation centring on

phonology, and exegesis and characters developed into the principal methodology

for rediscovering and reinterpreting the studies of ancient classics.

For a lengthy spell during theMing andQing Dynasties, intellectuals had been

deprived of the right to the interpretation of truth and the orientation of social

development as a result of the political suppression of inWdels, the imperial

monopoly of truth, and the complete annexation of ‘morality-governing’ by ‘rule-

governing’ with the moral commanding heights and the rationality base occupied

by the governing power. In order to cast oV the mantle of the public, oYcial, and

mainstream discourses, the literati gradually stepped into the temple of the textual

research of classics. As time went on, such practices became a vogue at that time,

which primarily prevailed in Jiangnan (the region south of the lower Yangtze River)

where scholars could enjoy a better subsistence atmosphere and later began to aVect

the intelligentsia throughout the country.

Ancient Chinese culture was, in the eyes of feudal governors, the systemization

of Confucianism, the kernel of which was the extension of imperial culture

into various domains. In that respect, the imperial court would advocate aca-

demic activities such as the personal and annotation of the classics as well as

relevant activities sorting traditional Chinese classics. Consequently, the oYcially

organized dictionary compilations embracing the annotation of words in

classics became the key feature of lexicographical culture in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties.

formation of word dictionaries 299

17.2 the evolution of lexicographical theoriesin the ming and qing dynasties

The fulcrum of lexicographic theories is semantic studies. Semantics in the Qing

Dynasty was actually the study of exegesis, which exceeded all previous dynasties

with its signiWcant accomplishments propelled by phonology. The reason for

such progress resided in the consensus gradually reached on research method-

ology among scholars of the Qing Dynasty, reXected in the following. First,

meanings are sought from pronunciations. Though scholars of the Qing Dynasty

did not originate this principle, it was compilers of the time, such as Duan Yucai

and Wang Niansun, who successfully employed it. Those scholars established a

scientiWc phonological system for ancient Chinese, thus enabling the realization

of the principle of ‘seeking meanings from pronunciations’. The practice of

deriving meanings from forms had the disadvantage of explaining the inter-

changeable words in the role of the regular base forms and explaining pairs of

alliterated or rhymed characters in their split forms, whereas the practice of

seeking meanings from pronunciations could overcome those traditional defects

in semantic studies. Second, meanings are sought from the laws of meaning

deduction. Duan Yucai was expert at establishing the laws of meaning deduction

and gave an accurate revelation of them in the annotations of classics in the Han

Dynasty. He stated:

Scholars in the Han Dynasty annotated the Classics by raising doubts and making

rectiWcations about meanings of characters, which are exempliWed as ‘读如,读若’

(pronounced like, read like), ‘读为,读曰’ (read in the same way as) and ‘当为’ (treated

in the same way as). (The Explanatory RectiWcation of the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty,

Author’s Preface, <周礼汉读考�自序>)

He explicitly proposed the systematicity of meanings and the basic method-

ology for commanding this system, stating that characters had their basic mean-

ing, extended meaning, and borrowed interchangeable meaning. (Explanations of

the Characters 亯 and 飨: A Case Study, in A Collection of Classic Rhyme House,

Volume 11). For instance, the original meaning of the character 亯 is ‘sacriWces

oVered to gods or ancestors’, which is extended to mean ‘whatever is oVered from

subordinates to superiors’. The character can be interchangeably used with飨 for

their identical pronunciation. Duan Yucai successfully employed the laws of

seeking meanings from examples in composing treatises such as The Stories

of Mizhou (<密州说>) and The Discrimination of 杀 and 弑 in the Spring and


Autumn Classics (<春秋经杀弑二字辨别考>) (see ACollection of Classic Rhyme

House, Volume 4). Third, meanings are sought by collecting exempliWcations

from extensive references. Wang Niansun noted in The Miscellaneous Notes in

Reading (<读书杂志>) that the accuracy of their works was such that tens of

thousands of books had been consulted for the explanation of just one character.

Wang Yinzhi mentioned in The Interpretation of Classics and Scriptures that, in

the correction of whatever mistakes were made by ancient scholars, the original

meaning was acquired through extensive quotations and sinuous evidence. The

practice of ‘consulting tens of thousands of books, i.e. extensively’ and ‘relying on

extensive quotations and sinuous evidence’ manifested the principle of ‘seeking

meanings by collecting exempliWcation from wide-ranging references’ for

detailed supporting materials and hence the deduction of a scientiWc conclusion.

The detection of the problem goes before its evidence. In this sense, evidence

Wnding is scholarship. That is the reason why Wang Yinzhi deemed that, when

annotating classics, one should make extensive consultation of various relevant

materials. No explanation should be made of a sentence if the whole book has not

been comprehended, neither of a work of the classics if various other pieces have

not been apprehended. Only through wide-ranging consultation is a scientiWc

deduction possible. Any non-serious explanation based on only a couple of

citations casually chosen is a far cry from ‘collecting exempliWcation from

extensive references’.

The discussion of scholars in the Qing Dynasty about the principles of ‘seeking

meanings from pronunciations’, ‘seeking meanings from the laws of meaning

deduction’ and ‘seeking meanings by collecting exempliWcation from extensive

references’ represented not only the fruit of their in-depth reXection of semantic

theories but also an exhaustive theoretical exploration of deWnitions and quota-

tions in Chinese word dictionaries before the Qing Dynasty, an endeavour which

laid the academic foundation for the formation of Chinese word dictionaries,

especially in respect of microstructural formation and perfection.

17.3 the development of format and stylein the ming and qing dynasties

In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the emergence of such new dictionary types as

dictionaries of function words and regional dialect dictionaries demonstrated

unique features of and reXections on word dictionary compilation of the time.


A distinctive feature of word dictionary compilation in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties was the rapid expansion of dictionaries of function words that were

not only huge in number and length but excellent in quality also. Among them

were The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words written by Liu Qi, The

Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies by Wang Yinzhi, and

The Studies in Function Words by Yuan Renlin. These dictionaries were rather

remarkable in their entry setting. The function words collected from classics,

historical and philosophical works, poetry and prose, and folk sayings from

the time of the pre-Qin Dynasty, were arranged in the order of rhyme sections,

and subsequently the four tones of the words. With plentiful exempliW-

cations and complete meaning items, these dictionaries Wrst presented a brief

explanation of the usages of the word, and then expounded every usage with

quotations from ancient books. The delicate classiWcation, accurate discrimin-

ation of usages, exhaustive tracing of the genesis, and historical development of

function words collectively illuminated the eminence of those dictionaries

of function words.

For over one thousand years, since Yang Xiong erected a monument to the

history of Chinese dictionary compilation with The Dictionary of Dialectal Words

in the Han Dynasty, there had been a sombre decline in the compilation of dialect

dictionaries. The only product in that period was the three volumes of The Ready

Guide for the Shu Dialect (<蜀尔雅>) by Li Shangyin (李商隐) included in The

General RectiWcation of Literature (<文献通考>). It was not until the Ming and

Qing Dynasties that the compilation of dialect dictionaries regained momentum

and sprinted into rapid development with advances in both quality and quantity.

Dialect dictionaries of that period fell into two categories: one type aimed at the

elucidation, emendation, supplementation, and continuation of The Dictionary

of Dialectal Words. These dictionaries were compiled for error rectiWcation,

explanation of minute meanings, and supplementation of the content of The

Dictionary of Dialectal Words; and the other type consisted of the newly compiled

dialect dictionaries, most of which dealt with regional dialects including those

of the ‘Shu’, ‘Wu-Xia’, and ‘Yue’ regions, and so forth. These dictionaries involv-

ing ‘regional’ dialects reinforced and enriched the content of Chinese dialect

dictionaries.

If perceived from the aspect of microstructure, the dictionaries of the Ming

and Qing Dynasties also possessed some salient characteristics: in terms of

dictionary format, The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics, which listed

characters as well as words, bore the dual functions of both a character and a

word dictionary. In the histories of both Chinese philology and dictionary


compilation, the Wrst systematic and thorough categorizations of Chinese

function words appeared in The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words,

which divided function words into thirty categories such as word repetition,

word omission, auxiliary words, and sentence breaking, and in The Dictionary

of Function Words in Lections and Biographies, which grouped them into

six categories: common function words, auxiliary words, interjections,

words signalling mood at the initial position of a sentence, interchangeably

used words, and words with extensions of original meanings. Scholars in

the Qing Dynasty also conducted an unprecedented exploration and summar-

ization with respect to how Chinese function words should be explained.

Qian Xizuo (钱熙祚) generalized the following six approaches of explaining

function words in the postscript of The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections

and Biographies: (a) supporting explanations with similar quotations; (b)

contrasting explanations with diVerent citations; (c) detecting similarities in

meanings with mutual explanations of words; (d) deducing meanings

from examples in other versions; (e) inferring from ancient annotations;

and (f) evidencing with quotations by later scholars. His generalization

makes a signiWcant contribution to the Chinese lexicographical deWnition

theory and the construction of microstructure in treating function words,

Wlling in the gaps in the theoretical exploration of dictionary compilation in

previous dynasties. The Dictionary of Dialectal Words simply listed the

explanation and comparison of the meanings of dialect words, eliding

the detailed notation of various pronunciations of the words in diVerent

regions. In contrast, The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect not only deWned dialectal

words in common language but also provided the clear and accurate phonetic

annotation of each word. The regional dialect dictionaries of the Ming and

Qing Dynasties attached great importance to textual research on the origin of

the dialectal folk language. As a typical example, The Dictionary of the Shu

Dialectmade a particular exploration of the sources of dialectal words. Records

in The Annals of Zunyi Prefecture (<遵义府志>) show that The Dictionary of

the Shu Dialect consulted nearly eighty per cent of all the resources available in

search of the origins of words. Another example is Proverbs of the Yue Dialect

(<越谚>), which makes an exhaustive inquiry into the origin of the Yue dialect

by the mutual corroboration between ancient and the then contemporary

materials. The General Ready Guide is still another case in point, which coped

with the absence of exempliWcation and counterexamples in previous versions

of The Ready Guide by providing both of them in the deWnitions to remove

some tough problems regarding meanings of words.


17.4 a brief introduction to the masterpiecesof word dictionaries in the ming

and qing dynasties

The dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties fall into the following four

categories: dictionaries patterned after The Ready Guide (the Erya dictionary

family), those patterned after The Dictionary of Dialectal Words (the Fangyan

dictionary family), dictionaries of exegetic explanations, and function word

dictionaries. An introduction to the masterpieces of each category will be pro-

vided to outline the evolutionary progression of dictionaries in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties. The introduction of major function word dictionaries will be

presented in the next chapter.

The Erya dictionary familyThemost immediate inXuence of the publicationofTheReadyGuideon the evolution

ofChinesecultureover thepast twothousandyearsWndsexpressionintheformationof

the Erya studies and the compilation of dictionaries modelled on it. In the history of

over two thousand years of Chinese lexicographical culture, The Ready Guide, An

Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The Dictionary of Rhymes, and diction-

aries derived from each of them have collectively woven the three main historical

threads of the development ofChinese dictionaries. Comparedwith the previous Erya

dictionaries, works in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were superior for their more

standardized formats, more comprehensive functions and more diverse styles, essen-

tially shaping their particular compiling styles, formats, and patterns.

The Rhythmical Ready Guidewas compiled by ZhuMouwei in 1587. ZhuMouwei,

whose courtesy names were Mingfu and Yuyi and who was from Haozhou, had

perused awide collection of classics and historicalworks.Hewas acquaintedwith the

literary quotations from the imperial court and wrote 112 books, such as The Classic

Account of Poetry (<诗故>), A Famed Record of the Spring and Autumn Period

(<春秋戴记>), Shui Jing Annotations and Commentaries (<水经注笺>), Notes onLu’s Arguments (<鲁论笺>), and New Manuscripts from the Citrange Garden (<枳园近稿>). Concerning the naming of The Rhythmical Ready Guide, Yu Changzuo

(余长祚) explained in the Preface to the dictionary that with the character 骈

signifying two horses walking in parallel, the naming of the dictionary implied the

harmony between forms and meanings and indicated that the entry word and its

explanation were both alliterative and rhyming compounds of two syllables.


The dictionary mostly provided the classiWcation and explanation of alliterated or

two-syllable rhymed compounds collected from the classics, historical and philo-

sophical works, poetry and prose dating back to the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties,

and even as far as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and to the Tang and Song

Dynasties if encyclopedias were also taken into account. The seven-volume diction-

ary was divided into thirteen categories, explaining archaic words, exegetic words,

appellations, words for buildings, garments and foods, utensils, astronomy, geog-

raphy, herbs, woods, insects, worms and Wshes, birds and beasts. The Rhythmical

ReadyGuidewas helpful in the study of alliterative or rhyming compounds. Itsmajor

defect resulted fromZhuMouwei’s ignorance of ancient phonology, which led to his

inability to analyse alliterated or rhymed words from a phonetic perspective, hence

the deWciencies in word explanation and entry arrangement.

The General Ready Guide was compiled by Fang Yizhi of the Ming Dynasty.

Fang Yizhi, from Tongcheng, whose courtesy names were Dazhi, Mizhi, Wuke,

Yaozhen, Hongzhi, and Master Yuzhe, became a monk after the Manchurian

troops invaded the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. He was knowledgeable

and wrote books such as Fine Observations of Nature (<物理小识>), The

Fushan Collection (<浮山集>), and The General Ready Guide. The General

Ready Guide was compiled as from 1641 and published in 1663, with Wfty-two

volumes in the main body and three volumes in the front matter. The three

volumes in the front matter, namely ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Meanings

and Pronunciations’, ‘Succinct ClassiWcation of Readings’, and ‘Preliminary

Introduction to Philology’ and ‘Aesthetic Notes on Poets and Poetry’ were a

synoptic discussion of some essential views on philology, which worked in

concert with the content of the main part of the work. The Wfty-two volumes

comprising the main body of the work were arranged as follows, with volumes

1 and 2 explaining ancient seal characters and ancient pronunciations; volumes 3

to 10, annotations; volumes 11 and 12, words in astronomy; volumes 13 to 17,

words in geography; volume 18, words of the human body; volume 19, terms of

address; volumes 20 and 21, family and given names; volumes 22 to 25, oYcial

administrative systems; volumes 26 and 27, administrative systems and institu-

tions; volume 28, etiquette; volume 29, rituals; volume 30, music and dances;

volumes 31 to 35, utensils; volumes 36 and 37, clothes; volume 38, buildings;

volume 39, food and drink; volume 40, arithmetic; volume 41 to 44,

plants; volume 45 to 47, animals; volume 48, inscriptions; volume 49, origin of

proverbs; volume 50, origin of rhymes and sounds; volume 51, pulse checking,

and volume 52, explanations of ancient recipes. The General Ready Guide brought

together diverse aspects of textual research in the explanations, sounds, and

rhymes as well as the names and deWnitions of various objects, giving priority


to the explanations of the words. Moreover, the writer’s own argumentations

against inaccurate explanations as well as his perspectives on some intractable

problems were put forward. The dictionary preserved an abundant databank of

ancient characters and words, with the immense addition of new words and

characters from the Tang Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, hence a marvellous

reference for the exploration of the genesis of ancient characters and words as

well as the study of words in the Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties.

The Buddhist Ready Guide (<佛尔雅>, eight volumes) was compiled by Zhou

Chun (周春, 1729–1815) from Haining, whose courtesy name was Song’ai. Zhou

Chun, a proliWc writer, was erudite and keen on ancient study and wrote A Brief

Introduction to Phonetic Sounds in Thirteen Scriptures (<十三经音略>, thirteenvolumes), The Chinese Book of Filial Virtues (<中文孝经>, one volume), The

Preliminary Annotation to the Ready Guide (<尔雅初注>, four volumes), and

The Buddhist Ready Guide. His outstanding accomplishments in Buddhist scrip-

tures were noted in Biographies of Confucian’ Scholars in the Qing Dynasty (<清儒学案>) as being the result of extensive perusal of over six hundred Buddhist

scriptures, which equipped him with the groundwork for his compilation of The

Buddhist Ready Guide. Informed of his friend’s intention of compiling The

Buddhist Book of Filial Virtues (<佛孝经>), he recognized the immediate indis-

pensability of another book to go with it, that is The Buddhist Ready Guide.

Subsequently, he exerted himself in an endeavour to compile and collate The

Buddhist Ready Guide and Wnalized it within three months. The eight-volume

dictionary comprised Wfteen chapters, which successively interpreted in each

volume appellations and terms, exegetic words, relatives, buildings, music, as-

tronomy, geography, mountains, waters, herbs, woods, Wshes, birds and beasts.

The words embraced in the dictionary covered eight categories: (a) Buddhist

titles such as the appellations of Buddha, Bodhisattva, Arhat, Master of Disser-

tation, Master of Explanation, King, Senior, and other gods (see ‘Explaining

Appellations’); (b) Buddhist terms concerning etiquette, disciples, parts of the

human body, languages in the Western Regions, Buddhist classics, measurements

of time and substance, motions, conditions, ghosts and humans, diseases, com-

mon principles, etc.; (c) Buddhist history and sects; (d) buildings such as

temples, Jingshe (living or preaching places for monks and priests), towers,

birth places of Buddha, etc.; (e) astronomy and geography, covering various

Buddhist heavens, the sun, the moon, and stars, weather, Buddha’s lands,

Buddhist Holy Lands, countries, and various heavens in ancient India and

theWestern Regions, HolyMountains and ordinary mountains, rivers, continents

mentioned in Buddhist scriptures, etc.; (f) plants such as herbs, crops, Xowers,

trees, fruits, and some types of bamboo and vegetable, etc.; (g) creatures and


animals, such as insects, aquatics (including reptiles), various kinds of birds and

beasts, etc.; (h) utensils and stuV, such as instruments and vestments for Bud-

dhist rites, ordinary textiles, household appliances, food and drink, medicines,

jewellery, colours, Buddhist music and musical instruments, etc. In China, the

translation of Buddhist scriptures once thrived to an unprecedented degree with

the translation of 1,690 books (6,420 volumes in all) of Buddhist sutras, doc-

trines, and analects. However, the linguistic obscurity of the translations required

additional annotation of the words and characters from the scriptures. Further-

more, indexing in most translations turned out to be inconvenient. By contrast,

The Buddhist Ready Guide distinguishes itself with its highly convenient arrange-

ment of words on the basis of the categorization of things and their matching

terms.

The ReWned Ready Guide (<彬雅>) was compiled by Hu Chenggong (胡承珙,

1776–1832), whose courtesy names were Jingmeng and Mozhuang and who was

born in Jingxian, Anhui Province. He wrote books such as An Epilogue to Mao’s

Book of Songs (<毛诗后笺>), The Ancient Interpretation of the Ready Guide

(<尔雅古义>), The Ancient and Contemporary Exegesis of Etiquette and Rites

(<仪礼古今义疏文>), The Collected Poems and Prose of Qiushi Academy (<求是堂诗文集>), The RectiWcation of the Pocket Ready Guide (<小尔雅义疏>), andThe ReWned Ready Guide, the last of which was compiled during the mourning

leave for his parents, Wnished in 1846 and printed and published in 1881 by Yilin

Publishing House.

The eight-volume The ReWned Ready Guide concerned itself with the explan-

ation of 801 words categorized into ninety-Wve radical sections which were

arranged in accordance with the number of strokes of each radical. From volume

1 to 7, the number of strokes of each radical determined the volume number.

Radicals of more than seven strokes were assembled in volume 8. The approach of

textual criticism was employed in the explanations in The ReWned Ready Guide,

presenting the meanings of the words supported by extensive quotations and

rectifying the errors of previous scholars. The scope of research of The ReWned

Ready Guide mainly covered the annotation of philology, sounds and rhymes,

exegesis, collations, etc. in ancient classics and scriptures and the textual research

on ancient ritual articles and notions of historical regions.

There were also two other dictionaries compiled in Emperor Tongzhi’s reign in

the Qing Dynasty, which deserve mentioning: The Ready Guide of the Huzhou

Prefecture (<湖雅>) and The Alternating Ready Guide. Both dictionaries distin-

guished themselves with their concentrated specialization and elaborated clas-

siWcation. The Ready Guide of the Huzhou Prefecture was compiled by Wang

Yuezhen (汪曰桢) in the Tongzhi Reign of the Qing Dynasty. Wang Yuezhen


adopted The Annals of Wuxing, Jiatai (<嘉泰吴兴志>) as the primary source,

previous records of the prefecture and subordinate counties as reinforcements

and The Ready Guide, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, The

Exegesis on Poetry (<诗疏>), The Compendium of Materia Medica as documen-

ted evidence. Apart from the above, Wang Yuezhen also carried out an elaborate

selection of entries based on his comparison of the consulted books as well as his

own observations to deliver in the dictionary a classiWed explanation of the

products, customs, utensils and appliances of the Huzhou prefecture. The

Ready Guide of the Huzhou Prefecture comprised nine volumes, the titles of

which were as follows: Volume 1, grains and vegetables; Volume 2, melons, fruits,

and teas; Volume 3, medicines and Xorae; Volume 4, herbs, woods and bamboos;

Volume 5, birds, beasts, dragons, and snakes; Volume 6, Wshes, coccids, worms,

and insects; Volume 7, metals, jades and stones, silk Xosses, cloths and silk

textiles; Volume 8, brewage, pastries, and cuisines; Volume 9, utensils and

appliances, vehicles and Wrewood. A resemblance could be discerned in the

compilation format of The Ready Guide of the Huzhou Prefecture to such dic-

tionaries as The Augmented Ready Guide and The Extended Ready Guide. The

Alternating Ready Guide, compiled by Shi Menglan in the Qing Dynasty, was

published in 1864. Complying with the format of The Ready Guide, this thirteen-

volume dictionary possessed an extensive coverage of the assonant compounds

appearing in ancient classics, historical and philosophical works, poetry and

prose as well as various annotations. As remarked in the preface of the dictionary,

characters in assonant compounds with similar meanings but diVerent forms

were categorized into the same sections while those with the same form but

diVerent meanings into diVerent sections. For characters in assonant compounds

sharing the same pronunciation and form and referring to each other, distinction

was made in regard to their forms as in The Distinctive Ready Guide and

manifestations of the sameness of their meaning as in The General Ready

Guide. The Alternating Ready Guide investigated the origin of the words and

provided exhaustive annotations on the deWnition of the words. For whatever

was cited in the dictionary, detailed information was provided with regard to the

name of books and articles and the time of the writer as well, rendering the

indexing system extremely helpful. Besides the above-mentioned dictionaries,

the Qing Dynasty also boasted The Contrastive Ready Guide and The Distinctive

Ready Guide. The former was compiled by Hong Liangji in keeping with the

format of The Ready Guide. This Wve-volume dictionary functioned as a conver-

gence of ancient exegesis, an explanation of synonyms in ancient Chinese, and

hence a desirable reference for research into language, literature, and studies of

the meanings of words. The latter was compiled by Wu Yujin and published in


the reign of Emperor Qianlong. Primarily concerned with the explanation of

two-syllable compounds, the dictionary listed the variant forms of each word

with their respective sources, demonstrating the relationships of interchangeabil-

ity, transferred deWnition, or loaning among the words.

Related to dictionaries in the family of The Ready Guide are its annotated

versions, the publication of which took place in various Chinese dynasties,

particularly in the Qing Dynasty. The Exegesis of the Ready Guide, written by

Hao Yixing in 1822, is generally considered the most detailed and popular

annotation characterized by the writer’s Weld research on most of the words

regarding herbs, woods, insects, worms and Wshes and his courageous rectiWca-

tion of various feudal superstitions handed down from previous dynasties. The

dictionary, being phonetics-oriented, employed the method of phonetic inter-

pretation in its endeavour to annotate The Ready Guide and explain and diVer-

entiate words so as to ascertain the character adoption from The Ready Guide and

other ancient works so as to achieve mutual corroboration with the deWnitions in

The Ready Guide.

The Fangyan dictionary familyThe Fangyan dictionary family members in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were

roughly categorized into two types: those elucidating, emending, supplementing,

and augmenting The Dictionary of Dialectal Words and those new compilations,

most of which are dictionaries of regional dialectal words, involving dialects used

in such regions as the ‘Shu’, ‘Wu-Xia’, and ‘Yue’ regions. These works reinforce

and enrich the substance of Chinese dialect dictionaries. The recorded diction-

aries of dialectal words in the Ming Dynasty include The RectiWed Dictionary of

Dialectal Words, A Categoric Dictionary of Dialectal Words, and The Dictionary of

the Shu Dialect. The Qing Dynasty represents a Xourishing period of dialect

compilations, comprising three categories: (a) dictionaries elucidating and

emending The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, such as The RectiWcation of the

Dictionary of Dialectal Words written by Dai Zhen, The RectiWed Dictionary of

Dialectal Words with New RectiWcations by Lu Wenshao, The Annotated Interpret-

ation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Qian Yi, and Supplements to the

RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Wang Niansun; (b) diction-

aries supplementing and extending The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, such as The

Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words written by Hang Shijun, Supplements

and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Cheng

Jisheng, New Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary of

Dialectal Words by Xu Naichang, The Broadly Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal


Words with Supplements by Cheng Xianjia, and New Supplements to the Aug-

mented Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Zhang Shenyi; (c) newly compiled

dictionaries, which may be subdivided into two types: (i) those collecting

dialectal words in famous works such as Li Diaoyuan’s The Dialectal Dictionary

of Literary Embellishments, which explains the dialectal words collected from

both ancient and contemporary poetry and prose; (ii) those expounding

regional dialects such as Hu Wenying’s The Dictionary of Textual Researches

on the Wu-Xia Dialect, which collected and investigated into the dialects in the

Changzhou, Wuxi, and Suzhou regions and Du Xuxu’s An Explanatory Diction-

ary of the Yue Dialect, which explored the origin of words in the Yue dialect. The

following is a concise introduction to the masterpieces of dictionaries of

dialectal words.

The Dictionary of the Shu Dialectwas compiled by Li Shi, who lived in seclusion

in Suzhou for thirty years after the fall of theMing Dynasty. Li Shi, whose courtesy

name was Rushi, from Suining, Sichuan Province, was a proliWc writer whose

works on language included The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect and The Dictionary

of the Wu Dialect (<吴语>). In the Preface to The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect, Li

Shi mentioned that he was born and brought up in the villages in the Shu Region

and was immersed in the Shu dialect. Yet confused by the strokes of the characters,

he had no time to research the dialect until he resided in Changzhou where he

began the study of the Shu dialect. He claimed that there was no diVerentiation of

inferiority and superiority between standard words and folk words from his

humble perspective and that both could function alike in communication. This

view had not been raised and fully recognized until the 1970s, when sociolinguis-

tics gained some momentum. The background to and motive for Li Shi’s com-

pilation of The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect can be best illustrated by his mention

of ‘fondness of speaking his native dialect as a reminder of his origin’. According to

FuDingmiao (傅定淼, FuDingmiao, 1987), Li Shi’s year of birthwas between 1606

and 1614 and the year of his death between 1684 and 1692. The Dictionary of the Shu

Dialect was compiled and published between 1673 and 1692. Explaining the words

of the Sichuan (Shu) dialect, the dictionary ranks among the earliest existing

dictionaries to investigate regional folk languages. The 564 entry words of the Shu

dialect included in the dictionary are treated with neither classiWcation nor

volume division. Meanings of the words are followed by their pronunciations.

The words covered included general terms, interpersonal appellations, human

actions, and properties and states.

The entries started with the explanation of the meanings, followed by phonetic

notations, as in ‘皮裂曰皴,皴音村’ and ‘露牙曰龅,龅音报’. As far as dictionary

format was concerned, The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect lacked a reasonable


sequence for word arrangement, resulting in diYcult access and retrieval of

information.

The Dictionary of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect was compiled by Hu

Wenying, whose courtesy names were Shengyan and Zhiyu and who was born in

Wujin, Jiangsu Province, in the Qing Dynasty, with the date of birth and death

unknown. According to Chen Zhen (陈真, 1984), the date of birth of Hu Wenying

goes back to the last years of the reign of Emperor Yongzheng (1723–1735) or to the

early years of the reign of Emperor Kangxiwhile the date of his death to the last years

of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, or even to the Wrst years of the reign of Emperor

Jiaqing. Rather than being unruly, Hu Wenying was ‘restrained’. Integrated and

open-minded, he would be content with living reclusively, playing musical instru-

ments, and singing songs to entertain himself. Learned and adept at writing, he was

quiet in his leisure and principled when travelling. In addition to The Dictionary of

Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect, Hu Wenying’s other works include

Original Commentaries on Zhuang Zi (<庄子独见>), The Interpretation of Poetry

(<诗疑义释>), The General Interpretation of Mao’s Book of Songs (<毛诗通义>),and Supplements to the Exegesis on Poetry (<诗疏补遗>). The compilation of The

Dictionary of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect started in 1753 or 1754,

Wnished in 1760 andwas sent for publication in 1783. The twenty-volume dictionary

studies the phonetics of words in the Wu dialect with evidence from ancient books

for the supplementation to classics and historical works from the perspective ofWu

dialect pronunciation. For every word or sentence in the books he read and every

folk saying he heard in the streets, Hu Wenying would consult ancient documen-

tation to explore their meanings. In the front matter of the dictionary are the

prefaces by Qian Renlin (钱人麟) and by the author himself, guide to use, and

table of contents. The dictionary listed 993 entries of dialectal words in the Changz-

hou, Wuxi, and Suzhou regions and arranged them in twelve volumes, Wrst accord-

ing to the pingshui rhyme and then the order of the four tones. Each entry was

signiWed by the original formof the character, whichwas followed by the notation of

pronunciation and tone with Chinese characters as well as relevant citations. Then,

explanations of the words in the citations were given in the form of notes. Finally,

the dialectal words and expressions in the Wu dialects were presented (marked by

*) together with their brief and concise explanations. The Dictionary of Textual

Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect is of signiWcant reference value in the textual

research of words. Hu Wenying made such outstanding achievements in detailed

textual research that even today’s research on the original form and genesis of

dialectal words cannot surpass in many respects what he accomplished. However,

the dictionary’s blemishes lie in its occasional inaccuracy in the phonetic study,

far-fetched interpretation of words due to improper understanding, and the


diYculty in consultation for lack of speciWc indications of chapters and reference

sources.

Mention should be made, lastly, of two more dictionaries – The Augmented

Dictionary of Dialectal Words and The Broadly Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal

Words with Supplements. The former was a collection of over 500 dialectal words

from over ten types of ancient classics such as The Annotated RectiWcation of

Thirteen Scriptures (<十三经注疏>). This two-volume dictionary adopted from

The Ready Guide the classiWcation and arrangement of words and provided

references of citations and in some cases the phonetic notation of fanqie and

collative explanations as well. Employing the same format of Hang Shijun’s The

Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words and Cheng Jisheng’s The RectiWed

Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words, the latter supplemented the two dic-

tionaries by providing citations dating back to the Tang Dynasty. Consisting of

four volumes and 18 categories, this dictionary is of considerable reference value

with its extensive quotations of dialectal words.

Dictionaries of exegetic explanationAlthough there are a huge number of annotations in ancient Chinese works, their

scattered distribution in various books has rendered consultation diYcult. Wang

Yinzhi recalls in the Preface to The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics that

previous scholars, such as Dai Dongyuan (戴东原) and Zhu Sihe (朱笥河), had

tried in vain the compilation of dictionaries of annotations. His teacher Yuntai

(芸台) also proposed such a compilationwith SunYuanru (孙渊如), later joined by

Zhu Shaohe (朱少河). Nonetheless, the project was aborted. It was not until Ruan

Yuan’s compilation of The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics that things

began to change. Ruan Yuan, from Yizheng, Jiangsu Province, whose courtesy

nameswere Boyuan andYuntai, had been appointedGrand Scholar of Tiren Library

and Governor of Hunan and Hubei, Guangdong and Guangxi, Yunnan and Gui-

zhou Provinces. The compilationwas carried out during his oYce of Administrator

of Education in Zhejiang Province. Led by ZangYongtang (臧镛堂, also ZangYong,

臧镛) as the chief compiler, the group of thirty-three selected scholars completed

the dictionary in two years and had it published in 1798.

Employing the arrangement of A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles, The Exegetic

Interpretations of Ancient Classics listed its character and word entries in 106

rhythmic volumes in the order of the four tones, with each volume representing a

rhyme. The dictionary included annotations of 13, 349Chinese characters (exclusive

of variant forms) collected from more than one hundred books prior to the Tang

Dynasty ranging from exegesis of ancient classics, historical, and philosophical


works, to books of annotations, characters, rhymes, and pronunciations as well.

Detailed information concerning the names of books, articles, and volume numbers

of the citations were provided in the dictionary to produce a conXuence of

approximately all the ancient exegesis of characters and annotations in various

ancient books. The dictionary covered words as well as characters. Besides the

characters in A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles, other characters and words from

The Dictionary of Rhymes and The Rhyme Dictionarywere also supplemented in the

dictionary. The explanations of meanings started with the original meanings of the

entries, followed by the extended meanings and interchangeable meanings. Poly-

phonic characters were categorized according to diVerent rhymes into their respect-

ive volumes where explanations were given separately. In terms of dictionary

format, The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics retained all the explanations,

brief or detailed, of the same character or word without addition or removal.

It is thus evident that The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics possessed

the dual functions of the Chinese character dictionary and word dictionary. The

chief Xaw of the dictionary lay in its inaccuracy and errors in the collation of

citations resulting from group compilation.

17.5 the academic value and influence of worddictionaries in the ming and qing dynasties

The word dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties function not only as

a summarization of the study of ancient classics of the time but also as an

indispensable tool for subsequent readers perusing ancient classics. The textual

research on the keywords of Confucian classics conducted by researchers in the

mid-Qing Dynasty are, in essence, circuitous challenges to the mainstream ideolo-

gies of the time and an eVort to cast oV the shadow of their deprived right to

the interpretation of truth. Such intentions are well expressed by Dai Zhen:

The summit of Confucian classics indicates the law of the universe, the enlightenment of

which relies on the words of the classics, which are subordinately formed by characters.

The comprehension of the law of the universe is a gradual process achieved through the

apprehension of the characters in the classics which lead to the formation of the words.

Dai Zhen also believes that because of the great distance in time from the

ancient sages, scholars could only learn the law of the universe in the Six Classics.

These classics written in ancient times expound profound speculations upon the


law of the universe and give succinct discussions about the systems of the times

according to the comprehension level of the learners of the time. However,

tracing the law of the universe in a remote dynasty hundreds of years ago is by

any means diYcult. Therefore, the study of the classics should start from

understanding the words, then the sentences, and Wnally the enlightenment of

the law of the universe bearing on the classics (see The Collected Works of Dai

Zhen, Volume 9:140; Volume 11:164–5, 1974). Such judgement and cognitive

sequence of the truth in classics has acquired wide acceptance among textual

researchers that the process should start from the exploration of character

meanings to the identiWcation of word meanings, then the analysis of sentence

meaning, and Wnally the interpretation of truth. Naturally following from such

acceptance is the social and political signiWcance of word dictionary compilation

by scholars in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

The academic value and inXuences of the word dictionaries in the Ming and

Qing Dynasties are evident in diverse respects. First, using the groundwork of

previous studies, dictionary compilers of this period brought about new devel-

opments in the research of lexicographical theories and relevant Welds, which was

primarily reXected in the front matter of the dictionaries. Ruan Yuan presented in

the front matter of The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics discussions on

the content, scope, and norms of terms of exegesis, which could be regarded as an

exegetic dissertation of admirable academic accomplishment with great sign-

iWcance to Chinese exegesis. The General Ready Guidemade several discoveries in

the semantics of ancient Chinese words by explicitly proposing the principles of

‘understanding the ancient phonetics prior to the apprehension of ancient

semantics’ (the front volume) and ‘seeking the meaning from the pronunciation

and inferring the pronunciation through the meaning’ (Volume 6).

The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words, compiled by Liu Qi, gives a

careful classiWcation and an accurate discrimination of the usages of function

words with an extensive range of resources and detailed argumentations. Re-

gardless of cases of non-compliance with the exegetic principles of explanation,

errors in citations and deWnitions, illogicality in categorization methods, the

dictionary still ranks as the Wrst in the history of Chinese language studies to

carry out such an exhaustive analysis, categorization, and interpretation of

function words. Being a major breakthrough and innovation in the study of

Chinese function words and the compilation of function word dictionaries,

The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words established a signiWcant frame

of reference for the compilation of usage dictionaries and later studies of function

words.


Second, as regards dictionary compilation itself, the word dictionaries of the

Ming and Qing Dynasties paved the way for the Wnalization of the format of

Chinese word dictionaries in the sense that their formats progressed further

towards perfection and standardization, that both micro- and macrostructuring

gradually became more uniWed and user-friendly, and that the theoretical sum-

marization concerning dictionary format becamemore systematic and integrated.

The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics embodies the accomplishments of

other dictionaries and its principle with respect to format can be condensed as

‘displaying all the characters under the heading of a single rhyme and complete

explanations within the entry of a single character’ (see Wang Yinzhi’s Preface).

The twenty-four notes on the use of the dictionary formulated by Ruan Yuan

represent an innovation in and systematic construction of the format of word

dictionaries, which furnish later word dictionary compilers with a great deal of

salutary inspiration. The layout of Ruan Yuan’s The Exegetic Interpretations of

Ancient Classics is so well organized that Liu Dabai (刘大白) deems it ‘a word

dictionary truly designed for later scholars’ (Preface to The General Dictionary of

the Chinese Language (<辞通>,序).

Wang Yinzhi and his father were extremely accomplished in the study of

exegesis and word deWnitions. Therefore, the deWning methods they employed

were relatively scientiWc and illustrative of their rational thinking on Chinese

grammar. They also attached great importance to the origin of characters and

proposed several reWned and innovative viewpoints regarding the interchange-

ability of characters. Their approach of integrated investigation of grammar,

word origin, and explanation exerted an indelible inXuence on the deWning

methodology of ancient Chinese dictionaries as well as its theoretical exploration.

Moreover, such an approach accumulated valuable experience for the compil-

ation of general dictionaries, and function word dictionaries in particular. A

breakthrough in the exempliWcation and deWnition of the Erya dictionary family

is seen in The General Ready Guide, which copes with the absence of exempliWca-

tion and counter-examples in previous Erya dictionary members by providing

both of them in the explanations to tackle some diYcult problems regarding

word meanings. Other innovations are represented by The Dictionary of Dialectal

Words to initiate the practice of adopting spoken language as examples and by

The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words to employ informal and folk

language in its explanation of ancient words, originating the approach of exem-

plifying standard words with informal and folk language.

Third, the level of word dictionary compilation in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties was further promoted, bringing about the emergence of new types of

dictionaries, such as dictionaries of regional dialectal words and function words.


The Dictionary of Dialectal Words was the Wrst Chinese dialectal dictionary.

Although succeeded by many augmentations and supplementations or records

of dialectal phenomena, none of these was ‘regional’ or became specialized. The

Dictionary of the Shu Dialect was the Wrst existing ‘regional’ dictionary of dialectal

words in China, containing several advantages in comparison with The Diction-

ary of Dialectal Words. While The Dictionary of Dialectal Words merely listed

explanations of meanings of dialectal words without indicating pronunciations

in various places, The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect, however, explained dialectal

words in popular language and provided clear and accurate pronunciations. It

retained a huge number of dialectal words from the ancient Sichuan region,

which were of such great vitality that most of them were still in use up to the

present, an indication that Li Shi possessed outstanding ability in the evaluation

and selection of dialectal words. Drawing a relatively comprehensive picture of

the phonology of the Sichuan dialect, the dictionary is of great signiWcance to the

study of the historical development of the pronunciations of the Sichuan dialect,

the historical comparative analysis of dialectal pronunciations, and the tracing of

some aspects of phonology in The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes. The dictionary

also attaches great importance to the genesis of dialectal words. It lists, to the

greatest extent, the textual exempliWcations of the words and gives fairly justiW-

able explanations for those lacking textual evidence.

In recording dialectal words, The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect strives for

conformity not only with the pronunciation and meanings of dialectal words

but also with old phonetic notations and explanations in books of rhymes and

characters of previous dynasties. It can be inferred that The Dictionary of the Shu

Dialect brings about remarkable developments in both the format construction of

dialect dictionaries and the substantiation and enrichment of dictionary content.

Fourth, in terms of textual research of language data, a great deal of sum-

marization and innovation was achieved in the compilation of dictionaries in the

Ming and Qing Dynasties, which resulted in beneWcial resources for subsequent

dictionary compilations. The ReWned Ready Guide aims at providing assistance

for the understanding of classics and records of defence of dissertations (Preface

to The ReWned Ready Guide). It distinguishes itself from other members of the

Erya dictionary family with its emphasis on the textual research of explanations,

a feature rendering the dictionary of relatively higher academic value. The ReWned

Ready Guide adopts important approaches instructive of the study of the Chinese

language, among which are conducting textual research on the explanation of

certain characters, collating ancient books, indicating the pronunciations of

polyphonic and polysemous characters, and pointing out their antinomy with

respect to the meaning items.


Proverbs of the Yue Dialect strives to explore the origin of the Yue dialect

through mutual veriWcation between ancient and present texts. The preservation

of some precious historical data, textual veriWcation of the origin of Yue customs,

introduction of features and methods for making various spectacular specialities

and typical local dishes together with its emphasis on the Weld corroboration of

the names of things contribute to the eminence of the dictionary as a greatly

distinctive dialect dictionary of extreme value to textual research. The greatest

value of The Dictionary of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect lies in its

preservation of an abundance of dialects and folk languages of the Wu region

during the reign of Emperors Yongzheng and Qianglong in the Qing Dynasty.

The dictionary lists more than 1,500 entries with explanations of the dialects and

folk languages of the Wu region. The textually researched original forms of

characters as well as the then popular spoken languages in the Wu dialect quoted

in every entry in the dictionary can provide valuable reference for the compara-

tive study of the history of the Chinese language, lexical and other research on the

Wu dialects and the compilation of dictionaries of the Wu dialect. The phonetic

notation used in The Dictionary of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect, the

so-called ‘Wu Notation’, together with the present pronunciations of the Wujin

dialect, will enable the induction of the phonological system of the then Wujin

dialect, which adds considerably to the value of the dictionary.

Fifth, the word dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties are of enormous

cultural value because of their preservation of material concerning local condi-

tions, customs, means of production, and daily life of the period. For instance,

some of the dialectal words listed in The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect provide rare

material for archaeological veriWcation and for the study of folklore. Proverbs of

the Yue Dialect inspires an understanding of nature by providing rich knowledge

regarding various aspects of the means of production and daily life of the time. It

preserves plenty of words, proverbs, and folk songs reXecting local customs and

the geographic features of the region.

Finally, the word dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties possess language

data of extraordinary value in providing later generations with abundant lin-

guistic material covering a wide range of Welds. For example, The Rhythmical

Ready Guide lists words from the ancient classics, histories dating back from the

Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties to the Six Dynasties, words from anthology and

encyclopedic dictionaries of the Tang and Song Dynasties, many of which came

down in their spoken forms from numerous and complicated origins, with varied

written forms. Scholars of modern times who wish to comprehend the Buddhist

scripts and understand the names of things therein will rely heavily on The

Buddhist Ready Guide. Zhou Chun claims in the Preface to this work: ‘All the


sutras, doctrines, and analects are presented in the form of language, while only a

careful discrimination of the names of things mentioned will ensure the full

understanding of Buddha’s teachings. That explains why books should not be

disposed of casually.’

The Buddhist Ready Guide is an indispensable tool for the sorting of ancient

classics, particularly Buddhist scriptures. The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient

Classics boasts a plentiful amount of language data and relatively complete

interpretations which provide invaluable linguistic resources for dictionary com-

pilation and are extremely helpful for meaning diVerentiation of deWnitions, the

perusal of ancient books, and the study of ancient classics. Proverb Couplets of the

Wu Dialect (<吴下谚联>) has focused resources of the common sayings of the

Wu region, which assist research in lexicology, semantics, the study of common

sayings, and the compilation of dictionaries of common sayings.


18

THE EVOLUTION ANDREFORMATION OF

SPECIAL ANDENCYCLOPEDIC

DICTIONARIES IN CHINA

AS indicated in the Introduction, dictionaries are classiWed into two major

categories – general and special dictionaries – on the basis of their func-

tions. Special dictionaries are mainly compiled to serve special purposes and

meet the needs of speciWc user groups. They usually involve the technical terms

of speciWc Welds (such as law, medicine, etc.), or a certain part of the lexicon of

a language (such as verbs, prepositions, etc.), or a certain aspect of language

use (such as spelling, pronunciation, rhymes, etc.). The special dictionaries to

be discussed in this chapter are mainly dictionaries of function words, and

dictionaries of quotations, idioms, and proverbs. Encyclopedic dictionaries are

more ‘general’ in nature than general dictionaries as they cover a much wider

range of information and knowledge concerning human civilization and

language. Encyclopedic dictionaries included in this chapter are mainly clas-

siWed dictionaries, which resemble encyclopedias in several conspicuous ways.

Since rhyme dictionaries have evolved into a relatively independent system

in the special dictionary genre, they will be discussed separately in the next

chapter.

18.1 the historical background in theming and qing dynasties

In the period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China once again experienced an

enormous and fundamental cultural shock with the gradual pervasion of Western

knowledge, thought, and religions into the ever great and proud Chinese Empire.

In ancient China, map making was rather advanced. In the minds of the Chinese

people, the notion of ‘the world’ was such that there is an enormous and civilized

Empire at the centre, surrounded by numerous uncivilized small states. The

‘world’ maps drawn by the ancient Chinese usually had titles like 禹贡, 华夷,

and 舆地. From these terms, the notions of the ancient Chinese people about

天下 (the world), 中国 (China), and 四裔 (minor nationalities remotely sur-

rounding China) could be recognized. At the end of the sixteenth century, when

Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), an Italian missionary, brought the map of the world

from the West to China, the collective ‘image’ of the world in the minds of the

Chinese people was dramatically changed. Some intellectuals quickly accepted

such a new ‘image’ of the world with the co-existence of multiple civilizations,

such maps of the world were printed prominently in the books of common

knowledge – classiWed dictionaries – which had a wide circulation and profound

inXuence on the thinking and religion of the general public. For instance, The

Entire Territory Map of Mountains and Seas (<山海舆地全图>) could be found

in General Monthly Climates (<月令广义>, 1602) and in A Pictorial Collection of

Heaven, Earth, and Humans (<三才图会>, 1609). From then on, the world of

knowledge, the world of thought, and the world of religion all underwent gradual

changes. There appeared books from the Western world about global geography,

such as The World Map (<万国舆图>) and Areas Outside the Concern of the

Chinese Imperial Geographer (<职方外纪>), books about the philosophy and

methodology of the Western people, such as Explorations in Philosophical Prin-

ciples (<名理探>), and A Thorough Exploration in Philosophy (<穷理学>),books about practical technologies, such as The Compendium of Agriculture

and The Book of Nature’s Engineering, and books about politics, such as The

Complete Manual of Taxes and Services (<赋役全书>) and Annals of Water

Transportation (<漕运志>).In the mid-nineteenth century, the publication of An Illustrated Gazette of

Overseas States (<海国图志>) by Wei Yuan (魏源) and A Brief Account of the

Overseas States (<瀛环志略>) by Xu Jishe (徐继畲) indicated a transformation

in the traditional transmission of knowledge.WhenWei YuanwroteAn Illustrated


Gazette of Overseas States, hemainly quoted from two kinds of books, that is, those

written by Chinese scholars, involving oYcial history books, decrees and regula-

tions, geographical records, classiWed dictionaries, in addition to journals, travel

diaries, local annals, and monographs, and those written by foreign scholars, six

old books by earlier missionaries and eleven new contemporary works. In com-

parison with An Illustrated Gazette of Overseas States, A Brief Account of the

Overseas States is more like a geographical work with fresher knowledge.

With the ‘expansion’ of the world and the ‘shrinkage’ of China, Chinese

intellectuals came to realize that there existed a world of multiple civilizations.

Such a realization further changed the attitude of the Chinese intellectuals

towards the outside world. In 1862, the Wrst year of Emperor Tongzhi of the

Qing Dynasty, an oYcial institution named the Capital City Tongwenguan (京城

同文馆) was established. The name of the institution alluded to the decree of

‘Writing Same Character’ promulgated by the Wrst Chinese Emperor in the Qin

Dynasty, indicating the egocentricity of the Chinese Imperialism. It was, however,

diVerent from Foreign AVairs Establishment (四夷馆), established by the Ming

Dynasty government in 1407, which focused on training interpreters for the

purpose of handling foreign aVairs. Tongwenguan, however, was set up for the

study of foreign languages in order to promote communication and exchanges

with the foreign countries. With the expansion of spatial dimensions, there came

an expansion of the knowledge space – various branches of knowledge Xowing

into China. The special dictionaries and encyclopedic dictionaries of the Ming

and Qing Dynasties were evolving against such a humanity background, serving

as a foil to the exchange and conXict between the Western and the Chinese

civilizations.

18.2 lexicographical paradigm in theming and qing dynasties

The theoretical underpinnings for compiling special and encyclopedic dictionaries

(especially for encyclopedias) are the lexicographical expression of the values of

scientiWc knowledge. In the classic and traditional Chinese culture, especially in that

of theMing andQingDynasties, science was normally construed as the bringing into

play of practical values. In the Ming Dynasty, there were representative Wgures such

as Li Shizhen, Xu Guangqi, and Xu Xiake. Theoretically, Li Shizhen took Yin–Yang,

the Five Elements, and Qi as the basic notions to construct his medical theory. He

evolution of special & encyclopedic dictionaries 321

laid much emphasis on ‘the investigation of things’ and held that medicinal herbs,

‘though materia medica in the eyes of the physicians, should be investigated in the

theoretical framework of Confucian studies in order to get a good understanding of

their properties’ (The Compendium of Materia Medica: Explanatory Notes). Here,

‘the investigation of things’ underlines the practicality of scientiWc research.

Xu Guangqi, a remarkable representative Wgure, achieved more than any other

scholar in learning scientiWc knowledge from the West at the end of the Ming

Dynasty. In the science historyofChina,XuGuangqi’smajor contributions resided

in the introduction of science and technology and researchmethodology from the

West, and the research he himself conducted. In 1606, together with Matteo Ricci,

he translatedEuclid’sElements (<几何原本>) intoChinese.Geometrywasmainly

a kind of training of thought and the basis for natural sciences in the West. The

translation of Euclid’s Elements was actually the Wrst attempt to introduce the

rigorous deductive inference system into Chinese civilization, representing a

dialogue between Oriental and Western civilization in ways of thinking, a big

event in the history of world civilization. Based on his many years of agricultural

experiments, he wrote The Compendium of Agriculture (sixty volumes), of about

700, 000 characters in size. It is an important work on ancient agriculture, of great

signiWcance to Chinese and indeed world agricultural studies.

Xu Xiake, a scholar of all-round knowledge, devoted more than thirty years to

geographical surveys, especially in Southeast China conducting for the Wrst time

a systematic investigation into the limestone karsts. The Travel Diaries of Xu

Xiake (<徐霞客游记>) is regarded as the Wrst academic work on karsts, which is

about two centuries earlier than similar research carried out in Europe. The style

of academic research employed by Xu Xiake was unique at the end of the Ming

Dynasty. Unlike his contemporary scholars, Xu Xiake looked into nature directly

and this new mode of investigation not only opened new Welds of research but

also undermined to a certain extent the supreme dominance of classic research.

How was the scientiWc knowledge presented in special dictionaries in the

Ming and Qing Dynasties? The Compendium of Materia Medica is a case in

point. The Ming and Qing Dynasties was an important period in the history of

medicine in China. The main characteristics of this period could be summar-

ized as: numerous important discoveries and inventions in medicine; frequent

and unprecedented communication between China and foreign countries;

considerable medical works, including specialized dictionaries of medicine,

which served as a summarization of previous medical achievements, in com-

bination with individuals’ clinical experiences. The Compendium of Materia

Medica is a good representation of such characteristics. Judging from the

historical perspective of scientiWc thought, The Compendium of Materia Medica


made prominent contributions to medicine and natural sciences in China and

the world. It systematically summarized medical research before the sixteenth

century in China, speciWcally identiWed the curative eVects of drugs, and

rectiWed the erroneous records of drugs in the old version of Materia Medica.

For instance, it veriWed that 苹 refers to 田字草 (clover fern) and 萍 refers to

水浮萍 (duckweed), putting right the misuse of 苹, 萍, 蓴, 莕, and 萍蓬草

interchangeably. The book also made great achievements in pharmacy and

proposed a scientiWc method of Materia Medica classiWcation. There were

records of ways of powder comminuting and mixing, the making of tinctures

and infusions, and the reWnement and capsuling of pills, etc. These records have

been proved to be accurate by modern pharmacy. In the reWnement and making

of pills, whether to use water or alcohol as the solvent depends on how easily

the medical solute can dissolve in water or alcohol, and if wax is to be used for

the capsule, the eVects of the medicine are better preserved. These practices are

very valuable in the making of pills in modern pharmacy and in the investiga-

tions into the preservation of the eVectiveness of the medicine. The Compen-

dium of Materia Medica put forward many signiWcant points in the light of the

theories established in Classic Internal Medicine (<内经>). Almost every argu-

ment in The Compendium of Materia Medica is supported by citations from

classic medical works, laying emphasis on the basic theories of Chinese medi-

cine, such as the Yin–Yang (阴阳) and the Five Elements (五行) theory, the

correspondence between heaven and the human being, the pulse condition, and

the main and collateral channels, etc. It is also among the earliest to have

noticed the fact that spiritual activities are the results of the functions of the

brain. The Compendium of Materia Medica also provided a detailed description

of the production areas, physical attributes and application methods (such as

methods of identiWcation) of numerous minerals and discussed the mechan-

isms of the evolution of some minerals and the chemical reactions taking place

in the processing of some metals, compounds, and biological medicines. The

Compendium of Materia Medica has made great contributions to China’s

natural history, pharmacy, and traditional medical science. It has been well

regarded and highly rated in the Welds of medicine and botany. As a specialized

dictionary of medicine in the Ming Dynasty, The Compendium of Materia

Medica has embodied the application of the principles of scientiWc thinking

to the compilation of special dictionaries – the format and style, selection of

contents, and the methods of deWnition and explanation. It has also embodied

the inXuence of the knowledge systems of natural and social sciences on the

design of the format and style, the classiWcation and explanation of knowledge

in special and encyclopedic dictionaries.


18.3 the analysis of format and stylein the ming and qing dynasties

In the early periods of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the macrostructure of

special dictionaries, in essence, indicated how to speciWcally classify diVerent

subjects and diVerent kinds of knowledge involved, and the microstructure

mainly indicated how to deWne and explain diVerent terms involved in natural

and social sciences. What follows is an analysis of the format and compilation

style of some representative works of the special and encyclopedic dictionaries of

the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Let us Wrst look at three special dictionaries: ADictionary of Rhymes and Styles, A

Dictionary of Synonyms, and A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations (<称谓录>).In terms of format and style, A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles is divided into

diVerent sections according to pingshui rhyme (平水韵, rhymes for poetry) and

based on the four tones, i.e. level tone, rising tone, falling tone, and entering tone,

with the level tone being subdivided into the upper level tone and the lower level

tone. Each tone consists of diVerent sections in the sequence of the subtitles of the

pingshui rhyme. There are 106 rhyme sections altogether. In each rhyme section are

listed the characters sharing the same rhyme. Since ‘things are character-oriented’,

words and phrases with the same character ending are grouped under each ‘head

character’. And the words and phrases are arranged according to the number of

characters the word or phrase comprises. Under each head character, its pronun-

ciation is phonetically notated with fanqie and the meaning of the character is

brieXy explicated with a clear indication of its source of citation. The whole lexicon

is listed and interpreted in two separate parts. The part of 韵藻 (rhyme chains) is

mainly copied from The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes and Wuju Rhyme Dictionary

(<五车韵瑞>). Those words that are not included in these two books are put in a

separate part – the Supplement. In this part, the data quoted are arranged in the

sequence of Classics, Histories, Philosophy, andAnthology. If aword or a phrase co-

occurs in several books, the Wrst quotation is usually the original one, with the

others in chronological order. The ‘Supplement’ is followed by antithetical quota-

tions (对语) and sentence quotations (摘句). The part of ‘antithetical quotations’ is

a collection of antithetical phrases and sentences, and the part of ‘sentence quota-

tions’ is a collection of relevant Wve-character and seven-character poetic verses.

Since the material in this book is chieXy taken from various classiWed dictionaries,

there are quite a number of errors that occur. Moreover, there are also quotations

with only the names of the books other than the titles of the texts from which they


are quoted, which renders it diYcult for users to consult and check, a major defect

of A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles.

A Dictionary of Synonyms plays a unique part in the history of Chinese

dictionary compilation, for it integrates the formats and styles of both a general

philological dictionary and a thesaurus. Its Preface states: ‘Things are sorted and

grouped together, which indicates the beginning of classiWcation. The characters

today are combinatorial and the characters with diVerent meanings can be

collocated together. In compilation, characters are grouped according to the

categories they belong to and the things they refer to will not be confused’.

Its signiWcance in the history of dictionary compilation lies in the fact that it

initiated a new format and style – a character governing relevant compounds and

phrases with this character as a component. As is stated in The General Catalogue

and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature : ‘It is

ingenious to invent such a format and style of compilation’. Zhang Luxiang

(1988) makes the following remarks:

A Dictionary of Synonyms is a reference book listing the best achievements of many other

relevant works and has been long highly valued for its enormous collection of words,

phrases, and literary quotations . . . A Dictionary of Synonyms has it that characters are

combinatorial, which makes it possible for a character to govern relevant compounds

and phrases with the same initial character, initiating the compilation of synonym

dictionaries. It also has it that in compilation, characters are grouped according to the

categories they belong to, which makes it possible to group synonyms together and

arrange them in order, and this truly lies at the origin of the compilation of thesauruses.

Such a huge reference book should receive more attention in that it bears quite a few

ingenious innovations in its format and style although it also bears some defects due to

the limitations of its time of compilation.

Zhang Luxiang (1988) has summarized the characteristics of A Dictionary of

Synonyms as follows:

The notion that characters are combinatorial, which makes it possible for a character to

govern relevant compounds and phrases, manifests its initiativeness in its format and

style; such an invention in its compilation style also embodies its uniqueness in classiW-

cation; the notion that, in compilation, characters are grouped according to the categor-

ies they belong to, which makes it possible to group synonyms together and arrange them

in order, manifests its precision in arranging compound words; its wide collection and

extensive quotation embody its richness in data coverage; and its citations with source

titles and words with supportive examples manifest its speciWcity in illustrative citation.

All these characteristics are a good summarization of the characteristics of format and

style put forward in the Preface to A Dictionary of Synonyms.


The ingenuity of A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations in format and style lies

mainly in its entry design and its selection of diVerent kinds of information. First,

it has the titles and appellations as entry words and supplies citations. Textual

research is made and citations are provided as evidence, which turns out to be

helpful to those interested in the sources of the titles. Second, for many entries

there are notes made by the author to give further explanation, introduce the

evolution of the title, or give evidence from his own experiences. Third, it collects

a large amount of valuable data on how to address people, which are indispens-

able sources for compiling general philological dictionaries. Fourth, there are

abundant citations, many of which bear earlier etymological information than

those employed in Ci Yuan. And some of the entries are very valuable for the

literary citations they have.

The Compendium ofMateriaMedica is themost representative among the special

dictionaries compiled in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Its format and style are as

follows: ‘In general, there are sixteen major parts which are further divided into

sixty subparts. The entries are all grouped according to the properties and origins of

medicinal herbs’ (The Compendium of Materia Medica: Explanatory Notes). In his

Preface to The Compendium of Materia Medica, Zhang Dingsi (张鼎思) states:

Generally speaking, the entries are arranged according to the standard names with the

attachment of the alias. Then, there are discussions and discriminations to rectify

the erroneous material in previous literature. There are detailed descriptions about the

concocting and processing of the medicine, its appearance, its properties, and pharma-

cology so as to identify it in the proper way. There are further supplements about the

medical prescriptions that it can be used in and the roles it plays.

For each medicine, there are detailed notes about its place of origin, shape,

properties, functions, and the medical prescriptions of which it is the principal

element. The mode of explanation for each entry is as follows: interpretation of

its name, followed by collective explanation and discrimination, then concocting

and processing, properties and pharmacology, its major medical eVects, research

Wndings, and Wnally medical prescriptions. Such a microstructure of information

organization is scientiWc, practical, and relatively complete.

ClassiWed dictionaries can, in a sense, be taken as the archetype of contempor-

ary encyclopedic dictionaries and encyclopedias. In terms of their content, format

and style, The Yongle Compendium, The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences,

and The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books all fall into such a

category. ClassiWed dictionaries are a collection of classiWed data for consultation

and their range of domains is extensive, involving poetry, vocabulary, historical

Wgures, literary citations, astronomy, geography, codes and regulations, systems


and schemes, Xying birds, running beasts, grasses and woods, worms and insects,

and numerous other things. They are all-embracing and historically related to

modern encyclopedic dictionaries. ClassiWed dictionaries diVer from book series,

which involve the printing of various complete works together, bringing those

scattered works under one cover. The format and style of book series are based on

the collection of ‘relevant books by ancient scholars and their combination into

one’. The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature is a book of such a kind.

ClassiWed dictionaries are very important to its contemporary scholars and

scholars of later generations of academic research.

In terms of its content, The Yongle Compendium bears greater resemblance to

modern encyclopedias. But in terms of its design, format and style, it looks

more like a dictionary. It adopts the framework of the Hong Wu Dictionary of

Standard Rhymes and ‘governs the characters by means of their rhymes and

relates to things by means of the characters’. The entries recorded in this

Compendium embrace classics, historical records, philosophy, astronomy, geog-

raphy, medicine, Buddhist scriptures, technology and arts, political systems,

poetry and opera, names of objects, military classics, applied sciences, etc. The

citations in the entries can be complete books, whole texts, or separate para-

graphs from a wide range of sources and without any revision or modiWcation.

Though such a practice gives the impression of inconsistency, it has whole-

somely preserved a large amount of data that would otherwise have been lost

completely, spanning the period from the Pre-Qin Dynasties to the early period

of the Ming Dynasty.

The most outstanding feature of The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences

is its divorce from the traditional type of comprehensive encyclopedic classiWed

dictionaries. ClassiWed dictionaries in ancient China were originally compiled

to meet the need of the emperors and learned scholars in surveying ancient

works or in consulting useful resources for writing poems or essays. The

Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences, however, is a new type of encyclopedic

dictionary for educated people, Wlled with information about natural sciences.

It is of a high quality and, as commented in The General Catalogue and Abstracts

of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature, ‘its collection is ex-

tremely extensive and its arrangement is orderly . . . its format and style appear

to be rigorous and the overall organization is coherent, and it is well-balanced,

free from the defects of being redundant and undiscriminating.’ The citations

in the dictionary are mostly directly taken from the original books and/or the

best versions and therefore there are few omissions and errors. Zhou Zhongfu

once commented: ‘It has made every eVort to be broad in its content and simple

in its length’.


18.4 a short analysis of some representativedictionaries in the ming and qing dynasties

Prior to the Ming Dynasty, there were special dictionaries in use, but were not

thus called. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there emerged a new epoch of

special dictionary making and quite a number of works with profound social

inXuence and high academic value. The major specialized dictionaries were The

Compendium of Materia Medica, The Compendium of Agriculture, and The Book

of Nature’s Engineering, and the encyclopedic dictionaries, i.e. classiWed diction-

aries, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were mainly represented by The Yongle

Compendium and The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books. What

follows is a rapid survey of some of the major dictionaries.

Dictionaries of function wordsA distinctive feature of dictionary making in the Ming and Qing Dynasties is the

rapid progress in the compilation of dictionaries of function words. These

dictionaries are of high quality, many in number and large in size, and reach a

fairly sophisticated level of compilation. The major function word dictionaries of

this period were The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words and The Dic-

tionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies. The entry words in these

dictionaries were well chosen from the Classics, Histories, Philosophy, and

Anthology, in addition to those from poetry and colloquial expressions, from

the time of the Pre-Qin Dynasties, and were arranged according to the rhyme

sections they belonged to and in the sequence of the four tones. They were rich in

citations and the senses identiWed were complete and speciWc. The usage of the

entry word is explained in brief but supported with citations from ancient classic

works. The function words in these dictionaries are precisely classiWed and their

functions and usages are discriminated with high accuracy. The explanatory texts

make an eVort to trace the origins and chart the paths of evolution.

The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words was compiled by Liu Qi in the

early Qing Dynasty and exercised strong and longlasting inXuence. Liu Qi, whose

courtesy name was Wu Zhong, came from Queshan (in present-day Henan

Province) and moved to Jining (in present-day Shandong Province). His major

works includedTheAnnals of Tangyi County (<堂邑县志>) andThe InterpretativeDictionary of FunctionWords. The latter (Wve volumes) was published in 1711with a

coverage of 476 function characters (or words) from the Classics, Histories,

Philosophy, and Anthology, in addition to those from poetry and colloquial


expressions, over the period from the Pre-Qin Dynasties to the Song and Yuan

Dynasties. These characters and words were arranged according to the rhyme

sections they belonged to and in the sequence of the four tones. The main charac-

teristics of the book are as follows: (a) a great variety of interpretive methods were

adopted to explain the function words, such as synonymous interpretation (正训),

antonymous interpretation (反训), general interpretation (通训), loaning inter-

pretation (借训), mutual interpretation (互训), and transferring interpretation (转

训); (b) function words were for the Wrst time classiWed into thirty types, i.e.

repetition (重言), omission (省文), assisting (助语), assertion (断辞), interroga-

tion (疑辞), exclamation (咏叹辞), abruption (急辞), recuperation (缓辞), initia-

tive (发语辞), conclusion (语己辞), proposition (设辞), diVerentiation (别异之

辞), succession (继事之辞), alternative (或然之辞), originator (原起之辞), ter-

minator (终竟之辞), pause (顿挫之辞), connective (承上), transition (转下),

predicative (语辞), generalization (通用), specialization (专辞), delimitation (仅

辞), regret (叹辞), approximation (几辞), accumulation (积辞), summarization

(总括之辞), dialect (方言), reversing (倒文), grammaticalization (实字虚用); (c)

making use of dialectal or colloquial words or expressions to interpret. In addition,

there were also abundant citations and the senses diVerentiated were complete and

speciWc. The citations were collected not only from works of the Pre-Qin and Han

Dynasties but also from the poetry of the Tang and Song Dynasties.

The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies was compiled by

Wang Yinzhi, awell-knownQingDynasty scholar of exegetic studies. It wasWnished

in 1798 and published 1819. His other works included The Interpretation of Classics

and Scriptures and The Collected Works of Wang Yinzhi (<王文简公文集>). TheDictionary of FunctionWords in Lections and Biographies covered 160 entries, dealing

with 254 function words among which the latest were those found in works of the

Western Han Dynasty. In Preface, the compiler states. ‘In order to search for

functionwords, I have read through and sorted the Nine Classics, the Three Annals,

and other books of the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties. These function words are

arranged and compiled into the ten volumes of The Dictionary of FunctionWords in

Lections and Biographies.’

The dictionary was compiled to interpret function words and assist in the

understanding and appreciation of classics. Its format and style diVered from The

Ready Guide, which was of semantic classiWcation in macrostructural conWgura-

tion, from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which was of radical

classiWcation, and from The Dictionary of Rhymes, which was of rhyme classiWca-

tion. It was arranged according to the initial consonants of the 160 head charac-

ters, with consistent and distinct format and style: Volumes 1 to 4 deal with

laryngeals; Volume 5, dentals; Volume 6, tongue-sounds; Volume 7, semi-back


dentals and semi-tongue sounds; Volume 8, tip-back dentals; Volume 9, back

dentals; Volume 10, labials. This unique type of format and style manifested the

new approach of Wang Niansun and Wang Yinzhi, that is, an initial consonant-

based approach to linguistic investigation, which was an indication of serious

pioneering endeavour towards innovation in macrostructural conWguration for

special dictionaries of function words.

The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies started each of its

entries with a brief explanation of the usages of the head character and then cited

extensively from ancient books to illustrate diVerent usages. Its citations and

explanatory notes were richer and more comprehensive than those of The

Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words. Its deWnition texts focused on tracing

the origin of the meaning of the character and explicating the extensional

relations between the senses of the character. Its treatment of common usages

was succinct, its treatment of rare or less frequent senses more speciWc and

practical, and its citations wide-ranging and free from redundancy and messi-

ness. The explication of the diVerent senses of a character was distinct and readily

intelligible. The function words in the book were classiWed into six types, namely

ordinary words, auxiliary words, exclamatory words, vocalizing words, general

words, and discriminating words.

Dictionaries of lexical expressionsDictionaries of lexical expressions are special-aspect dictionaries intended for the

composition of poems, retrieving literary quotations, and Wnding appropriate words

for antithetical couplets. The Wrst dictionary of such a kind is The Sources of Rhyme

Ocean compiled by Yan Zhenqing in the Tang Dynasty. Another inXuential diction-

ary of a similar kind is The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes compiled by Yin Shifu in the

early Yuan Dynasty. The Wrst dictionary of this kind in the Ming Dynasty is Wuju

Rhyme Dictionary by Ling Zhilong. The representative dictionaries of lexical expres-

sions in theMing andQingDynasties areProverbs of the YueDialect,ProverbCouplets

of the Wu Dialect, A Collection of Popular Expressions (<通俗编>), A Dictionary of

Rhymes and Styles, and A Dictionary of Synonyms.

Proverbs of the YueDialectwas compiled by FanYin (范寅, 1830–1911, or 1827–1897

according to another account), whowas born into the family of a Confucian oYcial.

He travelled far and wide and became learned and well-informed. He spent much

time observing, comparing, and investigating the diVerences between the Yue

dialect and other languages or dialects. Proverbs of the Yue Dialect was compiled

between 1878 and 1881 andpublished in three volumes in 1882. TheWrst volume dealt

with language and consisted of eighteen texts, namely meditating on past events,


presentwarnings to people, quoting, investigating things,making analogy, divining,

rumouring, riddles, types of things, numbering, ten ‘only’s, ten ‘must’s, head

characters, end characters, translating bird’s language, cursing and jeering, baby’s

words and children’s folk rhymes, and warning proverbs and praising prayers. The

second volume listed the names of the objects and consisted of twenty-four texts,

namely heaven, earth, time sequence, human beings, spirits, ghosts, diseases,

human body, buildings, utensils, goods, food and drink, dressing, beasts, aquatic

animals, worms and insects, Xowers and grasses, bamboos and woods, melons and

fruits, grains and vegetables, odours and smells, shapes and colours, crafts and skills,

and customs. The third volume was concerned with meanings and speech sounds,

comprising ten classes, namely one character with six diVerent pronunciations, four

equivalents and one diVerence, combined meanings, diVerences in both spelling

and pronunciation, accents of northern regions, combined rhymes, one character

with a single meaning, speech sounds and musical sounds, and speech initiators.

Following the three volumes was an additional part ‘Other Miscellaneous Expres-

sions’, which consisted of two volumes – the Wrst one dealing with colloquial words

and phrases and slang expressions, and the second with words of the written

language. There was also an appendix with Wve texts in the contents (actually

dealing with six texts). Proverbs of the Yue Dialect records the spoken language as

it was used in everyday life and is valuable for investigating into the Yue Dialect and

its evolution. The format and style, however, were not consistent or rigid, and the

data used in the dictionary were relatively unmeasured and jumbled.

Proverb Couplets of the Wu Dialect, also a dialect dictionary of folk expressions,

was compiled byWang Youguang (王有光), whose courtesy name was Guan Guo

and who was born in Wujin, present-day Jiangsu Province. It was originally

printed in 1820 and a big Wre broke out in the publishing house that year.

Fortunately, it survived the disaster with little damage and was reprinted in

1873 with some restoration work and some amendment. It listed 304 entries of

proverbs and slang expressions of theWu Dialect. To interpret these proverbs and

slang expressions, much textual research was conducted on the poetry history

and the chorography of the region, and much investigation carried out into social

customs and folklores. The characters involved were carefully discriminated and

explicated, and the sentences in question were adequately explained and inter-

preted. The arrangement of the entries was also delicate, innovative, and inter-

esting. As for its deWnition, the characters were well deWned, the proverbs were

explained with extreme precision, and numerous citations provided to support

its treatment. This dictionary imparted serious knowledge and rectiWed the

errors and misinterpretations made previously. It was unique in displaying the

outstanding features of its deWnition style and in its format of entry arrangement.


A Collection of Popular Expressions, a practical dictionary of folk expressions

and common words, was compiled by Zhai Hao (翟灏, 1736–1788), a Qing

Dynasty scholar, born in Renhe, present-day Zhejiang Province. Zhai Hao was

a productive scholar and his major works, in addition to A Collection of Popular

Expressions, included The RectiWcation and DiVerentiation of the Four Books

(<四书考异>) and Peripheral Amendments on the Ready Guide (<尔雅补郭>).A Collection of Popular Expressions (thirty-eight volumes) was published in 1751.

The data in the book were extensively collected, involving Classics, Annals,

Philosophy, and History, poetry, songs, novels, wordbooks, religious scriptures,

and directly from contemporary spoken languages. There were more than 5,000

entries, which were classiWed into thirty-eight categories: astronomy, geography,

time sequence, feudal ethics, oYcialdom, politics, literature, martial arts, eti-

quette, congratulations and invitations, items, behaviours, communication, cir-

cumstances, dispositions, body, speech and manners, addressing, god and ghost,

Buddhism and Taoism, arts, women, properties and goods, sheltering, dresses and

ornaments, utensils, food and drink, cattle and beasts, poultry and Wshes, grasses

and trees, numbers, language and rhetorics, appearance, sounds and voices,

miscellanies, stories, and so on. Each category was dealt with in one volume.

For each entry, the source was given at the Wrst place. Then citations were given to

support the deWnitions. As to those with some changes in their processes of

evolution, textual research was carried out and explanatory notes added.

A Collection of Popular Expressions is important not only for consulting folk

expressions encountered in reading but for studying Chinese etymology, names,

artefacts, social systems, and the origin and development of the arts. It is also

useful for looking up the meanings of words and expressions, for studying the

literary quotations of stories, and for investigating the customs of regions.

However, it is not free from defects. The works involved were numerous and

jumbled, the information about the corresponding authors, names of texts, and

the number of volumes was incomplete. To amend the defects of this book, his

contemporary, Liang Tongshu (梁同书), compiled Direct Amendments on A

Collection of Popular Expressions (<直语补证>). It added some new expressions

and rectiWed the previous entries in their citations and some other aspects.

In order to remedy the defects of The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes and Wuju

Rhyme Dictionary, i.e. ‘their careless omissions and incompletion in content;

their frequently encountered errors and mistakes’ (The General Catalogue and

Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature: A Dictionary of

Rhymes and Styles), Emperor Kangxi ordered Zhang Yushu and Chen Tingjing to

take responsibility for the compilation of a new one – A Dictionary of Rhymes and

Styles, to help those having diYculties in consulting relevant information in


writing poems. The dictionary project was started in 1704 and completed in 1711,

and its Chinese title佩文 came from the name for the study of Emperor Kangxi.

In 1716, the Emperor gave an order to compile its sequel – The Additions to A

Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles (<韵府拾遗>), which was Wnished in 1720.

A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles adopted the same format and style as The

Gem Dictionary of Rhymes andWuju Rhyme Dictionary, i.e. ‘things are character-

oriented, and characters are governed by rhymes’. In addition to these two rhyme

dictionaries, there were also extensive collections from Classics, Histories, Phil-

osophy, and some of the collections of poetry compiled before the Yuan and

Ming Dynasties. The original book was not classiWed into volumes but into 106

sections according to its 106 rhymes. When it was incorporated into The Imperial

Collection of Four Branches of Literature, it was classiWed into 444 volumes. To

compensate for the defects of A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles, Zhang Tingyu

(张廷玉, 1672–1755) et al. compiled The Continuation of A Dictionary of Rhymes

and Styles on imperial order, with the same format and style. It originally had 106

rhymes and each rhyme a volume. Later, they were reclassiWed into 120 volumes.

As for the characters listed in A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles, they were given

phonetic notations via fanqie. As for those newly included character entries, they

were phonetically notated and semantically deWned. Its major revision with

respect to A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles was apparent in the inclusion of

greater numbers of entry characters and the addition of more quotations and

more accurate information on the works quoted from.

A Dictionary of Synonyms (240 volumes) was compiled by Zhang Tingyu et al.

on the imperial order of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. Zhang Tingyu was

born in Tongcheng, Anhui Province and was a successful Supreme oYcial.

Compilation started in 1719 and was Wnished in 1726. In the title, there was the

character骈, designating the keeping abreast of two running horses. The adoption

of骈字 (literally, characters in parallel) in the title was due to the fact that the head

characters were all set in parallel, and the other character, i.e.类, in the title meant

‘category’, indicating that characters were semantically treated in groups. This

dictionary selected 1,604 characters as head characters, under which there were

about 100,000 compounds and phrases treated. The principle for its format and

style was that ‘characters are governed by the rhymes they share’ and ‘their

arrangement is based on the categories they fall into’. In other words, under

each entry, the compounds and phrases sharing the same initial character, i.e.

the head character, were listed. And as for the 1,604 head characters, they were

grouped into diVerent ‘categories’ and further into diVerent subcategories. Thus,

the dictionary consisted of twelve categories on the macrostructural level, namely

heaven and earth, time sequence, mountains and waters, sheltering, treasures,


numbers, geographical locations, colours, utensils, grasses and trees, birds and

beasts, worms and insects, and Wshes. There was an additional category for

‘human behaviour’, which was further classiWed into subcategories. For instance,

under the category of ‘heaven and earth’, there were Wfty-eight entries, such as sky,

sun, moon, wind, cloud, rain, dew, earth, soil, suburb, plain, etc. These character

entries each represented a diVerent ‘subcategory’.

A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles was arranged on a diVerent basis and was

intended as a diVerent way of consultation, by end characters. As commented in

The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of

Literature, ‘the two dictionaries (i.e. A Dictionary of Synonyms and A Dictionary

of Rhymes and Styles) are complementary, with the compounds and phrases

grouped in the former according to the consonants of the initial characters they

share and in the latter according to the vowels of the end characters they share’.

The data used in A Dictionary of Synonyms were the same as those in A

Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles and they were both in the same sequence of

Classics, Histories, Philosophy, and Anthology. Compared with A Dictionary of

Rhymes and Styles, A Dictionary of Synonyms appears to be closer to perfection in

format and style because it provides more detailed and accurate information

about the cited books and texts and their authors.

ADictionary of Titles andAppellations (thirty-twovolumes)was compiledbyLiang

Zhangju (梁章钜, 1775–1849), whose courtesy name was Hong Zhong and who was

born in Changle, Fujian Province. He held quite a number of important positions in

the central government and was proliWc in academic research. He produced more

than seventy works. This dictionary was Wnished in 1848 and published in 1884. As

indicated in the title, it was a collection of diVerent terms of address, divided into 738

categories with 5, 424 entries. The major categories read as follows:

(a) From remote ancestors to parents, maternal relations, paternal relations,

brothers, husbands, wives, concubines, sons, daughters, grandchildren, relatives on

the husband’s side, relatives on the wife’s side, uncles and aunts, relatives by

marriage, relatives of children and grandchildren (appendix of teachers and friends);

(b) The Emperor and his parents, the children and grandchildren of the Em-

peror, thewives of the Emperor, princesses and sons-in-law, relatives of the Emperor

on the side of his mother or wife, eunuchs, martial masters and body guards;

(c) Supreme Council and investiture, Zhongrenfu, the Cabinet, Military

OYce, the Imperial Academy, the Council of Routine AVairs, Ministers;

(d) The Ministry of Personnel AVairs, the Board of Revenues and Demog-

raphy, Granary and Factories, Ministry of Rites, Department of War, the Ministry

of Punishments (including the names of its branches in ancient times), Ministry

of Public Works, Ministry of Tribal AVairs;


(e) Department of General Administrative AVairs and Supreme Court, ritual

oYcial, the Imperial College, Hong Lu;

(f) Department of Capital AVairs, Imperial Prison, Imperial Hospital, Depart-

ment of Civil AVairs, Department of Military Facilities, Imperial Carriage,

imperial stable;

(g) Head of Imperial Guards, commander-in-chief of the ‘Eight Banners’,

commander of the army, Commander-in-chief of the Nine Gates, commander

of the front-line army, commander of the defending army;

(h) Provincial civil oYcials: governor-general and provincial governor and

people under his control such as managerial oYcials of river aVairs, river

transportation, salt industry; district magistrate, imperial envoy; Great General

and other generals of national defence; Commander-in-chief and commanders of

Green Camp and other oYcers of lower ranks;

(i) Department of Educational AVairs and the oYcial examiner of diVerent

ranks; oYcials with a pass in imperial examinations and their family members,

gentlemen, servants, women servants, clerks, soldiers, warriors;

(j) Crafts and Wne arts: all sorts of workmen, businessmen, cooks, and car-

penters;

(k) Musical instruments, chess, calligraphy, painting, singing and dancing,

riding and shooting, boxing, gambling;

(l) Thieves, pickpockets, performers, prostitutes, people of the three religions

(Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and the nine schools of thought (the

Confucians, the Taoists, the Yin–Yang, the Legalists, the Logicians, the Mohists,

the Political Strategists, the Ecletics, and the Agriculturists), three kinds of

middle-aged women, i.e. nuns, women Taoists, and women fortune-tellers, and

six kinds of elderly women, i.e. women traYckers in human beings, match-

makers, witches, procuresses, women quacks, and midwives – women who

have no honest occupation and make trouble; and various other terms of address.

A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations ensured its completeness by its listing of

terms of address and proved user-friendly. It is the Wrst dictionary of its kind in

the lexicographical history in China.

Specialized dictionariesSpecialized dictionaries in the modern sense came into existence and gradually

prospered in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The General Survey of Currencies, The

Dictionary of Currencies, and A Dictionary of Ancient Currencies are specialized

dictionaries of ancient money. A Complete Collection of All Beauties provides

detailed information about the appearance, properties, ways of fostering, and the


utility of various living things. During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Wang Hao

et al. undertook the revision of A Complete Collection of All Beauties. They had

access to the books stored in the imperial court and data were collected and used

for the revision. The revision was a greatly expanded version and re-entitled The

General Dictionary of All Beauties (100 volumes). These two books are actually

dictionaries of botany. A Contemporary Dictionary of Ancient Names of Places in

All Dynasties (twenty volumes) was compiled by Li Zhaoluo in 1837. It collected

geographical names from historical annals from the period of the Western Han

Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty. The book oVered a brief introduction to each

geographical name about its establishment and evolution. Its contemporary name

in the Qing Dynasty was also indicated. This dictionary is the Wrst comparative

dictionary of ancient – contemporary geographical names in China – a dictionary

of a pioneering nature. The period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties was charac-

terized by the compilation of dictionaries of science and technology. These

dictionaries were great in number, broad in scope, high in quality, and bulky in

size. The subjects involved were wide-ranging, such as ancient currency, botany,

geography, medicine, agriculture, handicraft industry, technology, chemistry,

physics, etc. Quite a number of them were comparable to modern encyclopedias.

For example, The Compendium of Materia Medica is regarded as ‘a medical

encyclopedia’, The Compendium of Agriculture as ‘a combined encyclopedia of

knowledge and technology’, and The Book of Nature’s Engineering as ‘China’s

encyclopedia of science and technology’. They are held in high esteem and

commended academically and culturally both inside and outside China.

The Compendium of Materia Medica was compiled by Li Shizhen, a distin-

guished pharmacologist of the Ming Dynasty. Li Shizhen, whose courtesy name

was as Dong Bi, was born in Qizhou, present-day Qichun County, Hubei Prov-

ince. He gave up the opportunity to becoming an oYcial but took his father as a

rolemodel to follow. He pursuedmedicine earnestly, especially pharmacology as a

career, with special emphasis on clinical treatment. He found numerous errors in

Materia Medica compiled by previous physicians and was determined to correct

them and write a new one, the result of which was The Compendium of Materia

Medica. He initiated this project in 1552 and Wnished it in 1578. The book had

undergone three major revisions and modiWcations. The Wnal version of The

Compendium of Materia Medica had Wfty-two volumes with excellent pictorial

illustrations. It amounted to 1,900,000 characters, comprising sixteen sections,

namely water, Wre, earth, metal, stone, grass, grain, vegetables, fruit, wood,

drinking vessels, worms, Wshes, insects, beasts, and human beings. Each section

was further classiWed into sixty categories, and each category was further classiWed

into subcategories. For instance, the section on grain was classiWed into four


categories: (a) Wbre crops, wheat and rice; (b) millet; (c) beans; (d) grains for

brewing. The Compendium of Materia Medica collected 1,892 kinds of medicines

(374 new ones) and 11,096 prescriptions, which was a fourfold increase over

previous works, and there were 1,109 illustrative pictures to describe the appear-

ance of medicine. Moreover, there was a volume on the general contents of

medicine, three volumes of pictures, one volume for inquiries into odd main

channels and eight collateral channels, one volume for studies of Li Shizhen’s

pulse theory, eight volumes for Cai’s surgery techniques, and ten volumes of

supplements to The Compendium of Materia Medica.

Li Shizhenmade a reference tomore than 800medical books and cited from 758

medical books. Through careful investigation and veriWcation, he rectiWed the

errors inMateria Medica in names of medicines, varieties, and places of origin; he

also collected a large number of medicines discovered from the time of the Song

and Yuan Dynasties, which greatly enriched the content of The Compendium of

Materia Medica. As commented by Zhao Xuemin (赵学敏) in his preface to

Supplements to the Compendium of Materia Medica (<本草纲目拾遗小序>):

Li Shizhen has read extensively, embracing the books of a hundred generations; he has

done extensive textual research and cited from works of Confucius through to books of

anecdotes and triXes; he has integrated the achievements of numerous scholars and

formed his own theory; furthermore, he has spared no time or energy in following the

steady development of Chinese medicine – he has inquired into folk medicine every-

where in the country. He travels far and wide to learn about local produce and takes risks

to explore deep in the mountains for precious and rare medicines.

There was even a record about mummies in his book. One cannot but ask: ‘Is

there anything missing for us to re-collect today?’

The Compendium of Agriculture was compiled by Xu Guangqi, whose courtesy

name was Zi Xian and who was born in Xujiahui, Shanghai. In 1619 he started to

work on this important book on agriculture. He died on 8November 1633, with the

book unWnished. The compilation was continued by Chen Zilong (陈子龙) and

was published in 1639. The Compendium of Agriculture had over 700,000 characters

in size, consisting of sixty volumes: three volumes on agricultural cultivation, two

on farmland systems, six on agricultural aVairs, nine on irrigation works, four on

farming tools, six on tree planting, four on sericulture, twomore volumes on related

sericultural aVairs, four on planting, one on animal husbandry, one on manufac-

turing, and eighteen volumes on relieving famines. It was in 1635 that Chen Zilong

borrowed the original manuscript from the grandson of Xu Guanngqi and pre-

sented it to the Imperial Inspector in Yingtian (i.e. Nanjing, present-day Jiangsu

Province), ZhangGuowei (张国维) who appreciated its value and commended it as


‘a book of everlasting value for state management’. Chen Zilong then presented it to

Fang Yuegong (方岳贡) for review, whowas lavish in his praise. They discussed the

issues relating to its publication. Chen Zilong was in charge of its editing and it was

eventually published in 1639 after four years’ work.

The Book of Nature’s Engineering was compiled by Song Yingxing, whose

courtesy name was Chang Geng and who was born in Fengxin, Jiangxi Province.

His other major works included Miscellaneous Commentaries (<野议>), On Qi

(<论气>), and On the Skies (<谈天>). The Book of Nature’s Engineering was

written around 1634 when he held an oYcial position in Jiangxi Province. The

book consisted of three volumes: the Wrst was divided into six volumes, namely

grain cultivation, cloth processing and dyeing, grain processing, salt making,

sugar making; the second volume was divided into seven volumes, namely

pottery, metal melting, ship and cart manufacturing, hammering, baking, oil

making, paper making and printing; the third volume was divided into Wve

volumes, namely metal exploitation and making, weapon making, pigment

making, brewing, and pearl collecting and precious stone making. There were

altogether eighteen subsidiary volumes, containing 123 pictures and diagrams,

illustrating the place of production, product models, methods of production, etc.

It recorded in detail the production technologies employed in agriculture and

industry in diVerent regions, especially in Jiangxi Province. As for the Chinese

title天工开物, it was derived from the proverb人间巧艺夺天工 (literally, ‘the

arts and crafts on earth are superior to those in heaven’), high praise to the

craftsmanship of diVerent trades in China. As is stated in the preface: ‘How

sorrowful it is to be in poverty! When I am in need of reference, there is no

money to buy rare books; when I want to invite some experts to consult and

attest the genuineness of some materials, there are no hotel rooms aVordable to

hold discussions’, from which it can be seen how hard Song Yingxing’s life was in

the course of compilation. The publication of The Book of Nature’s Engineering

was funded by his intimate friend Xu Shaokui (徐绍煃) in Jiangxi Province in

1637. In the early period of the Qing Dynasty, the book was reprinted by a

number of publishing houses in China and later in Japan and France. In 1959,

the book was photocopied by Beijing Library.

ClassiWed dictionaries in the Ming and Qing DynastiesThe compilation of classiWed dictionaries Xourished in the Ming and Qing

Dynasties. There are some great classiWed dictionaries compiled during this

period, such as The Yongle Compendium, The Compendium of Ancient and

Contemporary Books, The Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary, and The


Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences. They remain milestones in the history

of Chinese lexicography.

The Yongle Compendium is a large-scale dictionary compiled on imperial

order. It was in the charge of Xie Jin (解缙, 1369–1415), a member of the

Imperial Academy. Xie Jin, whose courtesy name was Da Kun, was born in

Jishui, Jiangxi Province. His broad knowledge was appreciated by the Em-

peror Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) and he was chosen as a royal consultant, and

as one of the Emperor’s attendants. He was once removed from his oYce by

the Emperor for ‘oVering opinions’. In 1403, he was repositioned by Zhu Di

(朱棣), the new Emperor, as a close oYcial. Soon afterwards, he was in

charge of the project of The Yongle Compendium. The project formally started

on 19 July 1403 and was completed on 21 December 1404. The dictionary was

at Wrst entitled by the Emperor The Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature

(<文献大成>). When the Emperor read the new dictionary, he was not

satisWed with it, for it failed to meet his expectations, i.e. ‘embracing all

that is in the universe and assembling the diVerent opinions of the past and

present’. He made the decision to revise it and expand it. In the new

programme, 3,000 people were involved in its compilation, editing, and

copying. The revision took four years and the project was completed on 8

December 1408. Since it was compiled in the period of Yongle, in the reign of

Emperor Zhu Di, it was re-entitled ‘永乐大典’. The dictionary was composed

of 22,877 volumes, in addition to sixty volumes of Explanatory Notes and

Contents, which were bound into 11,095 books. It collected books of diVerent

schools of thought, both ancient and contemporary, on astronomy, local

annals, Yin–Yang, medicine, Buddhism and Taoism, and technologies and

arts, amounting to more than 7,000 diVerent kinds of information. It was

extremely bulky in size, totalling to 370 million characters. Its coverage was

all-embracing: classic Chinese philosophy, religions, politics, economy, cul-

ture, education, literature, arts, history, geography and agriculture, industry,

astronomy, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, medicine, con-

struction and utensils. It is an general manifestation of the level that Chinese

society, its politics, economy, culture, and science, had reached by the early

Ming Dynasty.

The Yongle Compendiumwas so enormous that it was diYcult to print. It could

only be hand-copied and the only copy was stored atWenyuan Library in Nanjing,

the then capital. In 1421, the central government was moved to Peking (Beijing

today), the new capital, and The Yongle Compendium was transported there and

stored in the ‘Literary Building’. In April 1557, the courtyard caught Wre and the

‘Literary Building’ was destroyed but, fortunately, The Yongle Compendium was


rescued from the Xames. For fear of losing the dictionary by accident, Emperor

Zhu Houcong (朱厚熜) decided to make an additional copy. In August 1562, Xu

Jie (徐阶) and Gao Gong (高拱) were imperially ordered to take charge of the

project. It took 109 Confucian scholars Wve years to hand-copy it and a new copy

came into being in April 1567. From that time on, the two copies have been

separately stored, one in the Wenyuan Library and one in the Huang Shi Cheng

Library. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the original copy was burned and only

the duplicate copy was preserved until the Qing Dynasty. During the reign of

Emperor Yongzheng, the dictionary was moved out of the Huang Shi Cheng

Library to the Imperial Academy so that oYcials and scholars could have access

to it. Eventually, the numerous volumes began to disappear. In 1773, when the

central government started to compile The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of

Literature, more than 2,000 volumes of The Yongle Compendium were lost. When

Beijing was invaded in 1860 and in 1900, part of the duplicate copy was burned and

part of it was stolen by invaders from England, the US, Russia, Japan, Germany,

France, and other countries. Those that remained scattered all over China were

few in number and by the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were only sixty-four

books left.

Since 1949, continuous eVorts have been made to collect the original volumes

of the duplicate copy. Up to now the number has reached 219 books. In 1960,

Zhong Hua Book Company made use of the 215 original books, together with

the pseudo-classical ones, photocopied ones, and others, and printed The Yongle

Compendium in photocopy, a 730-volume Yongle Compendium. In recent years,

Zhong Hua Book Company has continued its pursuit of The Yongle Compen-

dium and collected another sixty-three photocopies with the help of libraries

both inside and outside China. The presently available 800-volume Yongle

Compendium is printed in photocopy.

The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences was compiled by Chen Yuan-

long, whose courtesy name was Guang Ling and who was born in Ninghai,

Zhejiang Province. He was a learned scholar and adept at composing poems.

He published a collection of poems, i.e. Collected Poems: Sun-loving Hall

(<爱日堂诗集>, twenty-seven volumes) and compiled A Collection of Fu-

poems of Previous Dynasties (<历代赋汇>, 184 volumes). The compilation of

The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences started in 1703 when he was

imperially permitted to leave his oYce and serve his sick father at home. He

was also imperially ordered to compile A Collection of Fu-poems of Previous

Dynasties at home at the same time. Eight years later and with the help of other

scholars, such as Fan Zuan (范纉), Huang Zhijun (黄之隽), and Yao Yan (姚

炎), The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences was completed and sent for


printing in 1717. It was in 1735 that the dictionary was prefaced and made

available to the public.

The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences had a classiWcation of thirty

categories, namely heaven, earth, human body, garments, court and room, drink-

ing and eating, cloth and silk, ship and cart, governmental system (i.e. seals,

ceremonial equipment), treasures, stationery, military equipment, ritual articles,

musical instruments, weaving instruments, farming tools, everyday utensils, fur-

niture, dressing utensils, entertaining utensils, gaming utensils, grain, vegetable,

wood, grass, Xower, fruit, bird, beast, aquatic animals, and insects. For each

category, there were some subcategories. For example:

(a) The category of ‘heaven’ (four volumes) dealt with heavenly bodies,

meteorology, calendar, time sequence, etc. and was classiWed into thirty-eight

subcategories, such as sky, the sun, the moon, stars, twenty-eight constellations,

Milky Way, storm and lightning, rainbow, armillary sphere, water clock, climate

and weather, etc.

(b) The category of ‘earth’ (six volumes) dealt with the landform and geo-

logical phenomena and was classiWed into forty-four subcategories, such as earth,

mountain, sea, stone, water, spring, waterfall, well, maps, seismograph, fossils,

and ornamental columns, etc.;

(c) The category of ‘cloth and silk’ (one volume) dealt with Wbre products and

was classiWed into thirty-eight subcategories, such as silk, ramie, brocade, em-

broidery, damask, gauze, damask silk, silk yarn, gunny cloth, cotton cloth, Wre-

proofed cloth, felt, etc.

If the data to deal with under one item were unmanageable, diVerent labels

were used for further diVerentiation, such as ‘general introduction’ (总论),

‘subcategories’ (各类), ‘titles’ (称号), and ‘diVerentiation’ (纪异). For instance,

the item ‘stone’ in the category ‘earth’ was further labelled with diVerent types,

such as ‘general introduction’, ‘detailed classiWcation’, ‘precious stones in ancient

times’, ‘individual stones’, ‘individual stones in ancient times’, ‘Wgure stones’,

‘strange stones’, ‘fossils’, and ‘stone diVerentiation’. In such a way, the enormous

data about ‘stone’ were well sorted and organized. The data pertaining to more

than one item were appended at the end of the main entry as a subentry. The

Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences explored the etymology of the names of

artefacts and physical objects. Joseph Needham (1900–1995), a British historian of

science, commented that it is ‘a useful’, ‘small-scale encyclopedia speciWcally for

the history of science and technology’ and it is ‘the best one’ among the

numerous books of its kind.


18.5 the academic value and influence of specialand encyclopedic dictionaries in the ming and

qing dynasties

The special and classiWed dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties were

mainly compiled ‘to research into the scientiWc principles of things and nature’.

They were important reference books for studying science and culture at that

time, serving the purpose of consultation in time of special need. They can also

be taken as a summarization of what natural sciences and social sciences achieve

at a speciWc stage of social development. They have greatly enriched Chinese

lexicographical culture and embodied its unique framework. They are still of

great value in terms of theoretical inquiries into and actual use of special

dictionaries, encyclopedic dictionaries, and encyclopedias of the twentieth century

in China.

Dictionaries of function words and of lexical expressions also developed

rapidly over this period. They were grand in size, speciWc in entry identiWcation

and selection, detailed and complete in citation and sense explication, and

particular in the classiWcation of function words. They strived as much as

possible to trace the origin of words and expressions (especially geographical

terms and terms of address), showing a high standard of compilation and great

commitment to academic enquiry. The Interpretative Dictionary of Function

Words and The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies instan-

tiated a high standard and expertise in the classiWcation and explication of

function words. The format and style of The Dictionary of Function Words in

Lections and Biographies diVered from those of The Ready Guide, which was of

semantic classiWcation, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which

was of radical classiWcation, and The Dictionary of Rhymes, which was of rhyme

classiWcation. It was arranged according to the initial consonants of the ancient

characters. Its format and style were consistent and distinct. This unique mode of

format and style was evidence of the new approach of Wang Niansun and Wang

Yinzhi, i.e. the initial consonant-based approach to linguistic investigation,

which also made pioneering explorations into the macrostructure of special

dictionaries of word usage. In his Preface to The Dictionary of Function Words

in Lections and Biographies, Wang Yinzhi pointed out the signiWcance of ‘learning

from example and extending by analogy’. By ‘learning from example’ was

meant that the meanings of function words could be deduced by comprehen-

sively studying the examples – observing the contexts in which they were used


and the roles they performed in the example sentences; and by ‘extending by

analogy’ was meant that the scope of word meaning explication could be

extended by employing the method of analogy. Such a notion of deWning

words in context initiated by Wang Yinzhi is insightful and had profound

implications for future theoretical and practical lexicographers. It was in the

second half of the twentieth century that such a notion began to receive greater

attention when learners’ dictionaries and active dictionaries were booming. It

was systematically applied to and well manifested by the Collins-Cobuild learn-

ers’ dictionary series.

Among the dictionaries of lexical expressions, Proverbs of the Yue Dialect,

Proverb Couplets of the Wu Dialect, A Collection of Popular Expressions, A

Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles, A Dictionary of Synonyms, and A Dictionary

of Titles and Appellations all have their particular features of format and style,

deWnition, phonetic notation, and citation. They are not only important refer-

ence books for consulting the meaning of proverbs, dialectal colloquial expres-

sions and terms of address but also important and valuable resources for the

etymological study of Chinese words, the optimization of social arts and

systems, the textual research of literary quotations, and the development of

local customs in ancient times, etc. In terms of format and style, A Dictionary of

Synonyms has it that ‘characters are combinatorial’ and that ‘in compilation,

characters are grouped according to the categories they belong to’. Such a

principle for designing dictionary format and style is initiative and scientiWc

in that it accords with the linguistic characteristics of dictionaries of lexical

words and meets the speciWc needs of its users. It has great signiWcance for later

generations of dictionary compilers. A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles is a

distinguished representative of dictionaries of lexical expressions and is com-

piled for literati to consult relevant literary quotations and antithetical couplets

in writing poems and fu-poems. In such a dictionary words and phrases are

grouped together when they share the same character ending. This reversing

dictionary is initiative and holds a unique position in the history of lexicog-

raphy in China. In terms of linguistic data, the materials involved in A Diction-

ary of Rhymes and Styles are abundant and it provides good lexical resources for

subsequent lexicographers.

In terms of the evolution of human civilization, The Compendium of Materia

Medica is undoubtedly the greatest medical work in the medical history of China.

Darwin praises it as ‘the encyclopedia of ancient China’ and Joseph Needham

also points out that the greatest scientiWc accomplishment of the Ming Dynasty is

The Compendium of Materia Medica by Li Shizhen and that it is the peak of

materia medica works. In terms of specialized dictionaries, The Compendium of


Materia Medica is a monumental work in the lexicographical history of China. It

accumulates massive valuable experience for later generations of special diction-

aries, encyclopedic dictionaries, and encyclopedias: it has improved the method

of the categoric arrangement of entries, highlighted the role of entries in explain-

ing meaning, strengthened the dominant position of name standardization in

entry organization – in treating the variant or diVerent but related names, and

fossilized the modes of deWnition. A model microstructure of The Compendium

of Materia Medica goes as follows: interpretation on its name – collective

explanation and discrimination – concocting and processing – its properties

and pharmacology – its major medical eVects – research Wndings – medical

prescriptions. Its Explanatory Notes has summarized the entry structure thus:

For its several constituents, the Wrst thing is to interpret the name, i.e. the standard name;

collective explanation, explaining its places of origin, its appearance, and its collection;

discussions and discriminations to rectify errors in previous literatures; then, produc-

tion, i.e. how to make it; odour and taste, i.e. to expose its properties; then, major

medical treatments, i.e. to record previous literature; its research Wndings, i.e. to discuss

its pharmacology; the attachment of prescriptions, i.e. to illustrate its medical functions.

Or if a prescription is to be deleted, reasons must be given to justify it.

Such a deWnition model is far ahead of its time and even today few specialized

dictionaries of medicine can surpass it.

Now, let us turn to The Book of Nature’s Engineering, a special-subject diction-

ary, which gives a comprehensive introduction to the tools, technologies, and

methods of processing employed in the agriculture and handicraft industry. It is

regarded by some Western scholars as an encyclopedia of Chinese science and

technology history. It is well known for its rich, full, and accurate content and has

embodied the overall situation of agriculture and industry of China in the middle

of the seventeenth century. The data in The Book of Nature’s Engineering are still

an important resource for the study of science and technology history of China

and of the world.

In a sense, an encyclopedic dictionary lies in between a general philological

dictionary and an encyclopedia proper. It is an integration of the two in format

and style and in content and among its entries the encyclopedic ones are more

than those in the philological dictionary. ClassiWed dictionaries could be taken as

the predecessors of Chinese encyclopedias and have made both theoretical and

practical preparations for the birth of encyclopedic dictionaries and encyclope-

dias. The Yongle Compendium is the biggest encyclopedic dictionary in ancient

China and the biggest dictionary of an encyclopedic nature in the world. It is rich

in content, profound and broad in knowledge, and comprehensive in the subjects


involved and, therefore, it is unprecedented as far as classiWed dictionaries and

encyclopedic dictionaries are concerned. The Yongle Compendium follows the

policy of word for word copy of the original and, therefore, it has genuinely

preserved a large amount of the content of the non-existent classics and ancient

books, which exercises great inXuence on the academic research and cultural

progress of later times. It holds an indispensable position in collecting lost

literature in that its data is vast and inexhaustible. For instance, in compiling

The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature in the Qing Dynasty, more

than 500 kinds of lost books are detected and listed. The ancient versions it

preserves are important for studying the evolution of academic research. It also

provides an abundant source of data for studying the politics, economy, history,

culture, and science and technology before the Ming Dynasty. For instance, The

Yongle Compendium lists more than 220 kinds of plays and drama, which are

important data for the study of art and literature. It also records books concern-

ing various subjects, such as The Old History of the Five Dynasties (<旧五代史>),Collected Essentials of the Song Dynasty (<宋会要>), The Nine Chapters on

Arithmetic (<九章算术>), The Arithmetic Classics of the Islands (<海岛

算经>), Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture (<农桑辑要>), Methods and

Models in Construction (<营造法式>), and Teachings of the Deceased Natives

(<梓人遗训>), which are indispensable data for studying ancient Chinese his-

tory and the history of science and technology.

The Yongle Compendium is the biggest and grandest dictionary project in the

lexicographical history of China and a rare gem among world civilizations and

cultures. It is extremely rich in its data collection, grand in size, accurate and neat

in copying the original, and delicate and beautiful in its design, binding, and

printing. The Yongle Compendium provides abundant experience and good

lessons for later generations of lexicographers to learn. In terms of format and

style, it abandons the traditional method of classiWed dictionary compilation,

that is, to group things according to the categories they belong to and to arrange

entries according to the categories of the things they designate and adopts a new

method of entry design, i.e. rhyme-based entry design – ‘to govern the characters

by means of their rhymes and to relate to things by means of the characters’. That

is an innovation and a new system in dictionary design. A rhyme-based entry

design is a new way of character listing, which is more convenient for retrieval. In

terms of retrieval, it adopts the method of co-referencing, which is an important

contribution to the improvement of the retrieval system of dictionary design.

Co-reference enables the interaction between diVerent entries and fosters and

strengthens the lexical association of the user in consulting a target word, which,

to a certain extent, changes the traditional model of retrieval and way of thinking.


The Yongle Compendium also adopts an editing policy of exhaustiveness, speciW-

city, and completeness, which is of signiWcance to the compilation of encyclope-

dias. Since it adopts the policy of word-for-word copying, it eVectively preserves

ancient books in their original forms and does much better work than The

Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature, which alters and/or deletes

what is taken from the ancient books. There are, however, some defects in The

Yongle Compendium:

Its content is disunited, enormous, and jumbled; it is not well organized . . . Since it is

hasty in compilation and completion, data collection cannot be carried out entry by

entry but text by text; as the programme was pressed for time and ended in haste, it was

impossible to carry out the analysis text by text, but book by book. Consequently, the

classiWcation was made on the basis of the book titles. The whole dictionary, therefore, is

inconsistent in some parts of its organization and it can only be left at that. (The General

Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature)

These are good lessons for later generations of lexicographers to learn.


19

THE EVOLUTION ANDFORMATION OF RHYMEDICTIONARIES IN THE

MING AND QINGDYNASTIES

LIKE pronouncing dictionaries, rhyme dictionaries fall into the special-aspect

dictionary type in the ‘special dictionary’ category. Over the Ming and Qing

Dynasties, rhyme dictionaries formed a relatively independent system, thus dealt

with here in a separate chapter rather than together with other special dictionary

types in the previous chapter.

19.1 the historical background in theming and qing dynasties

Since The Dictionary of Initial Consonants was compiled by Li Deng in the Three

Kingdoms period, rhyme dictionaries have been compiled to standardize and dis-

criminate speech sounds, and to assist literati in composing poems or fu-poems. At

the very beginningof theMingDynasty,HongWuDictionary of StandardRhymeswas

compiled. In the Preface, the author, Song Lian, mentioned his motivation for

compilation: Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang happened to consult rhyme dictionaries and

found that the analogies made in them were illogical in many cases, and the speech

sounds, phonetically notated, were occasionally found to be abnormal. He sum-

moned the oYcials whowere in charge of language teaching aVairs and instructed:

The study of phonetics originated from the regions to the left of the Yangtze River but

the phonetic notations have already lost their justiWcation today: there are rhymes that

are used individually but should be used in a general way, such as东冬 and 清青; there

are also rhymes that are used in a general way but should be used separately, such as 虞,

模, 麻, and 遮. Examples of such a kind are numerous. You oYcials concerned should

consult with those with expertise in phonetics and rectify the rhyme dictionaries. (from

the Preface to Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes)

From 正韵 (literally, ‘to rectify the old rhymes’) in the Chinese title, it can be

inferred that it was compiled mainly for the examination and rectiWcation of

phonetic notations. In the Qing Dynasty, when he was compiling Ancient and

Modern Rhyme Standards, Zhu Junsheng stated:

When I Wnished the compilation of An Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds, I wanted to

get it published and solicit comments from the experts. On second thoughts, I am afraid

that with the publication of the 106 rhymes a negative eVect might be brought about – the

over-emphasis on the 106 rhymes might strongly constrain poetic composition in oYcial

examinations; the contemporary could not be generated and the ancient would not be

suppressed. Then I came back to the contemporary rhymes and reconsidered them

carefully. And as a result, one rhyme is divided into several types and the users can

choose from one speciWc type and select the appropriate ones for their poems. No matter

whether they match the contemporary or the ancient, either is justiWable. Thus the book

is entitled古今韵准 (Ancient and Modern Rhyme Standards). (from Self-introduction to

Criteria of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes)

The motivation for the compilation of Criteria of Ancient and Contemporary

Rhymes was to compromise the diVerences between the ancient and the contem-

porary rhymes, on the one hand, and to help those take part in imperial

examinations on the other hand, which truthfully reXected the background and

the evolutionary path of rhyme dictionaries.

19.2 the development of lexicographicaltheories in the ming and qing dynasties

The theoretical underpinnings of the compilation of rhyme dictionaries in ancient

China were phonological studies. The period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties,


especially the Qing Dynasty, reached the peak of ancient phonological studies in

China. Chen Di, a Ming Dynasty scholar, initiated the scientiWc studies of phon-

ology in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The publication of The VeriWcation of

Ancient Phonetic Sounds in Mao’s Book of Songs (<毛诗古音考>) overturned the

‘coordinate rhyme’ (叶韵) theory universally acknowledged by the Song Dynasty

scholars for reading The Book of Songs. As Chen Di points out:

Diachronically, we have the ancient and the contemporary; geographically, we have the

North and the South; and inevitably, the characters and words undergo reforms while the

speech sounds experience changes. If we read an ancient work with present day pronun-

ciation, we will Wnd it awkward and inharmonious. All these were once attributed to

‘leaves’ for they were what the ‘fruits’ all came from. Correspondingly, literary works are

not all written by one hand and they are not collected from one single state, then, why

must母 be universally pronounced as米? If it does not rhyme with杞 or止, then it must

rhyme with祉 or喜. Why? (from Self-introduction to The VeriWcation of Ancient Phonetic

Sounds in Mao’s Book of Songs)

Gu Yanwu was the pioneer of academic research and the founder of ancient

Chinese phonetics in the Qing Dynasty. On the basis of the research by Chen Di,

he further worked out the ancient pronunciations of some characters and

classiWed them into rhyme sections. He proposed a classiWcation of ten rhyme

sections for the ancient rhyming system, which laid the foundation for the study

of ancient rhymes in the Qing Dynasty. Of the ten rhyme sections identiWed by

Gu Yanwu, four of them were well acknowledged, i.e. the sixth, seventh, eighth,

and ninth rhyme sections. For the other six rhyme sections, the classiWcation was

preliminary and more work needed to be done, mainly in further subdivision.

For instance, the ancient rhyme system was classiWed into thirteen sections by

Jiang Yong (江永, 1681–1762), nine categories and twenty-Wve sections by Dai

Zhen (1723–1777), seventeen sections by Duan Yucai, eighteen sections by Kong

Guangshen (孔广森, 1752–1786), and twenty-one sections by Wang Niansun. Gu

Yanwu invented an important method of studying the ancient pronunciation –

‘go along the streams and trace upwards to the sources’, in other words, ‘research

into ancient speech sounds through a better understanding of how contemporary

speech sounds divorce and merge’ (Jiang Yong: The Standards of Ancient Rhymes:

Style Guide, <古韵标准�例言>). By this method, for the Wrst time, he dissected

the rhymes in the Tang Dynasty and classiWed ancient rhymes into ten sections.

Let us see how he did it. Firstly, he took apart the combined rhymes as ‘level

rhymes’, i.e. the rhymes for poetry and went back to The Tang Dictionary of

Rhymes; then he studied how rhymes were used in The Book of Songs and tested

the Wndings against the rhyming works in the Pre-Qin Dynasties; next, he

evolution of rhyme dictionaries 349

dissected and analysed the rhyme system instantiated in The Tang Dictionary of

Rhymes; and lastly he reclassiWed them in an attempt to restore the ancient rhyme

system. Gu Yanwu broke through the paradigm set by The Tang Dictionary of

Rhymes and separated one rhyme into two, which was unprecedented and

revolutionary. Gu Yanwu also changed the distribution system of the entering

tone in The Dictionary of Rhymes: in his Table of Ancient Phonetic Sounds (<古音

表>) he matched the entering tone with the high and level tone, which revealed

the relationship between the entering tone and the high and level tones in the

speech sounds of the early ancient period, which was a great contribution to the

study of the rhyme system in early ancient times. That was also used as support-

ive evidence for his classiWcation of the three rhyme sections of支,脂, and之 in

The Rhyme Diagram of Six Categories of Chinese Characters. The rule of ‘the

entering tone mating the high and level tone’ was well recognized by the majority

of the phonologists of later generations.

For the studies in ancient phonetics in the Qing Dynasty, more attention was

given to ancient rhyme sections. The ancient initial consonants were largely

neglected. Qian Daxin was the Wrst scholar to systematically look into ancient

consonants and made noticeable achievements. His Wndings about ancient

initial consonants were mainly given in The Collected Works of Qian Yan Tang

(<潜研堂文集>) and New Collections of Shijiazhai (<十驾斋养新录>) and

could be summarized as follows: (a) There were no light labials in early ancient

times: the four light labial alphabets, i.e. 非, 敷, 奉, and 微 in the 36-letter

alphabet of Middle Ancient Chinese, did not exist in Early Ancient Chinese but

were the result of diVerentiation from four heavy labials, i.e.帮, 滂,并, and明

respectively; (b) There were no tongue surface sounds in early ancient time. The

three such sounds, i.e. 知,彻, and 澄, were once pronounced as 端,透, and定

respectively, which were tongue head sounds from which the tongue surface

sounds were derived; (c) The ancient people had more tongue sounds than we

have today; (d) In early ancient times,影,喻,晓, and匣 are mutual alliterations.

These four Wndings are Qian Daxin’s major contributions to the study of the

early ancient initial consonants. The Wrst two Wndings are especially important

and have been widely accepted by his contemporaries and the scholars of later

generations.

Not only were outstanding achievementsmade in ancient phonology but also in

contemporary Chinese phonology in the Qing Dynasty. Contemporary Chinese

phonology focused on the study of Chinese sound patterns and systems in the Sui

and Tang Dynasties and referred especially to the studies of the phonological

systems reXected in The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes, which was represented by

Chen Li in theQingDynasty. He wroteThe VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese


Rhymes (1842) to restore the original outlook of The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes

by Lu Fayan of the Sui Dynasty via a systematic investigation into The Dictionary

of Rhymes. Chen Li held that ‘The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes is lost but it exists

in The Dictionary of Rhymes’ (from the Preface to The VeriWcation of the Dictionary

of Chinese Rhymes). The fanqie used in The Dictionary of Rhymes was what

Lu Fayan called ‘the old method’. The focus of Chen Li’s investigation was on

the fanqie used in The Dictionary of Rhymes. The basic principle established

by Chen Li was that: the Wrst character in fanqie and the target character to

be phonetically notated must share the same initial consonant while the second

character in fanqie and the target charactermust share the same end vowel, i.e. they

rhyme. From this basic principle two corollaries can be inferred: for two fanqies,

if their Wrst characters are of the same kind, then the second characters must be

of diVerent kinds; if their second characters are of the same kind, then the Wrst

characters must be of diVerent kinds. The method he employed for analysing

fanqie was the method of relation-detection, a kind of induction, which can

be instantiated as three rules, namely:

(a) identical use (同用):冬 is phonetically notated as都宗切 and当 as都郎

切 – the two fanqies share the same Wrst character都;

(b) mutual use (互用):当 is phonetically notated as都郎切 and都 as当孤切 –

in the two fanqies都 and当 are mutually used to give phonetic notations;

(c) successive use (递用):冬 is phonetically notated as都宗切 and都 as当孤

切 –当 is used for都which is used for冬, i.e. the three characters are used

in a successive fashion. (from The VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese

Rhymes: Style Guide)

Chen Li used the method of relation-detection in studying the Wrst 452

characters of fanqie in The Dictionary of Rhymes and classiWed them into forty

initial consonant types. Then he turned to over 1,200 second characters of fanqie

and classiWed them into 311 rhyme types. Chen Li approached The Dictionary

of Rhymes in the right way and implemented the relation-detection method

successfully. For the Wrst time he revealed the initial consonant system and the

rhyme system of The Dictionary of Rhymes. The relation-detection method is still

widely used in phonological studies today.

The focus of ancient phonological studies in China was on how to classify

diVerent speech sounds into diVerent categories and/or diVerent sections and

how to improve the methods of phonetic notation, especially fanqie. The achieve-

ments in phonological studies in the Qing Dynasty had an impact on the

compilation of rhyme dictionaries, in their format and style and in their content.

They formed the underpinnings for the design of rhyme dictionaries – how to


construct the format and style, how to design the macrostructure, and how to

present the diVerent kinds of information in an entry.

19.3 the evolution of format and style in theming and qing dynasties

In terms of the nature of the rhyme system, the important rhyme dictionaries of

the Ming and Qing Dynasties fell into two major categories: Hong Wu Dictionary

of Standard Rhymes and Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions (<五方元音>) arerhyme dictionaries under the Central Plains rhyme system while An Explanatory

Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes was under the rhyme system of The Dictionary

of Chinese Rhymes.

Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes, in line with The Central Plains

Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes, adopted a critical attitude towards traditional

rhyme dictionaries. Since Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang believed that ‘the study of

rhymes originated from the regions to the left of the Yangtze River and it has

eventually lost its justiWcation and validity as a standard’ (Preface to Hong Wu

Dictionary of Standard Rhymes), the compilers argued accordingly that ‘it is too

hard for Shen Yue to take the speech sounds of Wu as the standard to govern the

sounds of the world. Today we will rectify it’ (Style Guide to Hong Wu Dictionary

of Standard Rhymes: Style Guide). Then, what was the criterion for rectiWcation in

Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes? The standard speech in the Central

Plains was to be adopted as the criteria for rectiWcation, for the compilers

believed:

Men are born with the capacity to speak. They speak diVerently because of what they

have practised in diVerent regions. Then, few types of speech are qualiWed to govern them

all. For instance, the forms of speech in Wu and in Chu are too Xighty; those in Yan and Ji

are too heavy; in Qin and Long the falling tones have turned into the entering and in

Liang and Yi the levelling tone sounds like a falling tone; the diVerences in rhyming

between the east of the Yangtze and the north of the Yellow River are even greater. Then,

which one can be justiWably reckoned as the standard one? The standard one should be

intelligible to people from all diVerent regions. (Style Guide to Hong Wu Dictionary of

Standard Rhymes: Style Guide.)

The one and only speech of such a kind was the speech of the Central Plains.

Then, what were the proto-sounds of speech in all regions? Nian Xiyao (年希尧)

stated: ‘The laws of Yin–yang and the Five Elements are instantiated as the Five


Elements in Heaven and the Five Directions on earth and the Five Tones in

sounds.’ ‘It is intended to apply the laws of heaven, earth, and nature to the

sounds of heaven, earth, and nature, and consequently the proto-sounds of

speech can be produced.’ (Preface to Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions).

‘Law’ referred to the twelve temperaments in music and Proto-sounds of Speech

in all Regions was correspondingly divided into twelve rhyme sections, indicating

the ‘sounds of heaven, earth, and nature’, i.e. ‘the proto-sounds of speech’. The

text of Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions was divided into two volumes: each

had six rhyme sections. The characters in each volume were further grouped

according to their initial consonants and the tones they shared. The characters

did not adopt the phonetic notation of fanqie but occasionally used direct

phonetic notation. Each character had a brief explication of its meaning. Look

at the following example entry from Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions:

一天: (剪) (上平) 煎,油煮 . . . . . . (去) 煎, 蜜浸果物。

(One heaven: 剪 [rising level tone] 煎: oil-fried . . . [falling tone] 煎: fruits

soaked with honey.)

天 (heaven) indicated the rhyme section, 剪 stood for the initial consonant,

and上平 and去 indicated the tones. It can be seen from this example entry that

煎 had two pronunciations and two senses. Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions

was written in simple and plain Chinese, with both phonetic notation and sense

deWnition, which partly explained why it was so popular in the early period of the

Qing Dynasty.

The actual phonetic sounds reXected in An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds

and Rhymes were diVerent from those reXected in the series of rhyme dictionaries

patterned after The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes in that a large-scale reformation

was made on the old phonetic notation system of fanqie. Such a reform was

triggered by a comparison between the Chinese language and the Manchurian

language. Emperor Kangxi noticed that ‘in the Manchurian language, the method

of sound combination is natural and this method should be good enough to

embrace the merits of fanqie’ (from Preface to An Explanatory Dictionary of

Sounds and Rhymes). Li Guangdi, along with others, was appointed to reform

the method of fanqie by taking advantage of sound combination. The so-called

‘sound combination method’ was a method of phonetic notation in the Man-

churian language. When it was applied to fanqie for the Chinese language, ‘its

function is manifested as follows: two characters are recognized when it is

pronounced slowly but only one is detected when it is pronounced fast enough.’

In order to facilitate the pronouncing of two characters as that of one character,

some characters were identiWed as the Wrst characters for fanqie, such as the

characters falling into the rhyming sections of 支, 微, 鱼, 虞, 歌, and 麻, etc.


These rhymes were all open syllables with no nasal ending. When they are

combined with the second character in fanqie, there will be no redundant

element lying in between. As for the second character for fanqie, the compilers

identiWed the characters with the vowel of影 /ying/ when it was a voiceless sound

and the characters with the vowel of 喻 /yu/ when it was a voiced sound. These

characters had a vowel or a semi-vowel as the initial sound and when they were

used as the second characters in fanqie there would be no initial consonants lying

in between as a hindrance. Through the work of Li Guangdi and his colleagues,

the Wrst characters in fanqie were stripped of sound tails, and the second

characters were without sound heads. They naturally merged into one when

they were pronounced quickly, which was the major advantage of the improved

method – the combinatorial fanqie (合声切字法).

In addition, there are also several other rhyme dictionaries bearing unique

features in format and style, such as General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems

(<诗词通韵>), General Examples of Sounds and Rhymes in All Human Speeches

(<古今中外音韵通例>), and The Diagram of Pictophonetic Characters (<谐声

谱>).General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems (1685) was written by Piao Yinzi (朴

隐子), a Qing Dynasty scholar from Jiangsu Province. It consisted of Wve volumes

arranged in the order of rising level tone, falling level tone, rising tone, falling tone,

and entering tone, with an appendix of The Standard Table of Fanqie (<反切定谱>, one volume). It was entitledGeneral Rhymes (<通韵>), because twenty basicrhyme sectionswere identiWed on the basis of the rhyme system in ci-poems and qu

which was systematically compared with that of the poems. The twenty rhyme

sections were:翁,咉,面,伊,纡,乌,鸦,矣,恩,安,嫣,剜,鏖,阿,耶,英,讴,阴,谙,

and 淹. In the Qing Dynasty, mouth-opening (开), parallel-dental (齐), mouth-

closing (合), and lip-rounding (撮) were identiWed as ‘four breathing-outs’ and

General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems was the Wrst to apply the ‘four breathing-

outs’ to the arrangement of the characters. ‘For rhymes, there are four breathing-

outs, seven basic sounds, and thirty-one classes. There is ‘‘open’’ or ‘‘close’’ for

breathing-outs, gong (宫) or shang (商) for sounddiscrimination, and voiceless or

voiced for thirty-one classes.’ (from General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems:

Illustrations). The ‘seven sounds’ referred to宫, 商, 角,徵, 羽,变徵, and变商.

The ‘thirty-one classes’ referred to the thirty-one initial consonants. Within the

thirty-one classes, the initial consonants were further diVerentiated between

‘voiceless’ and ‘voiced’. General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems amply reXected

the major characteristics of the initial consonants of the rhyme dictionaries on

Southern Qu, a kind of verse popular in the Yuan Dynasty.

General Examples of Sounds and Rhymes in All Human Speeches was compiled

by Hu Huan (胡桓, 1836–?). The book was originally entitled as Rhyme Studies in


Wei Gen Xuan (<味根轩韵学>) and published in 1888. It consisted of twenty-

Wve sections and one preface which expatiated on the reasons and motivations

for the book. In the third section of Preface, he stated:

The front matter of General Diagrams of Vowels and Consonants (<音呼声韵总谱>) Wrstlisted four diagrams for individual surveys of the vowels and the initial consonants, then

Wfteen diagrams for general survey of the vowels and the initial consonants, and then

sixteen diVerent ways of pronunciation, which serve as an introductory guide. Those

diagrams are the results of several decades’ investigation and analysis. It is a well-

established method for serious study to approach from their diVerent ways of pronun-

ciations. Later, diVerent tables are made for the rhymes in the classics, in diVerent

dialects, and in translation, but the essentials all fall into the scope of General Rhymes.

(from the Preface to General Examples of Sounds and Rhymes in All Human Speeches)

General Diagrams of Vowels and Consonants had some rhyme tables to illustrate

combinatorial relationships between diVerent initial consonants and vowels.Dia-

grams of the 15 Rhymes: the Five Tongue Positions and the Opening and Closing of the

Mouth (<十五韵分五舌张笼口图>) had identiWed Wfteen rhyme sections cat-

egorized into three types, i.e. Wve tongue rhymes, mouth-opening rhymes, and

mouth-closing rhymes.Diagrams of 22 Initial Consonants: lightness vs. heaviness of

the Five Sounds (<二十二母分五音轻重图>) listed twenty-two initial conson-

ants that were regrouped into Wve types: laryngeals, alveolars, back dentals, front

dentals, and labials and, for each type, the consonants were further classiWed into

four subtypes: primary heavy, secondary heavy, secondary light, primary light.

Diagrams for the Four Breathing-outs: Positive vs. Negative;High vs. low;Narrow vs.

Broad; Roundedness vs. Flatness (<四呼分正副高低狭阔圆扁图>) made use of

the four breathing-outs to reclassify the vowels and choose the root vowels as the

representatives. Diagrams for the Five Sounds: Levelling vs. Oblique; Yin vs. Yang;

Rising vs. Falling vs. Entering (<五声分平仄阴阳上去入图>) classiWed the tonesinto the levelling tone, which was further classiWed into the yin-levelling tone and

the yang-levelling tone, and the oblique tone, which was further classiWed into the

rising tone, the falling tone, and the entering tone. Hu Huan made diagrams for

each rhyme section and general diagrams weremade to embrace the Wfteen rhyme

sections. For each diagram, horizontally listed were the twenty-two initial

consonants for the rhyme sections and vertically listed were the four types

of breathing-outs: mouth openings, parallel-dentals, mouth-closings, and lip-

roundings. Within each type were listed the Wve tones – yin-levelling, yang-

levelling, rising oblique, falling oblique, and entering oblique. Hu Huan stated

that the book was written for enlightenment and practical use, to help understand

and appreciate rhyming patterns. In Level-Oblique Initial Consonants: Seven Items


(<平侧声七条>), he said that ‘it is compiled for enlightenment and it will simply

follow SoundDiVerentiation (<音鉴>) by Li Songshi (李松石)’; ‘Since it is to help

to enlighten the students, when an odd sound is encountered the chief method

employed is to elicit or to highlight the most basic things’. This emphasis on

enlightenment can be found in most parts of the book. For instance,

since it is for enlightenment, there would be no diVerentiation of the voiceless from the

voiced but just the diVerentiation of breathing-out for the initial consonants and the

rhyming of the vowels. When it is expected that the user might know only one of the two

characters in fanqie, the diYcult one might be substituted for an easy borrowed one.

(from Head Characters with Vowels: Two Items, <母韵领首字两条>)

The alphabetical characters used are only those voiceless ones. The addition of the yang-

level tone to the four tones is also intended to ease pronunciation. (from The Method of

Keeping the Voiceless and Deleting the Voiced: Two Items, <留清去浊法二条>)

the deletion of the voiced from the vowels is also to assist learners in grasping pronun-

ciation. . . . It is inappropriate to take the names of the breathing-outs as the names of

the vowels. Otherwise the learners would be confused. . . . The illustrative examples are

expected to meet the need of the students and the slang and colloquial expressions are

not deliberately avoided. (from Self Introduction: Three Items, <自述三条>).

As Zhao Yintang (赵荫棠, 1957) stated: ‘Since the book is entitled ‘‘all speeches in

the world’’, its content does not merely focus on rhyming but also is concerned

with translated expressions and sound transmission in the open air, in addition

to the vowels and initial consonants of human speech.’

Therefore, the book served to help to understand ancient speech sounds

centuries or millennia ago or the sounds of dialects hundreds or thousands of

miles away. Hu Huan added fresh ideas to theoretical investigations and devoted

suYcient attention to speech sounds of diVerent regional dialects. His contribu-

tions to phonological studies are remarkable and indispensable.

Among the rhyme dictionaries in the Qing Dynasties there was one of rigorous

format and style, i.e. The Dictionary of Pictophonetic Characters (Wfty volumes) by

Zhang Huiyan (张惠言) and Zhang Chengsun (张成孙), an essential dictionary

on ancient phonetics, second only to those compiled by Gu Yanwu and Wang

Niansun. This dictionary made full use of the data from classic literature and the

early ancient sounds were divided into twenty sections. There were four kinds of

format and style, namely表 (chart),谱 (pedigree),韵 (rhyme), and略 (omission).

The logical relations in the macrostructure of the dictionary were meticulously

woven and well-grounded. From the studies in the ancient rhymes some charts

were obtained, from which were derived the other charts for pictophonetic


characters. The charts followed the model of the theory of combined rhymes by

Duan Yucai; the pedigrees were mainly based on An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters; the pictophonetic characters were mainly rhymed ones while

the rhymesweremainly found in poems; the omissions were written in the formof

the oYcial script in the order of the pedigrees to facilitate consultation. (See Style

Guide to The Dictionary of Pictophonetic Characters.)

19.4 the representative dictionariesin the ming and qing dynasties and

their academic influence

The major inXuential rhyme dictionaries in the period of the Ming and Qing

Dynasties areHongWuDictionary of StandardRhymes,Proto-sounds of Speech in all

Regions,An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes,The Essentials of Sounds

and Rhymes of Zhongzhou State (<中州音韵辑要>), The Pearls of Rhyme Studies

(<韵学骊珠>), and ACollection of Characters and Sounds (<字音汇集>).

Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard RhymesImmediately after the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang

ordered Yue Shaofeng (乐韶凤) and Song Lian (宋濂) to compile a new rhyme

dictionary, the result of which is Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes. The

compilation was completed in 1375. It regrouped the 206 rhyme sections into 76

new ones – twenty-two rhyme sections for the levelling tone, the rising tone, and

the falling tone respectively, and ten rhyme sections for the entering tone, for

instance, the rhyme sections represented by the characters东,支, 齐, 鱼, 模, 皆,

庆, 真, 寒, 删, 先, 萧, 爻, 歌, 麻, 遮, 阳, 庚, 尤, 侵, 覃, and 盐. Hong Wu

Dictionary of Standard Rhymes had thirty-one initial consonant types, which was

Wve fewer than the standard ‘36-character alphabet’ – in other words, Wve pairs

were mixed:非 with敷;知 with照;彻 with穿;澄 with床; and泥 with娘.Hong

Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes kept the entering tone and the completely

voiced initial consonants without discrimination of yin and yang with the

levelling tone. Many scholars came to the conclusion that some elements from

southern dialects had been merged into the dictionary. In a sense, Hong Wu

Dictionary of Standard Rhymes served as a transitional bridge connecting The

Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymeswith the rhyme dictionaries of the


Ming and Qing Dynasties, occupying a very important position in the develop-

ment of rhyme dictionaries in China. In terms of exegetic interpretation, Hong

Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes classiWed the characters according to the

rhyme categories they fell into, following the example of Amendments to the

Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites (<增修互补礼部韵略>)by Mao Huang (毛晃) in the Southern Song Dynasty. The rhyme sections of

Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes were similar in many respects to those

of The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes, reXecting, to a

certain extent, the actual situation of the oYcial language in Northern regions

and proving valuable for the study of how the oYcial language came to take

shape.

Proto-sounds of Speech in all RegionsProto-sounds of Speech in all Regions was written by Fan Tengfeng (樊腾凤,

1601–1664), whose courtesy name was Lin Xu and who was born in Long County,

present-day Hebei Province. DiVerent accounts existed concerning when it was

written: between 1653 to 1673 according to Zhao Yintang or between 1654 to 1664

according to Yu Min (俞敏). Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions consisted of

a Preface, table of contents, and a two-volume main part with Style Guide. The

Style Guide included the part from河图 (River Diagram) to二十字母 (20-letter

alphabet), which was an exposition of the format and style, the part from the

labials of水,肾, and 羽 to the three poems of West River Moon (西江月三首),

which introduced the common knowledge of sounds and rhymes, and the part

on rhyme introduction (韵略), which was actually made up of the rhyme tables:

one rhyme table for each rhyme section and twelve tables in all. The dictionary

text started with the part from 一天 (One Heaven) to 六獒 (Six MastiVs), the

Wrst volume, followed by the part from 七虎 (Seven Tigers) to 十二地 (Twelve

Earth), the second volume. Within each volume, the characters were grouped

according to their initial consonants and the tones of their vowels. The characters

were not phonetically notated by means of fanqie but sometimes with direct

notations. For each character there was always a brief explication of its meaning.

The format and style of the book can be summarized as follows: ‘The rhyme

system is the spine; the initial consonants form its sequence; four breathing-outs

are discriminated; the Wve sounds are identiWed; the entry characters are deWned

brieXy.’ The characters were classiWed into twelve rhyme sections represented by

天,人, 龙, 羊, 牛, 獒, 虎, 驼, 蛇, 马, 豺, and地. Within each rhyme section, the

characters were, according to the initial consonants they shared, classiWed into

twenty major groups represented by梆,匏,木,风,斗,土,鸟,雷,竹,虫,石,曰,


箭, 鹊,丝,云, 金, 桥, 火, and 蛙. As for the characters sharing the same rhyme

and the same initial consonant, they were further divided according to the four

breathing-outs, i.e. mouth-opening, dental-parallelling, mouth-closing, and lip-

rounding. Those sharing the same initial consonant, the same rhyme, and the

same breathing-out were further divided according to the Wve tones, i.e. rising

level, falling level, rising, falling, and entering.

The Qilin Manual of Eight SoundsThe Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds (<戚林八音>) was a combination of The

General Survey of Eight Sounds and Meanings for Qi Armymen (<戚参军八音义

便览>) and The Sound Synchronization of Pearls and Jade (<珠玉同声>). Theformer was compiled by the Ming Dynasty military leader Qi Jiguang (戚继光,

1528–1588) to teach his soldiers the dialects of Fujian Province. The latter

was compiled by Lin Bishan (林碧山), a learned scholar born in Fuzhou City,

present-day Fujian Province. The two books were combined and printed by Jin

An (晋安), a citizen of Fuzhou City in 1749. Qi Jiguang, whose courtesy name

was Yuan Jing, was born in Dengzhou, present-day Shandong Province.

His major works included Disciplines and EVects: A New Book (<纪效新书>),Records on Soldier Training (<练兵纪实>), and The Zhizhitang Collection (<止止堂集>). Among the rhyme books on the Fujian dialects, The Qilin Manual

of Eight Sounds (<戚林八音>) was the earliest, the most widely circulated,

and the most popular and inXuential. The earliest version presently available

of The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds is The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds:

Bound Edition, printed in 1749 by the Haixuetang Publishing House, which

was a combined edition of The General Survey of Eight Sounds, Characters and

Meanings (<戚林八音字义便览>), and Historian Lin Bishan’s Sound Synchron-

ization of Pearls and Jade (<太史林碧山先生珠玉同声>). Its Foreword by

Shangwan Jin’an (上浣晋安) stated that the two books ‘have lasted for a

long time and errors and mistakes appeared in their circulation. It is a pity

to those who appreciate their signiWcance, as the two books are separately

issued and are diYcult to come by. That is why they are now combined into

one volume, with a great deal of rectiWcation and correction so that they can

be co-referred to each other in reading now, avoiding possible gaps between

the two.’

The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds, Characters and Meanings (<戚林八音字

义>) was ascribable to Cai Shipan (蔡士泮), and The Sound Synchronization of

Pearls and Jade, a simpliWed version of Eight Sounds, Characters and Meanings

(<八音字义>) in early Qing Dynasty, to Lin Bishan, and its editor was Chen Ta


(陈他). According to the textual research carried out by Li Rulong (李如龙),

neither Qi Jiguang nor Lin Bishan was the original author. Their names were used

because they were well-known. The authors were actually Cai Shipan and Chen

Ta, as was recorded in the original books. They both failed the Imperial Exam-

inations and were thus in a better position to understand the real need for the

compilation of such dialect rhyme dictionaries, which were not very greatly

appreciated among the learned scholars.

Qi’s manual classiWed the initial consonants into Wfteen types, as represented

in the following four-line poem:

柳边求气低,波他曾日时。

莺蒙语出喜,打掌与君知。

The vowels were classiWed into thirty-six types, as indicated in the following

poem:

春花香,秋山开。

嘉宾欢歌须金杯,孤灯光辉烧银缸。

之东郊,过西桥,

鸡声催初天,奇梅歪遮沟。

The tones in the manual were classiWed into eight types: levelling, rising,

falling, and entering, with each of the four tones divided into two subcategories

of ‘voiceless’ and ‘voiced’. Among these eight types, the two ‘rising’ subcategories

were identical, actually only one tone, marked by the symbol☉.

The initial consonants in Lin’s book were also classiWed into Wfteen classes, as

illustrated in the following poem:

柳边求美女,波面鸟亦之。

雅音风出语, 声援悉皆知。

The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds is still of considerable value today. As

pointed out in the Preface to The Supplement to the Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds

(<加订戚林八音>):

If you want to enjoy the highly elegant and the widely popular at the same time and have

the readily intelligible and the most profound side by side, the best choice is The Qilin

Manual of Eight Sounds. When its pronunciation is examined, you have learned the

character and have the pleasure of getting the essence of each of the adequately explicated

characters when the volume is opened, without any diYculties in grasping its essentials.

(from The Supplement to the Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds)

This illustrates that The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds applied the principles of

phonology and rhyming theories to actual lexicographical practice. The people in

the Fujian dialect region could learn the characters with the help of the sounds and

retrieve the meanings of the character from the book. It became an important tool


for learning the characters and getting to know about the culture and provided

useful rhyme data for the composition of local operas. It preserved the phono-

logical system of the Fuzhou dialect 400 years ago, which furnished important

data for dialectal investigations. This phonological system could also serve as a

frame of reference for the study of themodern Fuzhou dialect and as a basis for the

tracing of its evolution. This manual is valuable for the study of lexicology and

exegetic research and signiWcant for studying the historical positions of dialectal

words and the changes of word meanings, as it provides rich data sources for the

deWnitions of a large number of local characters, words, and expressions.

An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and RhymesIn 1715, Emperor Kangxi ordered Li Guangdi, Wang Lansheng, and others to

compile An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes, which was completed

in 1726. Li Guangdi, whose courtesy name was Jin Qing, was born in Anxi, Fujian

Province. This dictionary consisted of eighteen volumes and 112 rhyme sections

which were classiWed according to the rhymes for poetry. Within each rhyme

section, the characters were arranged according to the four breathing-outs and

the 36-letter alphabet. As to phonetic notation, the phonological system of the

Northern OYcial Language was taken as the standard. For the application of

fanqie, the Wrst characters were selected from rhyme sections represented by支,

微, 鱼, 虞, 歌, and 麻, which were open syllable characters, and the second

characters made no diVerentiation between voiceless and voiced, except that they

were identical to the Wrst characters of fanqie in level and oblique tones.

The outstanding features and achievements of An Explanatory Dictionary of

Sounds and Rhymes resided in its application of the principles of the rhyme

contour theory, its improvement on the style and format of rhyme dictionaries,

and its reform in fanqie. The scholars of the Qing Dynasty contended that the

fanqie adopted in pre-Qing Dynasty was ‘over-elaborate and unintelligible and

usually segregated by a diVerent categoric classiWcation’ (from the Preface to An

Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes). Thanks to a series of reforms in

the old fanqie system adopted in previous rhyme dictionaries, the new methods

of fanqie were more simple, Xuent, and intelligible, having overcome the short-

comings of the previous method of fanqie, i.e. ‘complicated to use and diYcult to

access the target sound’. This book, as a valuable data source for studying the

evolution of pronunciation in modern times, holds an important position in the

history of phonology. Even today, the majority of its phonetic notations for single

characters by means of fanqie have been directly adopted in compiling large-scale

dictionaries, such as Ci Hai and Ci Yuan.


The Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes of Zhongzhou StateThe Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes of Zhongzhou State was compiled by Wang

Jun (王鵕), whose courtesy name was Lu Qing (履青), and was completed in

1781, consisting of twenty-one sections represented by东同,支时,归回,苏模,

真文,欢桓,萧豪,家麻,庚亭,侵寻,纤廉,江阳,机微,居鱼,皆来,干寒,天田,

歌罗,车蛇, 鸠由, and 监咸. This book was based on A Comprehensive Diction-

ary of the Rhymes of Zhongzhou State (<中州全韵>) by Fan Shanzhen (范善

臻) – ‘deleting the odd and outdated characters, integrating the essential ones,

and rectifying the erroneous ones’, and its adoption of fanqie was ‘tested

against General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems’. As for deWnitions, ‘half of

them are simpliWed, but all of them are essentially based on The Imperial

Dictionary of Kangxi’. The falling tone in The Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes

of Zhongzhou State was divided into yin and yang, following Fan Shanzhen’s A

Comprehensive Dictionary of the Rhymes of Zhongzhou State, while its treatment

of the entering tone was modelled on The Central Plains Sounds and Rhymes

Dictionary, taking into consideration the Southern sounds. As mentioned in its

Style Guide:

The Wrst important thing to do is to have an accurate phonetic notation of the entering

tone; then, to phonetically notate with the Northern sounds and make sure that they

rhyme. As to the confusable ones in the previous rhyme dictionaries, they will be

analysed and assigned to where they belong. Finally, the four tones are complete and

the relationships between diVerent regions, i.e. the North, the South, and the Central

Plains, have been well worked out. (from The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and

Contemporary Rhymes: Style Guide)

All these practices constituted substantial contributions to the compilation of

rhyme dictionaries.

The Pearls of Rhyme StudiesThe Pearls of Rhyme Studies was compiled by Shen Chenglin (沈乘麐) who had

spent half a century writing it and it had been redrafted seven times before it was

Wnalized. The book included a Foreword by Jie Zhou (芥舟) in 1746 and a Preface

by Zhou Ang (周昂) in 1792. Its rhyme sections were mainly based on Hong Wu

Dictionary of Standard Rhymes and The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and

Rhymes. Following the example of Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes, it

further divided 苏模 into 姑模 and 居鱼, 齐微, into 机微 and 灰回, but for

寒山, it followed The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes, without

further division, adding up to twenty-one rhyme sections. The Pearls of Rhyme


Studiesmade important contributions to the development of rhyme dictionaries,

with signiWcant innovations in the division of tones. The levelling tone was

initially divided into yin-levelling and yang-levelling in The Central Plains Dic-

tionary of Sounds and Rhymes Dictionary. In A Comprehensive Dictionary of the

Rhymes of Zhongzhou State, the levelling and the falling tones were each discrim-

inated between yin and yang. The Pearls of Rhyme Studies, however, went one step

further and divided each of the levelling, rising, falling, and entering tones into

yin and yang, employing the system of宫,商,角,徵,羽,变宫,变徵 to represent

the initial consonants, rather than adopting the 36-character alphabet.

A Collection of Characters and SoundsA Collection of Characters and Sounds was compiled by Jiang Xuehai (江学海)

between 1821 to 1850, comprising seventy-eight rhyme sections:

(a) The rhyme sections falling into the rising levelling category included: 优,

依, 巴赊,夫,呵,诗, 焉,央, 风, 深, 蒿, 威 and哀;

(b) The rhyme sections falling into the falling levelling category included:由,

移,拔, 蛇, 浮,何,时, 言,阳,逢,辰, 豪,为 and 岩;

(c) The rhyme sections falling into the rising category included:有,以,把,舍,

府,大,始, 眼,养, 捧,审,好,委 and 蔼;

(d) The rhyme sections falling into the falling category included:右,易,罢,射,

父,贺,是,焰,样,凤,剩,号,魏,艾,幼,意,霸,赦,富,货,世,厌,漾,讽,圣,耗,

畏, and 爱; and

(e) The rhyme sections falling into the entering category included: 欲, 壹,八,

涉,福,合,实 and曰.Within each of the above rhyme sections, the characters were regrouped into

rhyme subsections according to the initial consonants or the middle sounds they

shared. The subsections were separated by the symbol *. There was a brief

explanatory note for each character, in imitation of The Dictionary of Rhymes.

In normal cases, there was no fanqie for phonetic notation except for some rare

examples, such as ‘遒,即由切’, in which遒 was notated as即由 in fanqie. A small

number of variant pronunciations were directly notated, such as ‘探, 又音突’,

which means that探 was also pronounced突. The methods adopted in the brief

explanatory notes were description (描叙), simulation (摹拟), classiWcation (归

类), alias (别名), synonymy (同义), opposite exegetic interpretation (反训),

word association (联词), sentence association (联句), colloquial expression (俗

语), citation (引证), and grammar (语法), etc. As illustrated in the Style Guide,

the book was compiled


originally for consulting the rhymes of characters and for explaining the meanings of the

characters in order to avoid misspelling and misuse. It is for teachers to use in their

leisure time. Using this book, students can understand a group of characters when one of

them is taught; and the meanings of numerous characters can be deduced when the

meaning of one character is explicated.

For those scholars who take part in the imperial examination, such a book will help to

prevent them from making errors and mistakes, such as the misinterpretation of 兽

(beast) as in 鱼兽 (Wsh and beast). And even those who have trades, and who have

learned and understood suYciently, will not have anything to regret. When talents are

moulded and trained, who will be belittled as being simple and shallow? (from A

Collection of Characters and Sounds: Style Guide)

ACollection of Characters and Sounds was used for learning characters and as a

valuable source of referential data for dictionary compilation. The abundant data

in the book are also important for diachronic research on the Chinese language,

its dialects, and exegetic research.


p a r t v

CHINESE BIL INGUAL

LEXICOGRAPHY:

A BRIEF OVERVIEW

(from the Tang Dynasty, 618–907 tothe Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911)


20

THE ORIGIN ANDEMERGENCE OF CHINESE

BILINGUAL LEXICOGRAPHY

LANGUAGE is often assumed to be the carrier of a nation’s culture, and in a

sense the dictionary can be said to be the carrier of language, as the diction-

ary describes and records language, which makes it possible for language elem-

ents to be preserved and transmitted from generation to generation. Modern

linguists have to resort to ancient glossaries, wordbooks, vocabularies, diction-

aries, and relevant literature to conduct research on ancient languages and their

writing systems. The dictionary is traditionally considered the reference tool that

provides information concerning word history, grammar, pragmatics, sense

relations, and sense diVerentiation, in addition to the phonetics, orthography,

and signiWcation of language. All this reXects the main features most dictionaries

share and is the epitome of the linguistic nature of the dictionary.

The dictionary chooses to describe and record language components, but it is

a cultural product by nature as it derives from the development of society and

culture and the need for human communication. The need for communication

leads to the emergence of language, and the dictionary progresses and matures

with the human understanding of language and the gradual advancement of

civilization. The birth of the dictionary signiWes a comprehensive and systematic

aggregation of a nation’s socio-linguistic and socio-cultural accomplishments over

certain periods of time. As a cultural product, the dictionary forms a culture of its

own – lexicographical culture, fromwhich its attributes are engendered. Standard-

ization is the most representative attribute of lexicographical culture, permeating

the whole dictionary both macrostructurally and microstructurally, and forms

the basis for the authority of the content of the dictionary.

Language depends on social existence and progression and mirrors the content,

standard, and scale of social production and life. Language use depends on social

conventions and needs social recognition. Language embodies the peculiarities of a

nation. Every nation has its own culture and cultural traditions. The formation and

development of a national language can never be separated from its historical back-

ground and cultural traditions. Language is not only the carrier of its national culture

but also the product of that culture. National idiosyncrasies and cultural features can

always be analysed and abstracted from the speciWc practices of material production,

spiritual life,psychology,waysof thinking, religion,moralvaluesandsocialcustomsof

thatnation,andreXected in its language,developing into its linguisticconventionality.

The dictionary, as a tool for describing and recording language, is eventually

imprinted with such socio-cultural behaviours. The social nature of the dictionary

is the mirror of the social conventions of language.

The linguistic, cultural, and social nature are inherent in the dictionary and are

reXected in its compilation and research by diVerent dimensions and interdiscip-

linary perspectives. The origin, compilation, and research of the dictionary are all

ascribable to the revelation and elevation of its linguistic, cultural, and social

attributes. There is no doubt that the inception, creation, and development of the

dictionary are also the outcome of such revelations and elevations.

The development of dictionary compilation is closely interwoven with social

civilization and cultural advancement, reXecting the evolutionary path for civiliza-

tional progression and the rise and fall of a nation. The diVerence in socio-cultural

setting will lead to diVerent modes and degrees for the rise and development of

lexicographical culture. English and Chinese bilingual lexicography originated from

diVerent cultural and historical backgrounds and consequently developed from

diVerent sources and along diVerent paths. English bilingual lexicography arose

with the glossing of classical works with Old English in the Anglo-Saxon period and

became heavily involved with the classical language Latin in the Middle Ages and

the Renaissance. Chinese bilingual lexicography started with religious preaching

and had its origins in the translation of Buddhist sutras, starting from around 550.

People today still indulge in the habit of glossing words and phrases in reading,

a practice which has come down to us from very remote times. These interlinear

and marginal glosses may give the reader’s comments upon certain lines of the

text, function as an aid for textual interpretation and comprehension, serve as a

reminder of previous thoughts and reXections relevant to the text, and explain

meanings of diYcult words or mark special uses of certain words in the text. It is

this last function of those interlinear and marginal glosses that marks the

368 chinese bilingual lexicography

inception of bilingual lexicography and is of immediate relevance and interest to

lexicographical studies.

20.1 buddhist preaching and the advent ofbilingual lexicography

Chinese bilingual lexicography originated from the preaching of Buddhism, a

religion founded in India during the period from the early fourth century bc to

the late sixth century. It spread from India to countries in Central, East, and

Southeast Asia, exercising a strong, profound, and long-lasting inXuence upon the

social, cultural, and spiritual life of the region. Buddhism was introduced into

China in the late Western Han Dynasty (206 bc–ad 7). To preach their Buddhist

doctrines to the native Chinese, Indian monks had to make painstaking eVorts to

translate their Scriptures into Chinese. As Buddhism was totally foreign on

Chinese soil, it is not hard to imagine what a diYcult and painstaking start Indian

monks must have had and what those early translations might have been like.

Meanwhile, Chinese monks started to write Sanskrit works, which can be

classiWed into two categories – dictionaries and Siddham. During the Tang

Dynasty (618–907) Chinese monks made pilgrimages to India to study Bud-

dhism and the Buddhist languages, preparing themselves for the task of preach-

ing Buddhism and translating Buddhist scriptures. That led to a signiWcant

improvement in the quality of later sutra translation and paved the way for

the compilation of the earliest Chinese glossaries and dictionaries of sound and

meaning, mainly compiled and augmented by Xuan Ying, Hui Yuan, Hui Lin, Xi

Lin et al., and collections of Buddhist terms in the translated Buddhist sutras,

like The Collection of Meanings of Terms in Translation (<翻译名义集>) by Fa

Yun (法云) and Translating Sanskrit (<翻梵语>) by Bao Chang (宝唱). Trans-

lating Sanskrit bore close resemblance to The Collection of Meanings of Terms in

Translation in compilation style and format, but neither can, in a strict sense, be

considered Sanskrit-Chinese bilingual dictionaries. The Chinese monks used

Siddham to refer to the Sanskrit phonetic alphabet and wrote several books in

this connection, like The Record of Siddham Characters (<悉昙字记>) writtenby Zhi Guang (智广), a Tang Dynasty monk, and The Origin of Siddham

Characters (<天竺字源>) jointly compiled by an Indian monk called Fa Hu

(法护) and a Chinese monk called Wei Jing (惟净) in the Northern Song

Dynasty.

chinese bilingual lexicography 369

20.2 buddhist sutras and the compilation ofdictionaries of sounds and meanings

Buddhist sutras were written in Sanskrit, an ancient language of India mainly

used by the upper elite class in northwest India, and, more signiWcantly, used to

preach Buddhism. In translating Buddhist sutras, Chinese monks accumulated

Buddhist terms and transliterated themwith Chinese characters, which were later

gathered to become glossaries. The earliest extant glossary of this kind – Sounds of

All the Buddhist Scriptures – was compiled by a Chinese monk of the Northern Qi

Dynasty (550–577), known as Dao Hui, who was mistaken by T. Watters for

‘Yuan-ying’ (Xuan Ying). It preceded the Wrst Western Sanskrit–English diction-

ary by Horace Hayman Wilson (1786–1860) by more than one thousand years

(see Collision, 1982:127).

There was a boom in the compilation of such glossaries in the Tang Dynasty,

which saw the birth of Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures (also

translated as Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Sacred Books, Sounds and

Meanings of the Whole Canon; Watters, 1889:52–3, 382). Sounds and Meanings of

All the Buddhist Scriptures was compiled under the patronage of Empress Zhen

Guan (贞观, 627–649) by another Chinese monk named Xuan Ying, probably a

contemporary of Yi Jing (义净) and Xuan Zang (玄奘). Xuan Ying commenced

his work ‘by collecting 454Mahayana and Hinayana sutras and arranging them in

a series starting with The Avatamsaka Sutra (<华严经>) and ending with The

Abhidharma Naya Anusara Sutra (<顺正理论>) . . . His purpose in compiling

the dictionary was to deWne diYcult words, both Sanskrit and Chinese, that

appeared in the Chinese translations of the sutras’ (Chien and Creamer, 1986),

which shows Chinese bilingual lexicography also started by following the ‘hard-

word’ tradition. The entries in his work were arranged in much the same way as

in The Leiden Glossary, i.e. in the order in which they appeared in the sutra text.

The dictionary text provides ‘any variant renderings of the headword, then the

deWnition, the pronunciation of diYcult characters in the headword combin-

ation and an explanation of any unusual character that appears in the deWnition’

(Chien and Creamer, 1986). Some time afterwards, another Chinese monk called

Hui Yuan added two more chapters, which may be regarded as a sort of

supplement to Xuan Ying’s Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures

(Watters, 1889:53). Mention must be made here of what can be called a composite

collection of all the glossaries of scripture words and expressions compiled in and

before the Tang Dynasty. Hui Lin, another monk of the Tang Dynasty, spent


twenty-Wve years selecting a vast number of Buddhist terms from previous

glossaries and from among over 1,300 Buddhist sutras and scriptures and com-

piled what was also called Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures,

which can safely be considered the archetype of the Chinese bilingual dictionary.

Xi Lin, a Chinese monk of the Song Dynasty, followed in the wake of the

compilation of the ‘sounds and meanings’ glossaries and compiled The Extended

Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures, which can be regarded as a

continuation of previous works of Buddhist terms.

20.3 dictionaries of sounds and meanings andthe dawn of bilingual dictionaries

In addition to the glossaries and dictionaries of sounds and meanings, there also

appeared a Sanskrit-Chinese vocabulary, with quite a unique compilation style –

The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary (<梵语千字文>), which is awk-

wardly translated as Sanskrit Thousand Character Text byWatters (1889:382). This

glossary is assumed to have been written by Yi Jing, collecting 995 transliterated

Sanskrit entry words. Each entry starts with a transliterated Sanskrit word, fol-

lowed by its Chinese phonetic equivalent and then a single Chinese explanatory

word. The body of the dictionary is prefaced with a one-thousand-character text

composed of rhymed verses with each line consisting of four characters. The

characters used in the text form the deWning vocabulary for the glossary. This

method of limiting the deWning vocabulary is similar in nature to that used by the

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978) and other modern English

monolingual dictionaries.

The above-mentioned glossaries and dictionaries, in most cases, employ trans-

literated Sanskrit Buddhist terms as headwords in the entries, which are deWned

or explained by Chinese characters. They can, by nature, only be considered

monolingual dictionaries deWning Buddhist terms, not bilingual dictionaries in

the modern sense. If any evolutionary connection can be detected between those

ancient glossaries and dictionaries and modern bilingual dictionaries, they can

only be reckoned as the most primitive attempts at compiling bilingual diction-

aries. Those early glossaries and dictionaries bear some basic features of modern

bilingual dictionaries, but it will be more reasonable to consider them as the most

distant forerunners of modern Chinese bilingual dictionaries.

chinese bilingual lexicography 371

21

THE ARCHETYPEAND EVOLUTION OFCHINESE BILINGUAL

DICTIONARIES

SIMULTANEOUS with The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary was a

glossary of a simlar nature, which was entitled A Miscellaneous Collection of

Sanskrit Terms (<梵语杂名>). It was written by a monk called Li Yan (利言), and

the version currently available was made in 1732. Li Yan was born in the Kingdom of

Guici (approximately present-day Xinjiang in Northwest China) and followed the

Indian monk Fa Yue (法月) to become a monk in his early years. He had a good

memory and was familiar with mid-Asian languages, apart from Chinese and San-

skrit. He died some time between 789 and 795. A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit

Terms was completed during his late years in Chang’an. It collected 1,221 headwords,

and most of them were monosyllabic character entry words, with occasional bi-

syllabic headwords like眼睫 (eyelid) and指节 (Wnger joints). It even included verb

phrases like 上马 (mount a horse) and 何处去 (where to go), which made it

somewhat diVerent from The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary in style.

21.1 buddhist culture and the emergenceof bilingual glossaries

The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary was prefaced with a text of one

thousand Chinese characters, and its headwords were mainly transliterated

Sanskrit words. A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms was, however, diVer-

ent in that it listed Sanskrit words as its headwords, which were then translated

into Chinese. In cases where there was a lack of appropriate translation, the same

Chinese character would be used repeatedly. A Miscellaneous Collection of San-

skrit Terms also collected quite a number of proper terms, together with their

Sanskrit translations. For instance, the Sanskrit equivalent for 京师 was Kumu-

dana, which originated from Khumdan – used by the Tujue and mid-Asian

people to refer to the capital city of Chang’an, and the Sanskrit equivalent for

高丽 was Mukuli, which was Mukrit, a Tujue word, and the Sanskrit equivalents

for吴 and 蜀 were Paravada and Amrdu respectively. It follows from the above

discussion that compared with The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary,

A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms bore greater resemblance to a

modern bilingual dictionary in structure and format and may, therefore, be

considered the archetype of early Chinese bilingual dictionaries.

From A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms were derived two Sanskrit-

Chinese glossaries – The Sanskrit–Chinese Glossary (<唐梵两语双对集>) and

The Glossary of Sanskrit and Chinese Characters (<唐梵文字>). The former was

written by two Indian monks and was appended to The Newly Revised Dazheng

Buddhist Scriptures (<大正新修大藏经>, abbreviated to <大正藏>, DazhengBuddhist Scriptures). The text was organized in the same way as Li Yan’s glossary,

but it left some characters out of account. There were no Sanskrit words but

Chinese transliterations. The characters used for transliteration were mostly

the same as those in A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms, which aroused

the suspicion that the book was a copied version of Li Yan’s glossary and that the

names of the two Indian monks were added deliberately. The latter was compiled

by Quan Zhen (全真) of the Esoteric Sect, covering 1,117 head characters. Com-

pared with Yi Jing’s glossary, some deletion was made in the book, except for the

last 400 entry characters. Quan Zhenwas dozens of years junior to Yi Jing, and his

book must have been written for the purpose of preaching the Esoteric doctrines

and was an adaptation from The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary.

21.2 chinese socio-cultural life and theevolution of bilingual dictionaries

Looking back upon the origin and evolution of Chinese bilingual lexicography,

three main threads of development are clearly visible. The Wrst thread goes

chinese bilingual dictionaries 373

through the translation of religious scriptures and preaching, particularly appar-

ent in the early history of Chinese bilingual lexicography. Around 200 bc, the

Indian monks came to the mysterious Chinese territory to preach Buddhism. As

a result, Sanskrit–Chinese glossaries and dictionaries started to appear, in add-

ition to Chinese monolingual dictionaries aimed at explaining Buddhist terms.

By the sixteenth century, Christianity began to spread in China, which led to an

endless stream of Chinese–English dictionaries, Chinese–Latin dictionaries, and

the combination of Chinese with other Western languages.

Ever since remote times China had established friendly cultural and trade

relations with its neighbours and countries in other parts of the world. During

the Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian (张骞) visited the Western Region, including

Xinjiang and Central Asia, in the capacity of an envoy and opened up the well-

known Silk Road. Closer ties were being forged between the Han people and the

non-Han peoples (such as the Japanese and Koreans), the Han people and

the ethnic minorities within the Chinese territory (such as the Tibetans and the

Mongolians), and the ethnic minorities and alien nations (such as the Arabians

and the Iranians) in social, cultural, technological, and commercial exchanges.

All this forms the socio-cultural background to the development of Chinese

bilingual lexicography, and the ever-increasing socio-cultural and commercial

exchanges became the propeller for early Chinese bilingual dictionary compil-

ation, particularly bilingual dictionaries of science and technology.

From the EasternHanDynasty (25–220), the Han Cultural Rimwas beginning to

take shape, and Chinese culture was widely found in China’s neighbouring coun-

tries such as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The earliest extant Chinese–Japanese

dictionary, which was completed in 830, was modelled on The Jade Chapters. In

the eleventh century the Wrst Chinese–Japanese encyclopedic dictionary, the work

of Minamoto no Shitago, made its appearance. The Kagakushu, another Chinese–

Japanese dictionary, possibly compiled by a Buddhist monk, was widely circulated

during the Wfteenth and sixteenth centuries (see Collision, 1982:51). Again, in the

eleventh century, an anonymous Chinese–Vietnamese encyclopedic work was pro-

duced with the title of AChinese–Foreign Language Vocabulary. This work ‘provides

a Chinese-to-Vietnamese corpus of 3,394 entries grouped under forty headings

(Astronomy, Geography, Human Morals, Human Body, Birds, Insects, Trees and

Plants, Fruits and Flowers, etc.)’. Another anonymous dictionary of a similar

sort entitled The Chinese–Vietnamese Guide to Sound and Meaning (Zi Nan Yu

Yin Jie Yi), probably ascribable to a Buddhist monk, was in circulation in Vietnam

around the sixteenth century (see Dinh-Hoa Nguyen, 1995).

The Koreans started to use Chinese loanwords between 108 bc and 313 ad, and

the earliest Chinese–Korean dictionary may be traced back to the Song Dynasty,


when Sun Mu (孙穆), a Chinese ambassador to Korea, produced a Korean-

Chinese vocabulary, strangely entitled <鸡林类事> (A Miscellaneous Collection

of Things and Events, mistranslated literally by Chien and Creamer (1986) as

Hen Grove Analogies). The original version of the three-volume book, which is

no longer in existence, consisted of sections dealing with social customs, royal

laws and regulations, dialectal words, and appendices. The current version was

produced in 1647, and the ‘dialectal words’ part, almost in its original shape and

with a total number of 361 entry words, was divided into eighteen categories:

Astronomy, Geography, Woods and Flowers, Birds and Beasts, Insects and Fish,

Utensils, Human Characters, Human Body, Garments, Food, Philology and

History. This part was arranged in much the same format and style as The One

Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary, but its headwords were Chinese, followed

by the Chinese transliterated Korean equivalents, which was quite the reverse of

The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary.

The fact that a considerable number of words in those glossaries were derived

from Chinese bears witness to the profound and extensive inXuence of the

Chinese language and culture upon Asian, and indeed Oriental languages and

cultures. Ever since, combinations of Chinese with these Asian languages, though

very limited in number, have improved considerably in terms of format, content,

and quality. This is especially true of Chinese and Japanese bilingual dictionaries

in the present century, with both the number and quality far surpassing those of

their counterparts in Korean and Vietnamese.

21.3 the writing of history books andbilingual glossary compilation

There is another easily discernible thread going through the early history of

Chinese bilingual lexicography, though it did not last very long – the collection

of annotations of words and terms in history books and historical records. That

thread continued till the Qing Dynasty. Explanations of the Terms in the History of

the Liao Language (<辽国语解>) is assumed to be the starting point of that

thread. Collections of a similar nature can be found in later history books,

imperial and royal surveys.

chinese bilingual dictionaries 375

22

ETHNIC MINORITYLANGUAGES ANDTHEIR BILINGUALDICTIONARIES

THE translation of the Buddhist sutras was beginning to decline with Bud-

dhism dwindling in the Later Tang Dynasty (923–936). A typical feature of

this transition was the increased communications and strengthened ties between

the Han people and the neighbouring minorities and other nationalities of the

Eastern World. As a matter of fact, the Kitans-Tartar, Mongolians and Manchu-

rians established the Liao Dynasty (907–1125), the Yuan Dynasty (1260–1368), and

the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) in Chinese history. As the ruling classes, their

languages became culturally, politically, and economically important and were

naturally the oYcial languages used in historical documents. They were also

given special prominence and received unusual treatment in Chinese-minority

language bilingual dictionaries. It is not hard to Wgure out why almost all these

minority languages occupied the position of source language in those early

Chinese bilingual dictionaries.

Bilingual dictionaries grow out of the need for communication and interaction

between people of diVerent speech communities and cultures. The need to

communicate and facilitate mutual exchange of ideas and experience will,

sooner or later, bring bilingual and multilingual dictionaries into existence. The

socio-political, cultural, science-technological interactions between the Han

people and minority groups provided impetus for the creation and development

of Chinese bilingual lexicography and gave rise to a large number of bilingual

dictionaries, bringing Chinese bilingual lexicography into a brand-new era.

22.1 western xia culture and tangutbilingual dictionaries

Western Xia, a dynasty founded by a people of Tangut descent in 1038 and

eliminated by the Yuan Dynasty in 1227, ruled a region that encompassed present-

day Ningxia, north Shanxi, northwest Gansu, northeast Qinghai, andwestern Inner

Mongolia. The Western Xia people inherited their writing system from the Qiang

nationality, an ethnic people of ancient China that originally inhabited a region

centring on present-day Qinghai Province, extending to Sichuan Province to the

south, and the Xinjiang Region to the north, then moving to the region around

present-day Gansu Province during the Eastern Han Dynasty. Prior to Yuan Hao

(元昊) becoming the Wrst Emperor of the Western Xia Dynasty, Yelirenrong (野利

仁荣) was ordered to create the writing system for the Tangut people, which was

then called the Tangut characters and promulgated within its borders in 1036. The

Tangut characters were held in high esteem as state characters and were used in

glossaries and rhyme books. In order to standardize the use of the Tangut charac-

ters, YuanHao and Yelirenrong, usingThe Ready Guide as amodel, compiled one of

the earliest Chinese and Tangut bilingual dictionaries – A Tangut–Chinese Ready

Guide (<番尔雅>), with the Tangut words as headwords, followed by Chinese

explanations and translations. According to The History of the Song Dynasty (<宋史>), that dictionary should have appeared between 1032 and 1048 in twenty-Wve

volumes, but is no longer in existence.

Within the Western Xia territories lived the Dangxiang people, the Tubo

people, the Huihe (Ouigour) people, the Tartar people (nomadic peoples of

northern China in ancient times), in addition to the Han people. The Dangxiang

culture naturally came under the inXuence of its neighbouring ethnics, especially

the Han culture. The Western Xia rulers held Confucius in high esteem for his

theories. With the expansion of the Chinese–Tangut exchanges came the necessity

of compiling a bilingual glossary to help the ethnic people to learn Chinese and

help the Chinese to learn the Tangut language. The result was the earliest extant

Chinese and Tangut dictionary – ATimely Gem Dictionary Tangut–Chinese (<番汉合时掌中珠>, inappropriately but literally translated by Chien and Creamer

(1986) as Foreign–Chinese (Glossary) As Timely As A Pearl In The Palm), compiled

minority languages and bilingual dictionaries 377

by Gulemaocai (骨勒茂才), an ethnic of Dangxiang nationality, and completed

in 1190. In the Preface, Gulemaocai states: ‘How can one associate with a

foreigner without learning the foreign language? How can one acquaint oneself

with Chinese customs without knowing Chinese? If it happens that foreign talents

are not recognized by the Chinese and Chinese talents are not recognized by

foreigners, it is because they cannot communicate in each other’s languages.’

A Timely Gem Dictionary Tangut-Chinese had only thirty-seven pages and

listed 414 headwords, divided into three sections under the headings of ‘Heaven’,

‘Earth’, and ‘Man’. Under each entry was listed, from right to left, the Chinese

phonetic transcription of the Tangut word, the Tangut word, Chinese transla-

tional equivalent, and the Tangut phonetic transcription of the Chinese word.

This glossary is most likely to be the earliest bilingual glossary with both source

and target language explanations in the world. It is no exaggeration that this

glossary is a key to Tangut studies and the studies of Western Xia Dynasty.

22.2 mongolian culture and mongolianbilingual dictionaries

The Mongolian people are proud of their long history and cultural traditions.

The Mongolian language has been in use for nearly one thousand years. Like the

writing systems in many other countries, the Mongolian characters were not

created by themselves but borrowed from other writing systems. They had

become popular and established through constant circulation.

The rise of the Mongolian people and their expansion stimulated the birth of

Mongolian bilingual dictionaries, including Mongolian–Persian, Mongolian–

Arabian, and Mongolian–Chinese dictionaries. Although the Mongolian lan-

guage had a history of less than one thousand years, the earliest Mongolian

bilingual dictionary The Mongolian–Persian Dictionary (<蒙古波斯语词典>)appeared anonymously in 1245, which, with over 600 entries, is supposed to be

the earliest Mongolian bilingual dictionary.

From the time when China entered the period of the Tang Dynasty, the

tradition of recording, by means of the Chinese language, other language elem-

ents and of compiling glossaries and wordbooks started to be handed down

from one generation to another. To meet the need for social and cultural

exchanges, Chen Yuanjing wrote a classiWed dictionary of an encyclopedic nature

– The Broad Records of Things and Events, which included a Mongolian–Chinese


thematic dictionary. This dictionary was entitled Explanations of the Mongolian

Language (<蒙古译语>, also known as <至元译语>), an anonymous collection

of Mongolian words and terms with Chinese explanations, produced in the Yuan

Dynasty. The Preface states, ‘unintelligible languages will not make sense unless

translated. Hence the present volume, carefully translated and deliberated, so that

interested readers can acquaint themselves with how to use it and consult any

problems and have them solved.’

This glossary collected 538 headwords, classiWed into twenty-two categories,

such as Astronomy, Geography, Foods, Garments, Utensils, Jewellery, Birds,

Beasts, and Colours. The headwords were transliterated Chinese characters,

followed by Chinese translations and explanations.

Explanations of the Mongolian Language carried on the tradition of using

Chinese characters to transliterate and record the target language coupled with

Chinese explanations and deWnitions, with a unique format and compilation

style. It is valuable for studying the Mongolian language in the Middle Ages and

the Chinese transliteration of the Mongolian language.

22.3 turkish culture and turkishbilingual dictionaries

The term ‘Tujue (Turk)’ means ‘the ripest and most prosperous time’. Tujue was

an ethnic minority group of ancient China that roved the Altay Mountains in

search of pasture, and which in the mid-6th century became powerful and

prosperous, annexing neighbouring tribes. In 582 or the second year of the

Kaihuang reign of the Sui Dynasty, the Tujue divided itself into Eastern and

Western groups, but were annihilated by the Tang Dynasty in themid-7th century.

The Complete Turkish Dictionary, variously known as Turki Tillar Diwani,

Diwanu Lught-it-Turk, Divanu Lugat-it-Turk, Diwanu LuBatit-Turk, and The

Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, was the Wrst Turkish–Arabian bilingual

dictionary in the history of world civilization, compiled by the outstanding

Uygurian scholar Mahmud Kashkarii (1008–1105), also known as Muhammad

Kashgaly. Mahmud Kashkarii was born of a noble family in the Karakhanid

Dynasty (840–1212) in Wupar, present-day Shufu County, Xinjiang. His tomb is

still situated on a hilltop in Wupar, 45 kilometres southwest of Kashi.

As a child, Mahmud Kashkarii studied at The Royal Islamic School in Kashigaer

and was conversant with the Arabian and Persian languages. He travelled far and


wide in Central Asia, particularly the Turkish-speaking countries. In the late 1160s he

arrived in Baghdad, the centre for Islamic culture, where he became a well-known

scholar in Islamic studies. Inorder to spread theTurkish cultures to the Islamicworld,

hemadeamazingeVorts toconduct languagesurveys, collectdata relating to theTujue

ethnicpeople and the tribal languages, andclassify and sort thedata.HecompiledThe

Complete Turkish Dictionary between 1072 and 1076 in Baghdad and stated in the

Introduction, ‘I visited all the villages and pastures of the Tujue people . . . After

extensive research and investigation, I completed this book in the most elegant form

and in themost crystallized language.’ Themanuscript of this landmarkwork has not

been discovered yet, and the currently available versionwas hand-copied in 1266, 200

years after the Wrst appearance of the original version, and is kept in the National

LibraryofTurkey. In 1917, a neweditionof thedictionarywas issued inTurkey, and, in

1981, a three-volumeUygurian editionwas published inChina. Ever since 1931, a large

amount of research has been conducted concerning the dictionary and its compiler

both inWestern Asia and China.

The Complete Turkish Dictionary collected over 7,500 entry words, arranged in

the Arabian alphabetical order. There was a preface in the front matter of the

dictionary, emphasizing the importance of the Tujue language, the objective for

compiling the dictionary, the data sources, the format and style, word formation of

the Tujue language, the distribution of the Tujue tribes and the features of their

tribal languages. This dictionary consisted of three volumes divided into eight

parts, which were subdivided into two smaller volumes. Each smaller volume was

comprised of chapters within which the headwords were further classiWed on

the basis of the number of roots, and words with the same root were arranged

according to their formation, phonetic features, and inXectional endings, followed

by explanations about pronunciations, semantic changes, grammar, etc. It is worth

mentioning that glosses were added to some entries to indicate the tribes to which

some usages were ascribed and that the deWnitions contained citations frommore

than 240 folk songs and over 200 proverbs and sayings. As the compiler stated in

the preface, ‘the maxims, prose, proverbs, poems, folklores, and narrative stories

are cited to adorn the book’. There were, in the category of Geography, Mountains

and Rivers, illustrations of roundmaps drawn by the compiler himself to show the

territories of the Karakhanid Dynasty and Central Asia. It can be assumed that

MahmudKashkarii was the Wrst to include pictorial illustrations in the dictionary.

The Complete Turkish Dictionary, considered an encyclopedia through which

to examine and study languages, socio-politics, history, culture, religion, hu-

manities and geography in 11th-century Xinjiang and Central Asia, listed words

and terms covering a wide range of Welds, such as language, human races, history,

social customs, astronomy, geography, agriculture, craftsmanship, medicine,


politics, military and social life. Its academic values are manifold, and its impact

extends to such areas as language studies, historical literature, lexicography,

social customs studies, geography, and history. It is undoubtedly the only im-

portant and reliable data source for later scholars to explore the social life of

the Tujue tribes of the time.

The Complete Turkish Dictionary made an in-depth and systematic compara-

tive study of the Tujue tribal languages and the Arabian language, which predated

European comparative linguistics by over 800 years, and reached the acme of its

times in terms of the systematicity and scientiWcity of the studies of the Tujue

languages and their grammar. This giant work has been published in various

bilingual versions, i.e. in Turkish, Uzbekish, Uygurian, Russian, Hungarian,

German, Japanese, French, English, and Chinese. The Turkish–Chinese Dictionary

was introduced to its users by The Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences in 2003.

The original version of The Complete Turkish Dictionary is still on display in

the exhibition room of the north wing of Mahmud Kashkarii Tomb Memorial.

22.4 tibetan culture and tibetanbilingual dictionaries

Around the turn of the Tang and Song Dynasties appeared an anonymous

The Tibetan–Chinese Bilingual Glossary (<西番译语>), which was appended to

The Secret Imperial History (<龙威秘书>) written in the regime of Qianlong of

the Qing Dynasty. The Tibetan region of present-day Qinghai and Gansu prov-

inces was called吐蕃 (Tufan) in the Tang and Song Dynasties and 西蕃 (Xifan)

in the Yuan Dynasty. This work collected over 200 entry words which were in

currency in that region, incorporating a number of Buddhist terms, like 藏经

(Tibetan canon),佛 (Buddha),佛像 (image or statue of Buddha), 罗汉 (arhat),

皈依 (conversion to Buddhism or another religion), 慈悲 (benevolence and

mercy), 清净 (free from disturbance), and 大乘 (Mahayana). It was classiWed

into twenty categories, under such headings as Astronomy, Geography, Seasons,

Humans, Human Body, Court and Palace and Utensils. Under each entry was

listed the Tibetan headword at the top, its Chinese phonetic transcription at the

bottom, and the Chinese translational equivalent in between.

According to Tibetan historical literature, the Buddhist scriptures in Tufan

were mostly translated from India, Nepal, and the Western Regions by monks of

diVerent periods, which naturally gave rise to inconsistency and irregularity in


translation and hence diYculty in understanding the meanings. That created a

serious barrier to preaching Buddhism in Tufan, making it immensely diYcult

for people in Tufan to read and become familiar with the translated scriptures. In

the early 9th century, a large number of translators from India and Tibet were

assembled to translate Buddhist classics and rectify the previously translated

Buddhist scriptures, bringing Buddhism into its prime period.

The collation and stipulation of rules and norms for Buddhist scripture

translation were carried out three times in the course of translation and set the

translation of Buddhist scriptures onto a path towards standardization, giving

rise to a Sanskrit–Tibetan glossary intended to serve the purpose of Buddhist

scripture translation and transmission – Mahavyu-tpatti (also known as The

Complete Collection of Terms and Meanings in Translation, <翻译名义大集>).This grand glossary collected 9,565 entry words, most of them being Buddhist

terms, and they were arranged on a categoric basis. Subsequent to the introduc-

tion of that glossary into the inland regions of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian

and Han monks inserted the Mongolian and Chinese translations, making it the

Wrst multilingual dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography. This version

of the glossary was brought to Russia by the Russians in 1853 and is now kept in

the Library of Saint Petersburg State University.

22.5 history studies and bilingualdictionaries for history books

The compilation of bilingual dictionaries for the purpose of assisting in the

reading of history books started with the writing ofTheHistory of the Liao Dynasty

(<辽史>), with the ethnic Mongolian of the Yuan Dynasty, Tuoketuo (脱脱,

1314–1355), acting as chief editor. This history book consisted of 116 volumes, and

appended at the end of the book was Explanations of the Terms in the History of the

Liao Dynasty, a Khitan–Chinese vocabulary, comprising about 200 entries. The

Khitan (Qidan), an ethnic people of ancient China, were a branch of the Eastern

Hus inhabiting the valley of the Xar Murun River in the upper reaches of the

Liaohe River. In the 10th century, Yelu Abaoji (also known as Ye-lu Apao-chi)

uniWed all the Khitan tribes and established the kingdom of Khitan. This vocabu-

lary provided Chinese explanations of the Khitan terms used for oYcial systems,

royal palace guards, tribes, and places in The History of the Liao Dynasty. It also

contained brief explanations of a small number of non-Khitan terms. Numerous


mistakes were found in its compilation, and they were eventually corrected and

rectiWed when Explanations of the Terms in the Histories of the Liao, Jin and Yuan

Dynasties (<辽金元三史国语解>) was compiled.

After the completion of The History of the Liao Dynasty, Tuoketuo was

appointed chief editor of The History of the Jin Dynasty (<金史>). This historybook was completed in 1344 and comprised 135 volumes. Appended at the

end of the book was Explanations of the Terms in the History of the Jin Dynasty

(<金国语解>), a vocabulary in the Nuchen language and Chinese. Nuchen, an

ethnic people of ancient China, were ancestors of the Manchurians, who

inhabited present-day Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces, and founded the Jin

Dynasty in 1115. This vocabulary listed 1,423 Nuchen words and terms in seventy-

two entries, divided into Wve categories: OYcial Terms, Human Terms, Natural

Phenomena, Things and Events, and Surnames. The entry words were Chinese

transliterations of the Khitan words and terms followed by Chinese explanations.

This glossary proves valuable in interpreting The History of the Jin Dynasty

and conducting research into the Nuchen language and its characters.

Chinese and ethnic minority language bilingual dictionary compilation had

been advancing steadily, though slowly, over the past century. Works have in-

creased considerably in number, covering combinations of Chinese with almost

all the major minority languages of China (see David Chien, 1986). However, they

leave much to be desired as far as their quality and informativeness are concerned.

Most of such combinations are devoid of any information except the pronunci-

ation and spelling of the headword and the meager deWnition or equivalent

in Chinese, and any information about grammar and register would be nothing

short of miraculous.


23

RELIGIOUS PREACHINGFROM THE WESTAND CHINESE

BILINGUAL DICTIONARYCOMPILATION

AT the turn of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, European missionaries came

into the mysterious Chinese territories to preach religion. To meet the need

for religious preaching, the missionaries, represented by the Jesuits, started to

study Chinese and Chinese culture and left behind them a great deal of valuable

data on Chinese studies and teaching.

23.1 matteo ricci’s contributions to chinesebilingual lexicography

Among the Wrst missionaries to arrive in China was Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit

missionary. He came toCanton (nowGuangzhou) by boat and started his Christian

mission inChina in 1582. In 1601 he went to Peking tomeet Chinese EmperorWanli,

which was considered a prologue to Western learning. To overcome linguistic

and cultural diYculties, the Western missionaries were beginning to compile

bilingual dictionaries of Chinese and Western languages, in addition to learning

the Chinese language. However, between the end of the sixteenth century and the

beginning of the nineteenth century, the number of bilingual dictionaries written by

them was quite limited. Starting from the middle of the nineteenth century, as a

result of ever-increasing penetration of Western countries into Chinese diplomatic

and economic arenas, more and more missionaries and Western scholars joined in

Chinese bilingual dictionary compilation, bringing about another climax in the

history of Chinese bilingual lexicography.

Matteo Ricci’s contributions to Chinese bilingual lexicography were mainly

represented by his creation of the Chinese Romanization system based on the

alphabets of the Portuguese and Italian languages and the Chinese tone indica-

tion system and his compilation of Dizionario Portoghese–Cinese (<葡汉词典>)in collaboration with Michele Ruggieri. This dictionary contained 189 folios

and listed Portuguese words arranged in alphabetical order from ‘aba da vesti-

dura’ to ‘zunir’. The dictionary is considered the Wrst combination of a Western

language with Chinese (see Chien and Creamer, 1986). Later on, Matteo Ricci

compiled another glossary entitled Vocabularium ordine alphabetico europaeo

more corcinnatum, et per accentus suos digestum with his fellow missionary

L. Cattaneo (Kang Zhijie, 1988). Another Jesuit, the Frenchman Nicolas Trigault,

published an important work An Audio And Visual Guide for Foreign Scholars

(<西儒耳目资>) in Hangzhou, China in 1625. It was ‘a massive vocabulary to

help the Chinese learn Latin’ (Chien and Creamer, 1986).

In the seventeenth century, the Polish Jesuit Michael Boym (1612–1659) compiled

a Chinese-Latin and a Chinese–French dictionary, which were printed between

1667 and 1670 in the popular magazine China Illustrata (<中国图说>). There isreliable evidence for those two works, more of a vocabulary than a dictionary, to be

considered the Wrst Chinese–Latin dictionary and the Wrst Chinese–French diction-

ary published in the Western world. The Western missionaries also compiled

alphabetical dictionaries and bilingual dictionary manuscripts with the number

of entry words between 10,000 and 13,000. Those manuscripts were used by

M. deGuignes as the data source for his compilation of Dictionnaire Chinois,

Francais et Latin (<汉法拉辞典>, 1813), probably the Wrst multilingual combin-

ation of Chinese with both French and Latin. About half a century later, in 1869,

Paul Perny ‘de la congregation des missions-etrangeres’ completed another com-

bination of Chinese with both French and Latin, but with a diVerent order, using

French as the source language, with Chinese following Latin. This dictionary had

two columns to each page, with the indication of parts of speech following the

French headword, then followed by Latin equivalents andChinese explanations and

their corresponding phonetic transcriptions.

religious preaching from the west 385

23.2 robert morrison and the firstchinese–english dictionary

In Chinese bilingual lexicographical circles, Robert Morrison, a name familiar

and yet remote, was the Wrst Protestant missionary to China (Chien and

Creamer, 1986). He was a missionary and a lexicographer. He took the road of

dictionary compilation for the purpose of religious preaching and occupied a

unique position in the history of Chinese bilingual lexicography because he

compiled the Wrst Chinese–English dictionary. Robert Morrison arrived in

Guangzhou in September 1807 and completed A Dictionary of the Chinese

Language (<华英词典> – 五车韵府) in 1822 after eight years’ strenuous and

arduous eVorts. The whole dictionary was printed by P. P. Thoms in six large

quarto volumes at the Honourable East India Company’s Press, and the Wrst

volume appeared in 1815. The dictionary contained three parts and listed over

40,000 Chinese characters and terms. The Wrst part (three volumes) was Chinese-

English, arranged according to the 214 Kangxi radicals. The second part (two

volumes) was also Chinese–English, based on the Chinese rhyme dictionary五车

韵府 but arranged alphabetically according to the Romanization of the Nanking

dialect rather than the Peking dialect. The third part (one volume) was English–

Chinese, arranged alphabetically. This dictionary was reprinted under the same

title in separate parts in Shanghai in 1865. Examined from a modern perspective,

the dictionary contained numerous errors, especially in its interpretation and

deWnition of a number of Chinese characters. For example, 站 was deWned as: to

stand up; to stand erect; a stopping; standing or remaining still; a stage of a

journey. Except for the Wrst and last deWnitions, all the others can hardly be

treated as its deWnitions because they are the extensions of its original meaning in

diVerent contexts. Even so, the dictionary delineated the basic conWguration of a

bilingual dictionary and shed a good deal of light upon the design and compil-

ation of English–Chinese, Chinese–English, and other bilingual dictionary types.

The year 1871 witnessed the emergence of William Lobscheid’s A Chinese

and English Dictionary and George C. Stent’s A Chinese and English Vocabulary

in the Pekinese Dialect (Shanghai: China Inland Mission and American Presby-

terian Mission Press). From Stent’s work were derived A Dictionary from

English to Colloquial Mandarin Chinese and Donald MacGillivray’s A Mandarin–

Romanised Dictionary of Chinese. The latter work was, time and again, revised and

enlarged with new terms and phrases and with new supplements. It enjoyed wide


popularity and had gone through nine reprints by the time the last edition came out

in Shanghai in 1930.

Three years later, Samuel Wells Williams published A Syllabic Dictionary of

the Chinese Language, ‘arranged according to the Wu-Fang Yuen Yin, with the

pronunciation of characters as heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai’

(see the title page). The number of characters in this dictionary is 12,527, ‘con-

tained in 10,940 articles, and placed under 522 syllables, which follow each other

alphabetically’ (see the Preface). Presumably, it was the Wrst dictionary of its kind

to contain such a great variety of pronunciations. As an explanation for the

inclusion of pronunciation variants, Williams stated in the Preface: ‘The plan of a

Chinese lexicon to satisfy all the needs of a foreigner should comprise the general

and vernacular pronunciations, with the tones used in various places, and the

sounds given to each character as its meanings vary.’ As good as his intention was,

it was highly doubtful whether he could achieve his goal. In the revised edition of

1909, the Wu-Fang Yuen Yin system of arranging Chinese characters was changed

to conform to that of Thomas F. Wade, which had become the established

prevailing practice for the arrangement of Chinese characters in the

nineteenth-century missionary dictionaries.

There appeared in the last few years of the nineteenth century two more

dictionaries of special signiWcance and interest – Herbert A. Giles’ A Chinese-

English Dictionary (<华英词典>, 1892) and P. Poletti’s A Chinese and English

Dictionary (<华英词典>, 1896). Giles’ dictionary, published in two volumes,

contained 13,848 numbered entries of Chinese characters, arranged alphabetically

according to the established Wade Romanization system with modiWcations. In

addition to the standard pronunciation, Giles went far beyond Williams by

indicating pronunciation in Wve more Chinese dialects and in Japanese, Viet-

namese, and Korean as well. Giles instilled into his work a bit of encyclopedic

Xavour by providing ‘Names, etc., of the Eighteenth Province’ on page 743, a

description of the geographical location of Tibet on page 744, and tables of the

insignia of oYcial ranks, family names, Chinese dynasties, topographical names,

the calendar, and the Chinese digital and decimal system in the Appendixes. This

example was followed in later Chinese and English bilingual dictionaries and up

to the present time. Giles’ work was revised and enlarged in 1912 and 1964, and

was in constant use until the 1960s. Giles modiWed the Wade Romanization

system in his dictionary, the result of which came to be called the Wade–Giles

Romanization system. This system was the best-known and the most commonly

used Romanization scheme in the Western world for Chinese until the oYcial

pinyin system implemented by the Chinese government in 1958. Giles’ dictionary


enjoys pride of place in the history of Chinese bilingual dictionaries as the

authoritative source for the Wade–Giles system of Romanization.

P. Poletti’s dictionary is of special interest to Chinese bilingual lexicographers

in adopting a special method of arranging Chinese characters. It Wrst arranged

Chinese characters according to the radicals, a then commonly accepted method

of entry arrangement, but instead of counting the number of the remaining

strokes, it again arranged the characters by sub-radicals, that is by the radical

under which the remaining part of the character would be found. Poletti’s

method of arranging Chinese characters, though scientiWcally based and helpful

in decoding Chinese characters, required a great deal of special knowledge

concerning the formation of Chinese characters on the part of dictionary users.

Understandably, it failed to gain currency in later Chinese bilingual works.

23.3 dialect studies and chinese bilingualdialect dictionaries

In the nineteenth century Western missionaries also became increasingly inter-

ested and active in studying Chinese dialects and vernaculars, among which

dialects spoken in Canton (Guangdong) and in Hok-keen (Fujian) were the

most thoroughly studied and the most systematically treated in Chinese dia-

lect–English bilingual lexicography. As a result, Chinese dialect and English

bilingual dictionaries appeared one after another. In 1828, Morrison took the

lead in publishing AVocabulary of the Canton Dialect, ‘the Wrst bilingual Chinese

dialect dictionary in a western language’ (Chien and Creamer, 1986). In 1856,

Samuel Wells Williams published A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in

the Canton Dialect. By 1870, John Chalmers’ An English and Cantonese Pocket

Dictionary had already gone through three editions. In 1883, William DuVus

published English–Chinese Vocabulary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of

Swatow. J. Dyer Ball’s An English–Cantonese Pocket Vocabulary, revised in 1894,

lasted well into the twentieth century.

In Chinese dialect–English lexicography, Hok-keen dialects received equal

attention. In 1832, Walter H. Medhurst (mistaken by Chien and Creamer (1986)

for William H. Medhurst) produced A Dictionary of the Hok-keen Dialect of the

Chinese Language, containing about 12,000 characters, arranged by Romanized

pronunciation in that dialect according to the author’s own system. This was

followed by An Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow


Dialect (1898), a joint work by Robert S. Maclay and C. C. Baldwin, and Costairs

Douglas’ Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language in

Amoy (1899). Shanghai and Ningpo dialects were also treated in missionary

bilingual dictionaries, as in William T. Morrison’s An Anglo–Chinese Vocabulary

of the Ningpo Dialect (1876), Joseph Edkins’ AVocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect

(1869) and Shanghai vernacular; Chinese–English Dictionary jointly compiled by

S. H. Davis and J. A. Silsby. There even emerged specialized dictionaries like

Giles’ A Dictionary of Colloquial Idioms in the Mandarin Dialect (1873) and

Williams’ An English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect (1844).

23.4 the end of missionary compilation ofchinese bilingual dictionaries

Missionary Chinese and English bilingual lexicography started at the beginning

of the nineteenth century and Xourished in the late part of the century, but its

vigorous inXuence extended well into the twentieth century. There were not only

revisions and extensions of previous works in the twentieth century but new

creations as well. In fact, the twentieth century was marked by a fresh start with

the publication of Adam Grainger’s Western Mandarin, or the Spoken Language

of Western China; with Syllabic and English Indexes (<西蜀方言>, 1900) and

Frederick W. Baller’s An Analytical Chinese–English Dictionary (1900). ‘The

objective of this work is to supply the demand for a dictionary at once portable

and inexpensive and at the same time suYciently large to meet the wants of an

ordinary student’ (in its Preface). Based on the belief that ‘6,000 characters are

suYcient to furnish a fount for a Chinese newspaper, and this number . . . is an

ample stock-in-trade for any scholar’, (Giles) Baller included in his dictionary

a corpus of 6,089 single characters. Baller’s work was characterized by a careful

selection of entries, an elaborate cross-reference system and a copious body

of appendixes. ‘With a view to ascertain which 6,000 characters were likely to

be the most useful’ (Preface), Baller made a careful analysis of a great number

of Chinese classic works and various other sources and then decided on 6,089 in-

dividual characters as entry words. In arranging these entry words, Baller created

his own Romanization system, now referred to as Baller’s system or the China

Inland Mission (shortened to C.I.M.) system, i.e. arranging entry words alpha-

betically according to groups of characters having the same Romanized pronun-

ciation, rather than adopt the Wade–Giles system. In addition, the characters


were numbered consecutively, with a Chinese radical index appended at the back

of the dictionary referring to these numbers. This cross-reference system enabled

the reader to make comparative analyses of each Chinese character. Furthermore,

Baller included more practical tables and appendices than any other predecessor

at the end of his work. There were even ‘selected passages from the Four Books,

and Standard Commentary of Chu-hsi’ to assist readers in studying classic works.

One of the defects of Baller’s is displayed by his inconsistent treatment of dialectal

pronunciations. On the one hand, no notice was taken of dialects ‘as those

spoken in the south-eastern provinces’, and, on the other hand, ‘the sounds of

characters as given in West China have been furnished’.

Baller’s work was followed by another important dictionaryMathews’Chinese–

English Dictionary (1931) and another vigorous and endless stream of dictionaries

compiled by Chinese authors in China and overseas and published in Chinese–

English and English–Chinese editions. Mathews not only revised Baller’s diction-

ary but augmented and innovated it as well. He reverted to the Wade–Giles

Romanization system in entry arrangement, increased the number of entry

words to 7,785 (excluding the variant spellings of the same character) and ‘cited

extensively from classic works, ordinary literature, magazines, newspapers, ad-

vertisements, legal documents and other sources’ (see Preface). He also doubled

the number of illustrations in it. Mathews’ dictionary has been reprinted time and

again and is still kept for reference in university libraries.

It is likely that Mathews’ dictionary was the last compilation by inland China

missionaries, signifying the end of missionary compilation of Chinese bilingual

dictionaries and the beginning of a new era for Chinese and English bilingual

dictionaries, based on stronger theoretical underpinnings andmore sophisticated

information technology as from the latter part of the twentieth century.


24

CHINESEGOVERNMENT

ESTABLISHMENTSAND CHINESE

BILINGUAL DICTIONARYCOMPILATION

THE practice of establishing foreign aVairs organizations in China started in

the pre-Qin Dynasty, when the concepts of ‘diVerentiating the Chinese from

the alien’ and ‘using the Chinese to reform the alien’ were being formulated. After

the uniWcation of the small kingdoms into a giant Chinese empire in the Qin

Dynasty, special establishments were set up to receive foreign visitors and take

charge of foreign aVairs, and this tradition continued from the Han Dynasty to the

Yuan Dynasty. Tomaintain the relations and promote communicationwith foreign

countries, the Ming Dynasty government founded the Foreign AVairs Establish-

ment aYliated to the Hanlin Academy (翰林院), which was in 1644 transformed

into the Foreign Studies School (四译馆). The ForeignAVairs Establishment, which

was divided into the Tartar Section, the Nuchen Section, the Tibetan Section, the

Burmese Section, the Persian Section, the Ouigourian Section, the Sanskrit Section,

the Dais Section, and two more additions (that is the Eight-Hundred Section and

the Thai Section) later according to the languages that were taught, took over

responsibility for translating and interpreting in foreign aVairs, teaching Chinese

ethnic minority languages and languages of neighbouring Asian countries and

cultivating translators and interpreters conversant with the history, geography,

and social customs of neighbouring countries. The establishment of these govern-

ment organizations provided strong support for the compilation of Chinese bilin-

gual glossaries and dictionaries. The miscellaneous collections of words and

translated terms were mostly in the charge of those organizations and compiled

by scholar oYcials serving the government.

24.1 government establishments andbilingual glossary compilation

According to textual research, 译语 (literally ‘translated languages’) had three

implications: interpreter, interpretation and translation, and languages trans-

lated. It is hard to tell the exact date when this term came into use. In the Tang

Dynasty, some neighbouring countries like Japan, Bohai, and Xinluo in the

Korean Peninsula also employed this term, which was obviously the result

of copying the oYcial system from China. In the Song, Liao, and Jin Dynasties,

译语 gradually lost its implication of ‘interpreter’ but retained the meaning of

‘interpretation and translation’. The Yuan Dynasty government set up an educa-

tional body for the cultivation of translators and interpreters so as to facilitate

exchanges between the Han people and the Mongolians. The founder of the Yuan

Dynasty, Hubilie (忽必烈, 1215–1294), gave the edict that Mongolian and Chinese

bilingual glossaries like Explanations of the Mongolian Language be compiled

to collect Mongolian words, categorize them into sections, transliterate them,

and provide Chinese explanations. The tradition of transliterating other lan-

guages via Chinese to compile wordbooks continued generation after generation.

Those compilations were a special form of bilingual glossaries, and the term译语

came to refer especially to combinations of Chinese with the languages of

ethnic minorities and neighbouring countries. In between the Yuan and Ming

Dynasties appeared another bilingual glossary, which is generally referred to

by Chinese academic circles as The Yellow River West Bilingual Glossary (<河西

译语>), compiled in 1370, or 1371 according to another account, for the reference

of interpreters receiving foreign visitors. The book consisted of 81 pages and

covered 255 entry words, divided into seventeen categories such as Astronomy,

Geography, Seasons, Flowers and Woods, Birds and Beasts, Royal Palaces, Uten-

sils, Human Body, Numerals, Jewellery, Garments, and Colours. Each entry


started with Chinese explanations, followed by Chinese transliterations, with an

absence of their matching foreign words. For lack of corresponding foreign

words, it has remained a riddle what was its source language or languages.

However, it can be inferred that The Yellow River West Bilingual Glossary was

oYcially compiled by the government establishment. Though small in size, its

format, compilation style and thematic categorization left a visible imprint upon

similar bilingual glossaries compiled in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

At the initial stage of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian language had no

written form. Then the Wrst Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Hong Wu (洪武),

requested foreign monks to create the written system for Mongolians. Huoyuan-

jie (火源洁), an ethnic Mongolian, was commissioned to add Chinese explan-

ations to the created language system. The establishment of the Foreign Studies

School in the Ming Dynasty did not seem to contribute much to dictionary

making, judging from the few bilingual dictionaries produced in this period, but

it exercised far-reaching inXuence upon later bilingual lexicographical practices,

for it did a lot of research into the principles of dictionary making and helped in

standardizing bilingual dictionary making in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

24.2 chinese-foreign language dictionariesand their three versions

According to The Provisions of the Foreign Studies School, student oYcials in

the ten sections were initially required to learn a miscellany of foreign words from

bilingual glossaries. From 1542 onwards, they were required to learn imperial

mandates, memorials and miscellaneous foreign words simultaneously. The so-

called miscellany of foreign words was actually Chinese–foreign language bilin-

gual glossaries compiled by the Foreign AVairs Establishment. For instance,

The Nuchen and Chinese Glossary (<女真译语>) is a combination of

The Nuchen Miscellaneous Collection of Foreign Words (<女真馆杂字>) and

Memorials from the Nuchen Section (<女真馆来文>) under the general headingof The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries (<华夷译语>). The

Nuchen Miscellaneous Collection of Foreign Words was divided in much the

samewayasTheYellowRiverWestBilingualGlossary intonineteencategories, covering

over 800 entry words. In each entry the Nuchen words were matched to their

corresponding Chinese words, phonetically notated by means of Chinese trans-

literated Nuchen words. The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries were

chinese government establishments 393

used as textbooks for student oYcials in the Foreign Studies School to learn

foreign words and read memorials from foreign countries.

The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries allow of two interpretations.

In a broad sense, the bilingual glossaries compiled by the Foreign AVairs Establish-

ment all came under this general title. These glossaries classiWed all the collected

words into categories on a thematic basis and provided Chinese translation and

Chinese transliteration for entry words. The title included the Huwu Version, the

Yongle Version, and the Huitongguan Version. Subsequent to the founding of the

MingDynasty, the last Emperor of the YuanDynasty led his subjects and forces into

the northern territories and left behind a large number of Mongolians in the Ming

Dynasty territory and a considerable amount of historical literature, documents,

and Wles of the Mongolians, which needed to be sorted. Daily communication

between the Mongolians and other ethnic peoples also needed the media of

language. What was born of these needs was Huoyuanjie’s A Chinese–Mongolian

Glossary, which appeared in 1389 and is the so-called Huwu Version. The Huwu

Version involved only the Mongolian language. It had 185 pages and listed nearly

3,000 entry words, with Mongolian words as headwords, followed by Chinese

explanations or translations and then Chinese transliterated Mongolian words.

Huoyuanjie capitalized on the general conWguration and other useful elements of

Explanations of the Mongolian Language and The Yellow River West Bilingual Gloss-

ary in the formation of its format and style and made a number of innovations.

The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries generally consist of the

following categories: Astronomy, Geography, Seasons, Flowers and Woods,

Beasts and Birds, Royal Palaces, Utensils, Garments, Food and Drink, Jewellery,

Public Figures, Important Events, Sounds and Colours, Numerals, Human Body,

Whereabouts, General Terms, History and Liberal Arts. Subsequently, The Aug-

mented Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries (two volumes) were added

to this general heading, which is the narrow interpretation of The Chinese–

Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries. In 1407, the Foreign AVairs Establishment

was founded and was responsible for ten foreign and ethnic language sections.

Each section compiled bilingual glossaries of their own languages, intended to

help translate the memorials and documents from ethnic minorities and foreign

countries. Each glossary consisted of two parts: miscellany and presented docu-

ments. The miscellany collected ethnic minority and foreign language words,

which were used as headwords, followed by Chinese translation and Chinese

transliterated pronunciation. The documents presented included memorials

and their Chinese versions. This is the Yongle Version of The Chinese–Foreign

Language Bilingual Glossaries, mainly including The Translated Documents of

Huihe (Ouigour) Section (<高昌馆译书>), A Miscellany of the Ouigourian


Words (<高昌馆杂字>), A Miscellany of Persian Words (<回回馆杂字>), ThePersian Language and Chinese Glossary (<回回馆译语>), The Burmese Language

and Chinese Glossary (<百译馆译语>), The Sanskrit and Chinese Glossary (<西天馆译语>), The Nuchen and Chinese Glossary, The Tibetan Language and

Chinese Glossary (<西番译语>), The Thai Language and Chinese Glossary (<暹罗馆译语>), etc.The Huitongguan Version of The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries,

whichwascompiledby theHuitongguan(theHuitongMansions) in the lateperiodof

theMingDynasty, included those bilingual glossaries compiledby theKoreanHouse,

the Japanese House, the Okinawa House, the Annan House, the Vietnamese House,

the Thai House, the Tartar House, the Ouigourian House, the Tibetan House, the

Persian House, the House of Sultanate of Malacca, the Nuchen House, and the

Burmese House. The Huitongguan Version had various copied editions and only

contained collections of words which had Chinese equivalents and Chinese translit-

eration but no foreign and ethnic minority language words, merely serving the

purpose of interpretation in foreign aVairs.

The Hongwu Version of The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries is

considered by scholars outside China to be the Wrst version, the Yongle Version

the second, and the Huitongguan Version the third version. As the Chinese

compilers did not realize the alphabetical or formal arrangement of entry

words the three Versions still modelled their arrangement on the format of The

Ready Guide, but they made substantial innovations in categorization, entry

selection, deWnition and explanation, and transliteration.

24.3 the spread of western learning and thecompilation of specialized bilingual

dictionaries

The pervasion of Western learning reached its Wrst climax in the late period of the

Ming Dynasty and its second climax was marked by the founding of the Capital

City Tongwenguan at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Scholars of various Welds

joined in the translation of contemporary works of Western science, which

brought about a Xourishing of translation as well as chaos and randomness in

translations. It was often the case that the very same book had several diVerent

translated versions, and the same terms were given diVerent Chinese equivalents,

thus causing great confusion and misunderstanding. It was becoming an urgent


issue to compile bilingual dictionaries and manuals of technical terms to stand-

ardize Western science translation. In the late period of the Qing Dynasty, the

focus was on the compilation of specialized bilingual dictionaries, which was a

natural result of the transmission of Western learning and standardization of

technical terms. The translation bodies were mainly local and regional trans-

lators’ workshops, typically the Jiangnan Arsenal. The Translation Department of

the Jiangnan Arsenal collected technical terms and published specialized voca-

bularies, like Vocabulary of Names and Substances Occurring in Various Words

on Chemistry: ChieXy in Bloxam’s Chemistry (<化学材料中西名目表>, 1885),Vocabulary of Names of Materia Medica Occurring in the Translation of Royle’s

Manual of Materia Medica and Therapeutics with Lists of Names and Places

Occurring in the Same Work and in Various Treatises and Allied Subjects (<西药

大成中西名目表>, 1887), Vocabulary of Mineralogical Terms Occurring in the

Manual by J. D. D. and A. M. (<金石中西名目表>, 1883), Vocabulary of Terms

Relating to the Steam Engine (<汽机中西名目表>, 1890). They were all compil-

ations by John Fryer (1839–1928). There were also a number of other specialized

bilingual dictionaries and glossaries and they laid the foundation for modern

Chinese science terminology and served as precedents for specialized bilingual

dictionary compilation.

24.4 the compilation of manchurian-chinesebilingual and multilingual dictionaries

in the qing dynasty

The founding of the Qing Dynasty in Chinese history gave another powerful

impetus to the development of Chinese–ethnic minority language dictionaries in

its early and middle periods and specialized bilingual dictionaries in its late

period. With the Manchurians as the ruling class, the Manchurian language

became the oYcial state language, which brought about a long and vigorous

stream of Manchurian–Chinese dictionaries, over one hundred in number,

which were still mainly the compilations of the oYcial establishments of the

Qing Dynasty, most notably A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing

Dynasty, The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language, and The Compendium of

the Manchurian Language. They were remarkable for their quality, sophisticated

techniques of production, number of languages involved in the text, and massive

size of some of them.


A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing Dynasty, compiled by Shen

Qiliang (沈启亮) in the Qing Dynasty, was the Wrst unabridged Manchurian-

Chinese bilingual dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography. It comprised

twelve volumes and included over 12,000 entries. It was divided into the Man-

churian part and the Chinese part. The former contained Manchurian words,

their derivation of proper names, expressions and inXections of some words,

dotted with citations, and the latter contained the Chinese equivalents of the

Manchurian words or their corresponding explanations. This dictionary was

characterized in particular by its emphasis on early Manchurian words and

Chinese loanwords and thus served as a signiWcant reference book for translating

early Manchurian historical literature and conducting research on the evolution

of Manchurian words.

Early in the eighteenth century, Emperor Kangxi attached great importance to

the studies of historical literature and proposed the compilation of the gigantic The

Dictionary of the Manchurian Language (twenty-Wve volumes), which was com-

pleted by Fu Dali (傅达礼), Ma Qi (马齐), and Ma Erhan (马尔汉) et al. between

1673 and 1708. It was the Wrst monolingual encyclopedic dictionary oYcially

compiled with 280 classiWcatory categories in the Manchurian language, abundant

in citations and explanations, but without Chinese deWnitions, andwas reckoned to

be the foundation of oYcial compilations of Manchurian dictionaries.

The appearance of The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language and its bilin-

gual and multilingual series pushed the compilation of bilingual and multilingual

dictionaries in the Qing Dynasty to its peak. In the 56th year of the Kangxi

reign appeared The Imperial Manchurian and Mongolian Dictionary (<御制满蒙

文鉴>), and in the last year of the Yongzheng reign, Chinese explanations were

added to The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language, hence The Manchurian and

Chinese Dictionary (<音汉清文鉴>). In the thirty-sixth year of the Qianlong

reign appeared the encyclopedic dictionary – The Augmented Imperial Manchu-

rian and Chinese Dictionary (<两体清文鉴>, also known as <御制增订清文

鉴>) by Fu Heng (傅恒) in forty volumes, four of which were Supplements. This

dictionary had thirty-Wve classiWcatory categories, subdivided into 292

sections and covering 18,000 entry words, including over 1,600 archaic and rare

words. Each entry word was deWned in both the Manchurian and Chinese

languages. The uniqueness of this dictionary lay in its adoption of fanqie

to indicate the pronunciation of Manchurian deWning words, and the Chinese

deWning words were notated with Manchurian pronunciation, making the

dictionary friendly to both Manchurian and Chinese users. This was followed by

the gradual addition of: (a) Mongolian explanations, hence The Three-Language

Dictionary: Manchurian, Mongolian, and Chinese (<三体清文鉴>, also known


as <御制满珠蒙古汉字三合切音清文鉴> and <满蒙汉字三合切音清文

鉴>); (b) the Tibetan explanations in 1779, hence The Manchurian Dictionary

in Four Languages (<四体清文鉴>); and (c) Uygurian explanations, hence The

Manchurian Dictionary in Five Languages (<五体清文鉴>). This was perhapsthe Wrst polyglot dictionary series in the history of Chinese lexicography.

The massive size of the Qing Dynasty can be best exempliWed by The Compen-

dium of the Manchurian Language, a combination of The Complete Collection of

the Manchurian Language (<清文汇书>, twelve volumes), which was compiled

by Li Yanji (李延基) on the basis of The Imperial Dictionary of the Manchurian

Language (<御制清文鉴>, 1673–1708) and The Supplements of the Manchurian

Language (<清文补汇>). With the standardization of the Manchurian language,

a large number of new words appeared and were not listed in previous diction-

aries. Consequently, Yixin (爱新觉罗宜兴) accumulated over 7,900 new words in

the Manchurian language and compiled The Supplements of the Manchurian

Language (eight volumes) in 1786, with its format and style patterned after The

Complete Collection of the Manchurian Language. In 1897, the Manchurian

scholars, Xiangxiang (爱新觉罗祥享), Zhikuan (志宽), and Zhipei (志培),

bound the two under one cover and with one title – The Compendium of the

Manchurian Language, in twelve volumes and with more than 20,000 entry words

deWned in Wve languages: the Manchurian, Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and

Uygurian languages. It is an indispensable reference work for scholars of Man-

churian studies even today.


25

THE CHARACTERISTICSAND INFLUENCE OF EARLY

CHINESE BILINGUALDICTIONARIES

THE preaching of Buddhism is the main force behind the earliest Chinese

bilingual dictionaries. Buddhist culture is a special part of Chinese culture,

and Buddhism has exercised extensive and profound inXuence upon China and

its neighbouring countries. Many Buddhist terms, such as 世界 (world), 实际

(reality),平等 (equality),相对 (relativity), and绝对 (absoluteness) have been in

daily circulation in Chinese life, and many Sanskrit words and expressions, such

as魔 (devil),觉悟 (consciousness),境界 (vision),大千世界 (Great Chiliocosm,

the boundless universe), 本来面目 (true nature), and 芸芸众生 (all living

things) have come down to the present day through Buddhist glossaries and

dictionaries, which in turn help to transmit Buddhist culture and forge exchanges

and communication ties between nations.

25.1 early bilingual dictionaries andtheir characteristics

When examined from the microstructural point of view, entries in early bilingual

glossaries and dictionaries generally consisted of headwords, deWnitions, and

phonetic notations. The headwords were, in most cases, transliterated Chinese

characters of foreign words, and a small number of them adopted foreign lan-

guage words directly as headwords. A Miscellaneous Collection of Things and

Events was the only book that was found to have adopted Chinese characters as

headwords. Some headwords were deWned with synonyms, some on a one-to-one

basis, and a number of others were provided with explanatory deWnitions.

Examples were rarely found in those entries. The pronunciations were generally

notated by means of Chinese transliteration, but some were not notated at all.

In terms of reform and innovation in format and compilation style, two major

dictionary categories – oYcial compilations and missionary compilations – come

to the fore, forming the main threads of bilingual dictionary development in the

Ming and Qing Dynasties. Although the two categories originated and developed

almost over the same historical period, there was no sign of any convergence or

interaction of their evolutionaly paths. OYcial compilations were progressing in

their own way and following their own set courses, upholding the authority and

dignity of the Ming and Qing Empire, with their format and style showing a high

degree of solemnity and inXexibility. Flexibility and innovativeness were, to a

greater extent, embodied in missionary compilations, which not only integrated

the merits of Western dictionary compilation but inherited the great traditions of

Chinese dictionary compilation, laying solid foundations for the development

and Xourishing of Chinese bilingual lexicography in the twentieth century.

Over theMing andQingDynasties, Chinese bilingual dictionaries turned out to be

distinct and signiWcant in several respects. First, they becamemore diversiWed in type.

There emerged not only bilingual dictionaries but also multilingual dictionaries and

their derivative series, specialized bilingual dictionaries, and bilingual encyclopedic

dictionaries as well. The types of dictionary covered were those with Chinese and

foreign languages as the source language. Moreover, a considerable number of bili-

ngual dialect dictionaries andbilingualminority languagedictionarieswere compiled.

Second, over the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the macrostructural conWguration

of bilingual dictionaries was beginning to take shape and gradually became

established, minimizing the unscientiWc and unstandardized practices that had

come down from the Tang and Song Dynasties. Bilingual dictionaries, subsequent

to the late Qing Dynasty, began to adopt the radical arrangement or the Roman-

ized alphabet (especially the Wade–Giles Romanization system), rather than

the thematic (or categoric) arrangement, as the basis for macrostructure. Such

information retrieval systems, based on word pronunciation or formation, were

more easily accessible and more user-friendly.

Third, in terms of microstructural formation, there still existed numerous

deWciencies, imperfections, and even wrong practices. No scientiWcally acceptable


standards were established for the sizes of headwords. Letters, characters, words,

expressions or even sentences could all be found in headword position. The

selection of headwords was largely random. The understanding and deWnition of

the headword were sometimes erroneous. However, the basic microstructure was

in good shape. The headwords were taken directly from the source language

instead of Chinese transliteration. Their phonetic notation employed the Ro-

manization system instead of fanqie or Chinese transcription. Their deWnitions

became more accurate and intelligible. DeWnitions were provided with citations

geared to the context of use. The methods and skills used for microstructural

construction were more diversiWed and more practical.

Finally, no individual essays or papers have been found for the purpose of serious

lexicographical study, but illuminating ideas and thoughts pervade prefaces, fore-

words, compilation plans, guidelines, and other relevant monologues. The Trans-

lation Department of the Jiangnan Arsenal, for example, stipulated, prior to

translating Western works, that it should be obligatory to employ already estab-

lished or popular terms; in cases where there are no such terms, translators may

employ the methods of combining a character and a relevant radical, combining

two ormore characters, or direct transliteration to create a new term; all new terms,

including names of people, place names, and terms for things and events, should be

collected and appended to the book for reference. This stipulation gave rise to a

series of specialized bilingual dictionaries. These discussions were highly practical

and served as guidelines for bilingual dictionary compilation but, in terms of

theoretical generalization, they were fragmentary and lacked consistency.

Dictionary compilations in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were mostly Chinese

and English or Chinese and French combinations. Chinese combinations with

other modern European languages were extremely limited. It is no doubt that

Chinese and English bilingual dictionaries became well established over that period

in their format, compilation style, entry selection, entry arrangement, phonetic

transcription, and illustrative citations, thus paving the way for Chinese bilingual

lexicography to make a new start and take oV afresh in the twentieth century.

25.2 the socio-cultural influence of earlybilingual dictionaries

The early Chinese bilingual wordbooks and glossaries are a mirror reXecting the

society, politics, economy, culture, and regional transformations of ancient

influence of bilingual dictionaries 401

China. With their help, people today can explore the path of ancient Chinese

language evolution, examine the social customs of ancient Chinese society,

observe the changes and transformations of social and political events, and

analyse the nature and geography of ancient times. A Timely Gem Dictionary

Tangut-Chinese, for example, tells us a lot about the Western Xia society. It

divides Western Xia architecture into 楼阁 (building), 泥舍 (clay house), and

帐库 (tent, shelter), and its description reveals architectural features and achieve-

ments. The terms for utensils made of bamboo and wood recorded in the

dictionary show that many Western Xia characters, when created, followed the

radical木 and adopted their corresponding Chinese characters as loanwords, and

that some characters, such as those denoting 碗 (bowl) and 碟 (plate), followed

the radical 木 rather than 石 as in 碗 and 碟, indicating that the utensils were

most likely made of wood rather than of pottery. It is known from Explanations of

the Terms in the History of the Liao Dynasty that the ceremony of rebirth was held

in the Liao Dynasty every twelve years and was developed into an event of

considerable political signiWcance that could only be attended by the Emperor,

Queen, crown prince, and the Khitan tribeal chiefs.

The early Chinese bilingual glossaries and dictionaries prove highly valuable

not merely for social and cultural study and for the study of history, politics,

geography, and terminology. Their academic inXuence and eVect are also

reXected in language studies, philology, and dictionary compilation. They played

a vital role in opening this new Weld, pushing its expansion and signifying its

direction, eventually forming the basic conWguration of bilingual dictionaries

and paths of development. Examined from the macrostructural point of view,

early glossaries and dictionaries were generally arranged on a categoric basis,

and the sequences between categories were relatively stabilized, but there were

no obvious patterns of arrangement within categories. Their entry selection

focused on diYcult words and expressions from ancient classic works, and

Buddhist terms in particular. They were mostly compiled by a small number of

‘sages’ and gifted monks.


Appendix i

List of book titles from

English to Chinese with English titles

arranged in alphabetical order

ENGLISH TITLES

CHINESE

TITLES

PAGE

NUMBER

A Brief Account of the Overseas States <瀛环志略> 320, 321

A Brief History of Chinese Character

Dictionaries

<中国字典史略> 4

A Brief History of Dictionary Compilation in

China

<中国辞书编纂史略> 4

A Brief Introduction to Phonetic Sounds in

Thirteen Scriptures

<十三经音略> 306

A Categoric Dictionary of Chinese Words <分类字锦> 267

A Categoric Dictionary of Dialectal Words <方言类聚> 269, 309

A Chinese–English Dictionary <华英词典> 386, 387

A Chinese–Foreign Language Vocabulary <华夷译语> 271, 374

A Collection of Characters and Sounds <字音汇集> 357, 363, 364

A Collection of Classic Rhyme House <经韵楼集> 284, 300, 301

A Collection of Fu-poems of Previous Dynasties <历代赋汇> 340

A Collection of Inscription Characters of the Yin

and Shang Dynasties

<殷周金文集成> 47

A Collection of Popular Expressions <通俗编> 330, 332, 343

A Collection of Rhymes <韵会> 292, 295

A Complete Collection of All Beauties <群芳谱> 271, 335, 336

A Complete Collection of Philosophical Essays <性理大全> 264

A Complete Collection of the Five Classics <五经大全> 264

A Complete Collection of the Four Books <四书大全> 264

A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing

Dynasty

<大清全书> 271, 396, 397

A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Rhymes of

Zhongzhou State

<中州全韵> 362, 363

A Contemporary Dictionary of Ancient

Names of Places in All Dynasties

<历代地理志韵编今

释>271, 336

A Continual to the General Survey on Ancient

Literature

<续文献通考> 278

ADiachronicDictionary of Chinese Rhyme Studies <韵史> 272

A Dictionary of Ancient Currencies <古泉汇> 271, 335

A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles <佩文韵府> 276, 324

332–4,

343

A Dictionary of Synonyms <骈字类编> 276, 325,

334, 343

A Dictionary of the Chinese Language <华英词典–五车韵

府>386

A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations <称谓录> 324, 326,

334, 335,

343

AFamedRecord of the Spring andAutumnPeriod <春秋戴记> 304

A General Introductory Dictionary of Rhymes <韵略汇通> 272

A Guide to Reading An Explanatory Dictionary

of Chinese Characters

<说文解字读> 284

A Guide to the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes <切韵指南> 292

A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms <梵语杂名> 372, 373

AMiscellaneous Collection of Things and Events <鸡林类事> 375, 400

A Miscellany of Persian Words <回回馆杂字> 395

A Miscellany of the Ouigourian Words <高昌馆杂字> 394, 395

A Narrative History of Lexicography in China <中国辞书史话> 3

APictorialCollectionofHeaven,Earth, andHuman <三才图会> 320

A Tangut-Chinese Ready Guide <番尔雅> 377

A Thorough Exploration in Philosophy <穷理学> 320

A Timely Gem Dictionary Tangut–Chinese <番汉合时掌中珠> 377, 378

402

Additional Notes on the VeriWcation of the

Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes

<切韵考外篇> 254

Amendments to the Essential Dictionary of

Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites

<增修互补礼部韵略> 358

An Annotated Collection of Materia Medica <本草经集注> 227

An Audio And Visual Guide for Foreign Scholars <西儒耳目资> 385

An Epilogue to Mao’s Book of Songs <毛诗后笺> 307

An Epilogue to the Standardized Version of Mao

Heng’s Exegesis of Book of Songs

<毛诗故训传定本小

笺>36

An Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds <说文通训定声> 285, 348

404 book titles from english to chinese

An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters <说文解字> 5, 41–8,

95–113, 141,

147–52,

169–70,

178–203,

276–7,

282–9,

295–7

AnExplanatoryDictionary of Sounds andRhymes <音韵阐微> 353, 361

An Explanatory Dictionary of the Yue Dialect <越言释> 270, 310

An Illustrated Gazette of Overseas States <海国图志> 320, 321

An Interpretative Dictionary of Rhymes <韵略易解> 272

An Introduction to Ancient Dictionaries in

China

<中国古代字典辞典

概论>4

An Introduction to Buddhist Scriptures in China <中国佛教史籍概论> 220

Ancient and Contemporary Characters <古今文字> 169, 187, 188

Ancient and Modern Rhyme Standards <古今韵准> 285, 348

Annals of Water Transportation <漕运志> 320

Areas Outside the Concern of the Chinese

Imperial Geographer

<职方外纪> 320

Ban Gui <班簋> 50

Bibliographies of Yizhai Library <一斋书目>Biographies of Confucian Scholars in the

Qing Dynasty

<清儒学案> 306

Brief Stories in Eastern Capital <东都事略> 159

Character Index <检字> 274

Characters <文字> 244

Ci Hai <辞海> 39, 289, 361

Ci Yuan <辞源> 39, 326, 361

Classic Internal Medicine <内经> 323

Collected Essentials of the Song Dynasty <宋会要> 345

Collected Poems: Sun-loving Hall <爱日堂诗集> 340

Collected Works of Wang Yinzhi <王文简公文集>Collections of Cangjie Exegesis <仓颉训纂> 81, 101

Collections of Jiaguwen Characters <甲骨文编> 105

Collections of Jin Inscriptions <金文编> 105

DaoDe Jing, TaoTe Ching <道德经> 30, 33

Dictionnaire Chinois, Francais et Latin <汉法拉辞典> 385

Direct Amendments on A Collection of Popular

Expressions

<直语补证> 332

Disciplines and EVects: A New Book <纪效新书> 359

book titles from english to chinese 405

Dizionario Portoghese–Cinese <葡汉词典> 385

East of the River <河东> 80

Eight Sounds and Character Meanings <八音字义> 359

Elements <几何原本> 322

Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture <农桑辑要> 345

Essentials of the Well-known Chinese Academic

Works: Language and Characters

<中国学术名著提

要�语言文字卷>218

Etiquette and Rites <仪礼> 215

Explanations of the Mongolian Language <蒙古译语>,<至元译语>

379, 392, 394

Explanations of the Terms in the Histories of the

Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties

<辽金元三史国语解> 383

Explanations of the Terms in the History of the

Jin Dynasty

<金国语解> 383

Explanations of the Terms in the History of the

Liao Language

<辽国语解> 375, 382, 402

Explorations in Philosophical Principles <名理探> 320

Fine Observations of Nature <物理小识> 305

General Examples of Sounds and Rhymes in All

Human Speeches

<古今中外音韵通例> 354, 355

General Monthly Climates <月令广义> 320

General Rhymes <通韵> 354, 355

General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems <诗词通韵> 354, 362

Gongyang’s Spring and Autumn Annals <春秋公羊传> 215, 216

Guliang’s Spring and Autumn Annals <春秋榖梁传> 215, 216

Historian Zhou’s Primer <史籀篇> 27 42–9,

51–60, 136

Hong Lie <鸿烈> 216

Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes <洪武正韵> 347–8, 352,

357–8

Huai Nan <淮南> 240

Huai Nan Zi <淮南子> 72, 107

Hui Lin’s Sounds and Meanings <慧琳音义> 220, 222

Jian Rhymes <柬韵> 285

Lao zi <老子> 107, 160, 215

Lectures on Ancient Wordbooks <古代词书讲话> 4

Li Sao <离骚> 81, 92

Lie Zi <列子> 72

Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs <毛诗诂训传>,<毛诗>, <毛传>

22, 35–7, 70,

97


Memorials from the Nuchen Section <女真馆来文> 393

Meng Zi <孟子> 36, 60, 107

Methods and Models in Construction <营造法式> 345

Minute DiVerences in Character Formations <分毫字样> 189

Miscellaneous Commentaries <野议> 338

Mo zi <老子> 107

New Collections of Shijiazhai <十驾斋养新录> 350

New Manuscripts from the Citrange Garden <枳园近稿> 304

New Supplements and RectiWcations to the

Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words

<续方言新校补> 94, 270, 309

New Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary

of Dialectal Words

<续方言又补> 270, 310

Notes on Lu’s Arguments <鲁论笺> 304

Notes on the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of

Rhymes

<广韵校勘记> 254

Notes on the RectiWcation of the Jade Chapters

and the Dictionary of Rhymes

<玉篇广韵校刊札记> 254

Ode to the Western Capital <西都赋> 274

On ‘Name’ and ‘Content’ <名实篇> 31

On Composition <纂文> 254

On Destiny <辨命论> 207

On Name RectiWcation <正名篇> 31

On Physics <物理论> 132

On Qi <论气> 338

On Substance <指物篇> 31

On the Skies <谈天> 338

One Thousand Characters Text <千字文> 57

One Thousand Golden Medical Prescriptions <千金方> 227

Original Commentaries on Zhuang Zi <庄子独见> 311

Peripheral Amendments on the Ready Guide <尔雅补郭> 332

Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions <五方元音> 352–3,

357–8

Proverb Couplets of the Wu Dialect <吴下谚联> 330, 331, 343

Proverbs of the Yue Dialect <越谚> 303, 317,

330–1

Recorded Studies on the Meaning of Classics <经义述闻> 70, 71, 301,

329

Records of Ancient Coins <泉志> 227

Records of Names of the Same Family Names <同姓名录> 276

Records on Soldier Training <练兵纪实> 359

RectiWcation on theDictionary ofChineseRhymes <刊谬补缺切韵> 245

Rhyme Essentials <韵英> 220


Rhyme Studies in Wei Gen Xuan <味根轩韵学> 354, 355

Rhymes of the Book of Songs <诗经韵谱> 284

Rhymes of Various Classics <群经韵谱> 284

San Pan <散盘> 51

Seven Strategies <七略> 63, 83

Shi Zi <尸子> 38, 40

Shizhuzai’s Chart of Painting and Calligraphy <十竹斋书画谱> 260

Shui Jing Annotations and Commentaries <水经注笺> 304

Simple Questioning <素问> 111

Sound DiVerentiation <音鉴> 356

Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist

Scriptures

<大藏音义> 170–3, 206,

219, 220,

222,

370–1

Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist

Scriptures (also Sounds and Meanings

of the Whole Canon)

<一切经音义> 110

Sounds and Meanings of Kaiyuan Characters <开元文字音义> 177, 220

Sounds andMeanings ofMaha Parinibbana Sutta <大般涅槃经音义> 219

Sounds and Meanings of the Avatamsaka Sutra <华严经音义> 185, 219

Sounds and Meanings of the Lotus Sutra <妙法莲华经音义> 219

Sounds and Meanings of the Ready Guide <尔雅音义> 39, 241

Sounds of All the Buddhist Scriptures <一切经音> 207, 370

Standard Words <法言> 81, 216

Standard Words for Writing Ci with Examples <正语作词起例> 252

State Didactics <州箴> 81

Studies in the Ready Guide <说雅> 285

Studies on the Dictionary of Rhymes <广韵研究> 254

Supplements and RectiWcations to the

Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words

<续方言补正> 270, 309

Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

<续方言补> 94

Supplements to the Compendium of Materia

Medica

<本草纲目拾遗> 337

Supplements to the Exegesis on Poetry <诗疏补遗> 311

Supplements to the RectiWcation of the

Dictionary of Dialectal Words

<方言疏证补> 93

Supplements to the RectiWed Broad Ready Guide <广雅疏证补正> 61

Supplements to the RectiWed Dictionary of

Chinese Characters and Terms

<释名疏证补> 131

Talks on Poetry <诗讲义> 217

Talks on the History of Ancient Word Books and

Dictionaries

<古代辞书史话> 4


Talks on the History of Chinese Dictionaries <中国字典词典史话> 4

Teachings of the Deceased Natives <梓人遗训> 345

The Abhidharma Naya Anusara Sutra <顺正理论> 370

The Academic Elites <文苑英华> 164

The Additions to A Dictionary of Rhymes and

Styles

<韵府拾遗> 333

The Alternating Ready Guide <叠雅> 276, 308

The Analects of Confucius <论语> 36, 39, 81

The Ancient and Contemporary Exegesis of

Etiquette and Rites

<仪礼古今义疏文> 307

The Ancient Interpretation of the Ready Guide <尔雅古义> 307

The Annals of Tangyi County <堂邑县志> 328

The Annals of the Three Kingdoms <三国志> 119, 120, 121

The Annals of Wuxing, Jiatai <嘉泰吴兴志> 308

The Annals of Zunyi Prefecture <遵义府志> 303

The Annotated Dictionary of Dialectal Words <方言注> 24, 90, 148

The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

<说文解字注> 112, 132,

283–4

The Annotated Huai Nan Zi <淮南子注> 101

The Annotated Interpretation of the Dictionary

of Dialectal Words

<方言笺疏> 94, 270, 309

The Annotated Ready Guide <尔雅注> 24, 62, 73, 74

TheAnnotated RectiWcation of Thirteen Scriptures <十三经注疏> 312

The Annotations of Selected Works <文选注> 110

The Arithmetic Classics of the Islands <海岛算经> 345

The Augmented Cangjie Glossary <埤仓> 186, 215, 254

The Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words <续方言> 270, 309, 312

The Augmented Imperial Manchurian and

Chinese Dictionary

<两体清文鉴>,<御制

增订清文鉴>397

The Augmented Ready Guide <埤雅> 170, 217–18

The Avatamsaka Sutra <华严经> 370

TheBai’sCollectionofClassics,HistoriesandEvents <白氏经史事类> 226

The Beginning of Chinese Characters <文始> 133

The Beitang Collection of Copied Books <北堂书钞> 172, 224–6

The Biographies of Great Monks of the Song

Dynasty

<宋高僧传> 219

The Biography of Xiao Kai <萧恺传> 192

The Book of Ancient Texts <尚书><书> 21, 22, 107

The Book of Changes <易经>,<易> 25, 26, 81

The Book of Family Names <百家姓> 57

The Book of Filial Virtues <孝经> 96, 107, 215

The Book of Late Han Dynasty <后汉书> 110

The Book of Music <乐> 21


The Book of Nature’s Engineering <天工开物> 336, 338, 344

The Book of Rites <礼记>, <礼> 36, 39

The Book of Secret Prescriptions <医经方> 111

The Book of Songs <诗经> <诗> 35, 77, 349

The Book of Songs and the Philological Studies <诗经小学> 284

The Book of the Chen Dynasty <陈书> 192

The Book of the Han Dynasty <汉书> 35, 60, 64–6,

79–81, 101

The Book of the Jin Dynasty <晋书> 38

The Book of the Late Han Dynasty <后汉书> 101

The Book of the Liang Dynasty <梁书> 192

The Book of the Song Dynasty <宋书> 239, 242

The Book of the Sui Dynasty <隋书> 112, 160

The Book of the Tang Dynasty <唐书> 178

The Book of the Wei Dynasty <魏书> 177, 215, 244

The Book of Three Rites <三礼> 120, 216

The Botanic Compendium <全芳备祖> 173, 227, 234

The Broad Cangjie Primer <广苍> 254

The Broad Ready Guide <广雅> 172, 215–17

The Broad Records of Things and Events <事林广记> 228, 232–3,

378

The Broadly Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal

Words with Supplements

<广续方言及拾遗> 270, 310, 312

The Buddhist Book of Filial Virtues <佛孝经> 306

The Buddhist Ready Guide <佛尔雅> 306, 318

The Burmese Language and Chinese Glossary <百译馆译语> 395

The Cangjie Primer <仓颉篇> 28, 35, 52–60

The Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary <渊鉴类函> 267, 276, 338

The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and

Rhymes

<中原音韵> 167, 251–2

The Character Designator <字指> 254

The Character Dictionary <字说> 180–2, 218

The Character Forest <字林> 185–8

The Character Garden <字苑> 254

The Character Mirror <字鉴> 198, 199

The Character Models <字样> 171, 173, 254

The Character RectiWcation <字諟> 101

The Chinese Book of Filial Virtues <中文孝经> 306

The Chinese-Foreign Language Bilingual

Glossaries

<华夷译语> 393–5

The Classic Account of Poetry <诗故> 304

The ClassiWcation of the Thirty-letter Alphabet <归三十字母例> 162


The ClassiWcation of Things and Objects <物性门类> 217

The ClassiWed Chapters <类篇> 165–71, 190,

191, 203

The ClassiWed Characters <字类> 254

The ClassiWed Characters of Banma <班马字类> 171, 199

The ClassiWed Collection <类聚> 225

The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary

Works

<艺文类聚> 224,228,229,

279

The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners <初学记> 226, 230

The ClassiWed Dictionary of Zhongzhou Yuefu

Rhymes

<中州乐府音韵类编> 172

The Cognate Dictionary of Characters <同源字典> 133

The Collected Poems and Prose of Qiushi

Academy

<求是堂诗文集> 307

The Collected Works of Qian Yan Tang <潜研堂文集> 350

The Collected Works of Wang Anshi <王文公文集> 181

The Collection of Ancient Records <集古录> 164

The Collection of Characters from Ancient

Books

<古文尚书> 211, 215

The Collection of Characters from Five Classics <五经文字> 195–6

The Collection of Characters from Nine Classics <九经文字> 174

The Collection of Lost Books in Yuhanshan

House

<玉函山房辑佚书> 244

The Collection of Meanings of Terms in

Translation

<翻译名义集> 369

The Collection of Rhymes <韵集> 174, 243, 244

The Compendium of Agriculture <农政全书> 322, 336, 337

The Compendium of Ancient and

Contemporary Books

<古今图书集成> 233, 271–2

The Compendium of China’s Buddhist Sutras <中华大藏经> 207

The Compendium of Materia Medica <本草纲目> 322–3,

336–7,

343–4

The Compendium of Scriptures and Classics <经世大典> 172

The Compendium of the Manchurian Language <清文总汇> 271, 396, 398

The Complete Collection of Terms and

Meanings in Translation

<翻译名义大集> 382

The Complete Collection of the Manchurian

Language

<清文汇书> 398

The Complete Guide to How to Do <万用正宗不求人> 229

The Complete Manual of Taxes and Services <赋役全书> 320


The Complete Turkish Dictionary, Turki Tillar

Diwani, Diwanu Lught-it-Turk, Divanu

Lugat-it-Turk, Diwanu LuBatit-Turk, The

Compendium of the Turkic Dialects

<突厥语大词典> 173, 379–81

The Comprehensive Dictionary of Ancient and

Contemporary Rhymes

<古今韵会> 171, 287

The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

<字汇> 269, 274,

286–91,

293–7

The Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature <文献大成> 339

The Comprehensive Five-sound Rhyme

Dictionary

<五音集韵> 171, 251

The Comprehensive Studies in An Explanatory

Dictionary of Chinese Characters

<说文解字系传><说文系传>

112, 179

The Contemporary Annotated Ready Guide <尔雅今注> 74

The Continuation to Biographies of Great

Monks

<续高僧传> 219

The Contrastive Ready Guide <比雅> 72, 269, 308

The Dadai Book of Etiquette <大戴礼> 117

The Data Corpus of Ancient Chinese Musical

History

<中国古代音乐史料

辑要>235

The Deepest Mystery <太玄> 81

The Dialectal Dictionary of Literary

Embellishments

<方言藻> 270, 310

The Dictionary of Ancient Character Exegesis <复古编> 175, 197, 198

The Dictionary of Buddhist Studies <佛学大辞典> 222

The Dictionary of Chao-shan Dialect <潮汕方言> 94

The Dictionary of Characters from Classics and

Scriptures with Phonetic Discrimination

<群经音辨> 200, 212, 213

The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms <释名> 114–33,

142–4

The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes <切韵> 161–8,

171–4,

183–5,

243–6,

251–4,

350–3

The Dictionary of Currencies <钱录> 271, 335

The Dictionary of Dialectal Words <方言> 43, 76, 79,

80–94,

142, 148


The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections

and Biographies

<经传释词> 328–30,

342

The Dictionary of Initial Consonants <声类> 174, 243–5,

347

The Dictionary of Meticulously RectiWed

Characters from Classics

<经典分毫正字> 177

The Dictionary of Popular Words <通俗文> 23, 275

The Dictionary of Rhymes <广韵> 170, 174,

246–54

The Dictionary of Standard Rhymes <正韵> 292, 295

The Dictionary of Textual Research on the

Wu-Xia Dialect

<吴下方言考> 310–11, 317

The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language <清文鉴> 271, 396–7

The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect <蜀语> 303, 316–17

The Dictionary of the Wu Dialect <吴语> 310

The Distinctive Ready Guide <别雅> 269, 276, 308

The Dragon Shrine Character Manual <龙龛手鉴> 192, 198

The Essential Collection of Words <文字集略> 254

The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and

Contemporary Rhymes

<古今韵会举要> 172–4

The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes <韵略> 171, 250, 254

The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the

Ministry of Rites

<礼部韵略> 171, 174, 251

The Essentials of Augmented Ready Guide <埤雅广要> 171, 217

The Essentials of Literature and Thoughts <文思博要> 226, 230

The Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes of

Zhongzhou State

<中州音韵辑要> 357, 362

The Everlasting Prosperity Collection <长兴集> 233

The Exegesis of the Cang Jie Primer <苍颉故> 101

The Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary

Characters

<古今字诂> 186, 188

The Exegesis of Lao Zi <老子疏> 215

The Exegesis of Six-category Characters <六书故> 182, 200–4

The Exegesis of the Analects of Confucius <论语义疏> 24

The Exegesis of the Book of Rites <礼记义疏> 24

The Exegesis of the Ready Guide <尔雅义疏> 74, 309

The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from the

Book of Changes

<周易文句义疏> 215

The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from

Zhuang Zi

<庄子文句义> 215

The Exegesis on Poetry <诗疏> 308

The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics <经典释文> 165–6, 211,

221–2


The Exegetic Interpretation of New Characters <新字训解> 254

The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics <经籍纂诂> 302, 312–15,

318

The Exegetic Primer <训纂篇> 47

The ExempliWed Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

<说文释例> 283

The Explanatory RectiWcation of the Rites of the

Zhou Dynasty

<周礼汉读考> 300

The Extended Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

<广干禄字书> 195

The Extended Ready Guide <尔雅翼> 171, 217, 308

The Extended Ready Guide <续尔雅> 217–18

The Extended Sounds and Meanings of All the

Buddhist Scriptures

<续一切经音义> 219–20, 371

The Extensive Miscellany of Minute Things <海录碎事> 229

The Feather Hunting <羽猎> 80

The Feng’s Records of Things and Events <封氏闻见记> 244

The Five Classics <五经> 214

The Five-scale Compendium of Chinese

Characters: with Revisions and Four-tone

ClassiWcations

<改并五音类聚四声

篇>196

The Four-tone MagniWcent Chapters <四声篇海> 196, 203

The Foushan Collection <浮山集> 305

The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters <干禄字书> 194–6

The Garden of Variant Characters <异字苑> 254

The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes <韵府群玉> 172, 330

The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the

Imperial Collection of Four Branches

of Literature

<四库全书总目提要> 325

The General Dictionary of All Beauties <广群芳谱> 271, 336

The General Dictionary of Chinese Characters <字通> 175, 197, 198

The General Dictionary of the Chinese Language <辞通> 315

The General Digest of the Taiping Reign <太平总类> 230

The General Exegesis of Six-category Chinese

Characters

<六书统> 182, 201

The General Interpretation of Mao’s Book of

Songs

<毛诗通义> 311

The General Interpretation of Six-category

Chinese Characters

<六书通释> 167, 200, 203

The General Primer <凡将篇> 25, 144

The General Ready Guide <通雅> 72, 305

The General RectiWcation of Literature <文献通考> 302

The General Survey of Currencies <钱通> 271, 335


The General Survey of Eight Sounds and

Meanings for Qi Armymen

<戚参军八音义便览> 359

The Glossary of Sanskrit and Chinese Characters <唐梵文字> 373

The Grand Dictionary of Classics <经典大典> 227

The Great Character Dictionary of China <中华大字典> 292

The Great Chinese Character Dictionary <汉语大字典> 79–81, 101

The Guidelines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds

and Rhymes

<等韵切音指南> 292

The Guiyuan Collection of Characters <桂苑珠丛> 178

The Historical Records of Cefu <册府元龟> 227, 231–2,

279

The History of the Chen Dynasty <陈史> 224

The History of the Jin Dynasty <金史> 383

The History of the Liao Dynasty <辽史> 382, 383

The History of the Qi Dynasty <齐史> 224

The History of the Song Dynasty <宋史> 377

The History of the Southern Dynasty <南史> 242

The History of the Zhou Dynasty <周史> 224

The Huayang National Annals <华阳国志> 78

The Immensely Augmented Jade Chapters <大广益会玉篇> 193

The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of

Literature

<四库全书> 267, 327, 346

The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi <康熙字典> 267–9,

272–4,

276,

290–7

The Imperial Dictionary of the Manchurian

Language

<御制清文鉴> 398

The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign <太平御览> 230–1

The Imperial Manchurian and Mongolian

Dictionary

<御制满蒙文鉴> 397

The Imperial Records of the Taiping Reign <太平广记> 226

The Imperial Survey <皇览> 225, 278

The Imperial Survey of Xiuwen Palace <修文殿御览> 230, 278

The Instant Primer <急就篇>,<急就> 57, 144

The Interpretation of Poetry <诗疑义释> 311

The Interpretative Dictionary of FunctionWords <助字辨略> 303, 314, 328

The Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics <五经异义> 101

The Interpretative Manual of Rhymes <韵诠> 220

The Jade Chapters <玉篇> 177–8,

184–5,

188–94,

202–3


The Jade Sea <玉海> 172, 227, 229

The Jigu Library Revision to An Explanatory


<汲古阁说文订> 284

The Language Assistant <语助> 172, 227

The Later Spring and Autumn Annals <春秋后传> 217

The Learned Exegesis of Six-category Chinese

Characters

<六书通> 201

The Lu Survey <吕览> 225, 240

The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals <吕氏春秋> 38

The MagniWcent Chapters <篇海> 191, 192, 289

The MagniWcent Chapters: with Augmentations

of Five Scales and Categorizations of Four

Tones

<五音增改并类聚四

声篇海>192

The MagniWcent Character Dictionary <字海> 178

The Manchurian and Chinese Dictionary <音汉清文鉴> 397

The Manchurian Dictionary in Five Languages <五体清文鉴> 398

The Manchurian Dictionary in Four Languages <四体清文鉴> 398

The Manuscripts of the Augmented Dictionary

of Dialectal Words

<续方言稿> 93

The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues <梦溪笔谈> 234

The Mirror of Rhymes <韵镜> 174

The Miscellaneous Collection <别录> 63

The Miscellaneous Notes in Reading <读书杂志> 301

The Miscellaneous Record of Dialectal Words <方言别录> 94

The Miscellanies of Argumentations Concerning

ClassiWed Dictionaries

<类林杂说> 172, 227

The Modern Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

<说文解字诂林> 112

The Mongolian–Persian Dictionary <蒙古波斯语词典> 378

The Mutianzi Biography <穆天子传> 38

The National Language <国语> 36, 72, 135

The New Collection of Character Models from

Nine Classics

<新加九经字样> 171, 177, 196

The New Dictionary of Dialectal Words <新方言> 94

The New Manual of Character Models from

Classics and Scriptures

<群书新定字样> 177, 196

The New Meanings of the Ready Guide <尔雅新义> 217

The Newly Revised Dazheng Buddhist Scriptures <大正新修大藏经> 373

The Newly Revised Materia Medica <新修本草> 227

The Nine Chapters on Arithmetic <九章算术> 345

The Nuchen and Chinese Glossary <女真译语> 393, 395

The Nuchen Miscellaneous Collection of Foreign

Words

<女真馆杂字> 393


The Old History of the Five Dynasties <旧五代史> 345

The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary <梵语千字文> 371–3, 375

The Origin of Siddhim Characters <天竺字源> 369

The Original Exegesis of Six-category Chinese

Characters

<六书本义> 201

The Origins of Direct Phonetic Notations of Six-

category Chinese Characters

<六书溯原直音> 201

The Orthographical Manual of Characters <字统> 220, 248, 254

The Overall Exegesis of Six-category Chinese

Characters

<六书总要> 201

The Pangxi Primer <滂喜篇> 34, 35

The Pearl Collection <编珠> 225, 228

The Pearl Collection of Three Religions <三教珠英> 226

The Pearls of Rhyme Studies <韵学骊珠> 357, 362, 363

The Pei Xi Dictionary <佩觿> 197, 198

The Peizi Language Forest <裴子语林> 236

The Persian Language and Chinese Glossary <回回馆译语> 395

The Phonetic Interpretation of the Extended

Ready Guide

<尔雅翼音释> 217

93

The Phonetic Studies in An Explanatory


<说文音隐> 112

94, 270, 309

The Phonological Exegesis of Six-category

Chinese Characters

<六书系韵> 201

The Pictorial Dictionary of Archaeology <考古图> 183

The Pocket Ready Guide <小尔雅> 23, 72, 215

The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences <格致镜原> 327, 339–41

The Preliminary Annotation to the Ready Guide <尔雅初注> 306

The Probe into Ancient Novels <古小说钩沉> 236

The Proprieties <礼象> 217

The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds <戚林八音> 359, 360

The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds and

Character Meanings

<戚林八音字义> 359

The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds: Bound

Edition

<戚林八音合订> 359

The Ready Guide <尔雅> 3, 40–3,

59–75,

122–5,

142–5,

147–52,

168,

215–18,

269


The Ready Guide for the Shu Dialect <蜀尔雅> 302

The Ready Guide of the Huzhou Prefecture <湖雅> 307, 308

The Record of Siddhim Characters <悉昙字记> 369

The Records of Hard Learning <困学记闻> 94

The Records of Internal Classics of the Tang

Dynasty

<大唐内典录> 219

The Records of the Historian <史记> 65, 199

The RectiWcation and DiVerentiation of the Four

Books

<四书考异> 332

The RectiWcation and Standardization of

Chinese Characters

<匡谬正俗> 94, 177

The RectiWcation of Ancient and Contemporary

Characters

<古今正字> 220

The RectiWcation of Classic Interpretations <刊谬正俗> 207

The RectiWcation of Historian Zhou’s Primer <史籀篇疏证> 58

The RectiWcation of Initial Consonants and

Vowels

<考声切韵> 220

The RectiWcation of Mao’s Book of Songs <诗毛氏传疏> 35, 36

The RectiWcation of Popular Words <证俗文> 254

The RectiWcation of the Annotated Ready Guide <尔雅注疏> 74

The RectiWcation of the Augmented Dictionary

of Dialectal Words

<续方言疏证> 94, 270, 309

The RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal

Words

<方言疏证>

The RectiWcation of the Interpretative

Dictionary of the Five Classics

<驳五经异义> 147

The RectiWcation of the Pocket Ready Guide <小尔雅义疏> 307

The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide <广雅疏证> 216, 221

The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters <正字通> 290–6

The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters

and Terms

<释名疏证> 131

The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words <方言据> 269, 309

The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words with

New RectiWcations

<重校方言> 270, 309

The RectiWed Exegesis of the Ready Guide <尔雅正义> 74

The RectiWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

<说文解字义证> 112, 283

The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics <五经正义> 162, 214

The RectiWed Interpretation of Mao’s Book of

Songs

<毛诗正义> 210, 211, 214

The RectiWed Interpretation of the Ancient

Texts

<尚书正义> 214


The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of

Changes

<周易正义> 214

The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Rites <礼记正义> 214

The RectiWed Interpretation of the Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

<方言校笺> 94

The RectiWed Interpretation of Zuo’s Spring and

Autumn Annals

<春秋左传正义> 214

The ReWned Ready Guide <彬雅> 307, 316

The Revised Dictionary of Rhymes of the Song

Dynasty

<大宋重修广韵> 245

The Revised Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

<校定说文> 179

The Rhyme Diagram of Six Categories of

Chinese Characters

<六书音韵表> 284, 350

The Rhyme Dictionary <集韵> 168, 170,

249–51,

277

The Rhythmical Ready Guide <骈雅> 304–5, 317

The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty <周礼> 41

The Sanskrit and Chinese Glossary <西天馆译语> 395

The Sanskrit–Chinese Glossary <唐梵两语双对集> 373

The Scholarly Circles <学林> 209

The Scholarly Primer <博学篇> 18, 57

The Secret Imperial History <龙威秘书> 381

The Shanhai Scriptures <山海经> 38, 107

The Six Classics <六经> 240

The Six Writing Models <六帖> 225

The Songs of Chu <楚辞> 194, 216

The Sound Family <音谱> 254

The Sound Synchronization of Pearls and Jade <珠玉同声> 359

The Sounds and Meanings of Characters <文字音义> 254

The Sources of Rhyme Ocean <韵海镜源> 178, 226, 330

The Spring and Autumn <春秋> 34, 135

The Spring and Autumn Exegesis <春秋传> 99

The Standard Five Classics <五经定本> 161

The Standardized Exegesis of Six-category

Chinese Characters

<六书准> 201

The Standardized Ready Guide <尔雅> 定本 61

The Standards of Ancient Rhymes <古韵标准> 349

The Star Collection of Things and Events <明星事类> 226

The Stemmata of the Gu Family <顾氏谱传> 192

The Stories of Emperors and Their OYcials in

Previous Dynasties

<历代君臣事迹> 231


The Stories of Mizhou <密州说> 300

The Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

<演说文> 112

The Studies in Function Words <虚字说> 270, 302

The Succinct Explication of Six-category

Chinese Characters

<六书略> 182

The Supplement to Sounds and Meanings of All

the Buddhist Scriptures

<正续一切经音义> 149

The Supplement to the Qilin Manual of Eight

Sounds

<加订戚林八音> 360

The Supplements of the Manchurian Language <清文补汇> 398

The Sweet Spring <甘泉> 80

The Taihe Dictionary of Rhymes <太和正音谱> 174

The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes <唐韵> 171, 245, 350

The Taoshan Collection <陶山集> 217

The Teachings of the Liu Family <柳氏家训> 156

The Teachings of the Yan Family <颜氏家训> 177

The Techniques for Segmenting Rhymes <字母切韵要法> 292

The Thai Language and Chinese Glossary <暹罗馆译语> 395

The Thesaurus of Chinese Words and

Expressions

<同义词词林> 142

The Three-Character Primer <三字经> 57

The Three-Language Dictionary:

Manchurian, Mongolian, and Chinese

<三体清文鉴>,<御制

满珠蒙古汉字三合

切音清文鉴>, <满蒙汉字三合切音清

文鉴>

397, 398

The Tibetan–Chinese Bilingual Glossary <西番译语> 381, 395

The Translated Documents of Huihe (Ouigour)

Section

<高昌馆译书> 394

The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake <徐霞客游记> 322

The Travels of a Tourist OYcial <游宦纪闻> 209

The Ultimate Designators of Words <文字指归> 254

The VeriWcation of Ancient Phonetic Sounds in

Mao’s Book of Songs

<诗古音考> 349

The VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese

Rhymes

<切韵考> 254, 350–1

The Waitai Collection of Secret Prescriptions <外台秘要> 227

The Word RectiWcation <别字>The World Map <万国舆图> 320

The Yellow River West Bilingual Glossary <河西译语> 392–4


The Yinggongtang Materia Medica <英公唐本草> 227

The Yongle Compendium <永乐大典> 271, 279, 327,

339–40,

344–6

The Yu Book <虞书> 109

The Yuanhe Dictionary of Family Names <元和姓纂> 227

The Yuanli Primer <爰历篇> 27, 28, 57

The Yuanshang Primer <元尚篇> 25, 101, 136

Three Annals <三传> 216

Three Cang Primer <三苍> 34, 35

Translating Sanskrit <翻梵语> 369

Vocabulary of Mineralogical Terms Occurring in

the Manual

<金石中西名目表> 396

Vocabulary of Names and Substances Occurring

in Various Words on Chemistry: ChieXy in

Bloxam’s Chemistry

<化学材料中西名目

表>396

Vocabulary of Names of Materia Medica

Occurring in the Translation of Royle’s

Manual of Materia Medica and Therapeutics

with Lists of Names and Places Occurring in

the Same Work and in Various Treatises and

Allied Subjects

<西药大成中西名目

表>396

Vocabulary of Terms Relating to the Steam

Engine

<汽机中西名目表> 396

Wang Renyun’s RectiWcation of the Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes

<王仁昀刊谬补缺切

韵>244, 246

Western Mandarin, or the Spoken Language of

Western China; with Syllabic and English

Indexes

<西蜀方言> 389

Wuju Rhyme Dictionary <五车韵瑞> 324, 330

Xi Zhuan <系传> 167

Xiping Stone Inscriptions <熹平石经> 18, 195

Xuanzong’s Collection of Things and Events <玄宗事类> 226

Xun Zi <荀子> 124

Yan’s Manual of Character Models <颜氏字样> 177, 194–6

Yu Didactics <虞箴> 81

Yu Gong <禹贡> 61

Zheng’s Annotated Analects of Confucius <论语郑氏注> 157

The Zhizhitang Collection <止止堂集> 359

Zhuang Zi <庄子> 38

Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals <春秋左传>, <左传> 39, 216


Appendix ii

List of book titles from Chinese to

English with Chinese Titles arranged

in Pinyin order

CHINESE

TITLES

ENGLISH

TITLES

PAGE

NUMBER

<爱日堂诗集> Collected Poems: Sun-loving Hall 340

<八音字义> Eight Sounds and Character

Meanings

359

<白氏经史事类> The Bai’s Collection of Classics,

Histories and Events

226

<百家姓> The Book of Family Names 57

<百译馆译语> The Burmese Language and Chinese

Glossary

395

<班簋> Ban Gui 50

<班马字类> The ClassiWed Characters of Banma 171, 199

<北堂书钞> The Beitang Collection of Copied

Books

172, 224–6

<本草纲目> The Compendium of Materia

Medica

322–3, 336–7,

343–4

<本草纲目拾遗> Supplements to the Compendium

of Materia Medica

337

<本草经集注> An Annotated Collection of Materia

Medica

227

<比雅> The Contrastive Ready Guide 72, 269, 308

<编珠> The Pearl Collection 225, 228

<辨命论> On Destiny 207

<别录> The Miscellaneous Collection 63

<别雅> The Distinctive Ready Guide 269, 276, 308

<别字> The Word RectiWcation 101

<彬雅> The ReWned Ready Guide 307, 316

<驳五经异义> The RectiWcation of the

Interpretative Dictionary of the

Five Classics

147

<博学篇> The Scholarly Primer 18, 57

<仓颉篇> The Cangjie Primer 28, 35, 52–60

<苍颉故> The Exegesis of the Cang Jie Primer 101

<苍颉训纂> Collections of Cangjie Exegesis 81, 101

<漕运志> Annals of Water Transportation 320

<册府元龟> The Historical Records of Cefu 227, 213–32, 279

<长兴集> The Everlasting Prosperity

Collection

233

<潮汕方言> The Dictionary of Chao-shan

Dialect

94

<陈史> The History of the Chen Dynasty 224

<陈书> The Book of the Chen Dynasty 192

<称谓录> A Dictionary of Titles and

Appellations

324, 326, 334, 335, 343

<初学记> The ClassiWed Dictionary for

Beginners

226, 230

<楚辞> The Songs of Chu 194, 216

<春秋> The Spring and Autumn 34, 135

<春秋传> The Spring and Autumn Exegesis 99

<春秋戴记> A Famed Record of the Spring and

Autumn Period

304

<春秋公羊传> Gongyang’s Spring and Autumn

Annals

215, 216

<春秋榖梁传> Guliang’s Spring and Autumn

Annals

215, 216

<春秋后传> The Later Spring and Autumn

Annals

217

<春秋左传>, <左传> Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals 39, 216

<春秋左传正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of

Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals

214

<辞海> Ci Hai 39, 289, 361

<辞通> The General Dictionary of the

Chinese Language

315

<辞源> Ci Yuan 39, 326, 361

<大般涅槃经音义> Sounds and Meanings of Maha

Parinibbana Sutta

219

<大藏音义> Sounds and Meanings of All the

Buddhist Scriptures

170–3, 206, 219, 220,

222, 370–1

<大戴礼> The Dadai Book of Etiquette 117

book titles from chinese to english 423

<大广益会玉篇> The Immensely Augmented Jade

Chapters

193

<大清全书> A Comprehensive Dictionary of the

Great Qing Dynasty

271, 396, 397

<大宋重修广韵> The Revised Dictionary of Rhymes

of the Song Dynasty

245

<大唐内典录> The Records of Internal Classics of

the Tang Dynasty

219

<大正新修大藏经> The Newly Revised Dazheng

Buddhist Scriptures

373

<道德经> DaoDe Jing, TaoTe Ching 30, 33

<等韵切音指南> The Guidelines for Segmenting

Phonetic Sounds and Rhymes

292

<叠雅> The Alternating Ready Guide 276, 308

<东都事略> Brief Stories in Eastern Capital 159

<读书杂志> The Miscellaneous Notes in

Reading

301

<尔雅> The Ready Guide 3, 40–3, 59–75, 122–5,

142–5, 147–52, 168,

215–18, 269

<尔雅> 定本 The Standardized Ready Guide 61

<尔雅补郭> Peripheral Amendments on the

Ready Guide

332

<尔雅初注> The Preliminary Annotation to the

Ready Guide

306

<尔雅古义> The Ancient Interpretation of the

Ready Guide

307

<尔雅今注> The Contemporary Annotated

Ready Guide

74

<尔雅新义> The New Meanings of the Ready

Guide

217

<尔雅义疏> The Exegesis of the Ready Guide 74, 309

<尔雅翼> The Extended Ready Guide 171, 217

<尔雅翼音释> The Phonetic Interpretation of the

Extended Ready Guide

217

<尔雅音义> Sounds and Meanings of the Ready

Guide

39, 241

<尔雅正义> The RectiWed Exegesis of the Ready

Guide

74

<尔雅注> The Annotated Ready Guide 24, 62, 73, 74

<尔雅注疏> The RectiWcation of the Annotated

Ready Guide

74

<法言> Standard Words 81, 216

<番尔雅> A Tangut–Chinese Ready Guide 377

424 book titles from chinese to english

<番汉合时掌中珠> A Timely Gem Dictionary Tangut–

Chinese

377, 378, 402

<翻梵语> Translating Sanskrit 369

<翻译名义大集> The Complete Collection of Terms

and Meanings in Translation

382

<翻译名义集> The Collection of Meanings of

Terms in Translation

369

<凡将篇> The General Primer 25, 144

<梵语千字文> The One Thousand Sanskrit

Character Glossary

371–3, 375

<梵语杂名> A Miscellaneous Collection of

Sanskrit Terms

372, 373

<方言> The Dictionary of Dialectal Words 43, 76, 79, 80–94, 142,

148

<方言别录> The Miscellaneous Record of

Dialectal Words

94

<方言笺疏> The Annotated Interpretation of the


94, 270, 309

<方言据> The RectiWed Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

269, 309

<方言类聚> A Categoric Dictionary of Dialectal

Words

269, 309

<方言疏证> The RectiWcation of the Dictionary

of Dialectal Words

94, 270, 309

<方言疏证补> Supplements to the RectiWcation of

the Dictionary of Dialectal Words

94, 270, 309

<方言校笺> The RectiWed Interpretation of the


94

<方言藻> The Dialectal Dictionary of Literary

Embellishments

270, 310

<方言注> The Annotated Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

24, 90, 148

<分毫字样> Minute DiVerences in Character

Formations

189

<分类字锦> A Categoric Dictionary of Chinese

Words

267

<封氏闻见记> The Feng’s Records of Things and

Events

244

<佛尔雅> The Buddhist Ready Guide 306, 318

<佛孝经> The Buddhist Book of Filial Virtues 306

<佛学大辞典> The Dictionary of Buddhist Studies 222

<浮山集> The Foushan Collection 305


<复古编> The Dictionary of Ancient

Character Exegesis

175, 179, 198

<赋役全书> The Complete Manual of Taxes and

Services

320

<改并五音类聚四声篇> The Five-scale Compendium of

Chinese Characters: with

Revisions and Four-tone

ClassiWcations

196

<干禄字书> The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

194–6

<甘泉> The Sweet Spring 80

<高昌馆译书> The Translated Documents of

Huihe (Ouigour) Section

394

<高昌馆杂字> A Miscellany of the Ouigourian

Words

394, 395

<格致镜原> The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary

of Sciences

327, 339–41

<公羊> Gong Yang 96, 115

<古代词书讲话> Lectures on Ancient Wordbooks 4

<古代辞书史话> Talks on the History of Ancient

Word Books and Dictionaries

4

<古今图书集成> The Compendium of Ancient and

Contemporary Books

233

<古今文字> Ancient and Contemporary

Characters

169, 187, 188

<古今韵会> The Comprehensive Dictionary of

Ancient and Contemporary

Rhymes

171, 287

<古今韵会举要> The Essential Dictionary of Ancient

and Contemporary Rhymes

172–4

<古今韵准> Ancient and Modern Rhyme

Standards

285, 348

<古今正字> The RectiWcation of Ancient and

Contemporary Characters

220

<古今中外音韵通例> General Examples of Sounds and

Rhymes in All Human Speeches

354, 355

<古今字诂> The Exegesis of Ancient and

Contemporary Characters

186, 188

<古泉汇> A Dictionary of Ancient Currencies 271, 335

<古文尚书> The Collection of Characters from

Ancient Books

211, 215

<古小说钩沉> The Probe into Ancient Novels 236

<古韵标准> The Standards of Ancient Rhymes 349


<顾氏谱传> The Stemmata of the Gu Family 192

<广苍> The Broad Cangjie Primer 254

<广干禄字书> The Extended Ganlu Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

195

<广群芳谱> The General Dictionary of All

Beauties

271, 336

<广续方言及拾遗> The Broadly Augmented Dictionary

of Dialectal Words with

Supplements

270, 310, 312

<广雅> The Broad Ready Guide 172, 215–17

<广雅疏证> The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide 216, 221

<广雅疏证补正> Supplements to the RectiWed Broad

Ready Guide

61

<广韵> The Dictionary of Rhymes 170, 174, 246–54

<广韵校勘记> Notes on the RectiWcation of the

Dictionary of Rhymes

254

<广韵研究> Studies on the Dictionary of

Rhymes

254

<归三十字母例> The ClassiWcation of the

Thirty-letter Alphabet

162

<桂苑珠丛> The Guiyuan Collection of

Characters

178

<国语> The National Language 36, 72, 135

<海岛算经> The Arithmetic Classics of the

Islands

345

<海国图志> An Illustrated Gazette of Overseas

States

320, 321

<海录碎事> The Extensive Miscellany of Minute

Things

229

<汉法拉辞典> Dictionnaire Chinois, Francais et

Latin

385

<汉书> The Book of the Han Dynasty 35, 60, 64–6

<汉语大字典> The Great Chinese Character

Dictionary

79–81, 101

<河东> East of the River 80

<河西译语> The Yellow River West Bilingual

Glossary

392–4

<洪范> Hong Fan 70

<鸿烈> Hong Lie 216

<洪武正韵> Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard

Rhymes

347–8, 352, 357–8

<后汉书> The Book of Late Han Dynasty 101


<湖雅> The Ready Guide of the Huzhou

Prefecture

307, 308

<华严经音义> Sounds and Meanings of the

Avatamsaka Sutra

185, 219

<华严经> The Avatamsaka Sutra 370

<华阳国志> The Huayang National Annals 78

<华夷译语> A Chinese–Foreign Language

Vocabulary

271, 374

<华夷译语> The Chinese–Foreign Language

Bilingual Glossaries

393–5

<华英词典> A Chinese–English Dictionary 386, 387

<华英词典>–五车韵府

A Dictionary of the Chinese

Language

386

<化学材料中西名目表> Vocabulary of Names and Substance

Occurring in Various Words on

Chemistry: ChieXy in Bloxam’s

Chemistry

396

<淮南> Huai Nan 240

<淮南子> Huai Nan Zi 72, 107

<淮南子注> The Annotated Huai Nan Zi 101

<皇览> The Imperial Survey 225, 278

<回回馆译语> The Persian Language and Chinese

Glossary

395

<回回馆杂字> A Miscellany of Persian Words 395

<慧琳音义> Hui Lin’s Sounds and Meanings 220, 222

<鸡林类事> A Miscellaneous Collection of

Things and Events

375, 400

<汲古阁说文订> The Jigu Library Revision to An

Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

284

<急就篇>,<急就> The Instant Primer 57, 144

<集古录> The Collection of Ancient Records 164

<集韵> The Rhyme Dictionary 168, 170, 249–51, 277

<几何原本> Elements 322

<纪效新书> Disciplines and EVects: A New Book 359

<加订戚林八音> The Supplement to the Qilin

Manual of Eight Sounds

360

<嘉泰吴兴志> The Annals of Wuxing, Jiatai 308

<甲骨文编> Collections of Jiaguwen Characters 105

<柬韵> Jian Rhymes 285

<检字> Character Index 274

<金国语解> Explanations of the Terms in the

History of the Jin Dynasty

383


<金石中西名目表> Vocabulary of Mineralogical Terms

Occurring in the Manual

396

<金史> The History of the Jin Dynasty 383

<金文编> Collections of Jin Inscriptions 105

<晋书> The Book of the Jin Dynasty 38

<经传释词> The Dictionary of Function Words

in Lections and Biographies

328–30, 342

<经典大典> The Grand Dictionary of Classics 227

<经典分毫正字> The Dictionary of Meticulously

RectiWed Characters from

Classics

177

<经典释文> The Exegetic Interpretation of

Classics

165–6, 211, 221–2

<经籍纂诂> The Exegetic Interpretations of

Ancient Classics

302, 312–15, 318

<经世大典> The Compendium of Scriptures and

Classics

172

<经义述闻> Recorded Studies on the Meaning of

Classics

70, 71, 301, 329

<经韵楼集> A Collection of Classic Rhyme

House

284, 300, 301

<九经文字> The Collection of Characters from

Nine Classics

174

<九章算术> The Nine Chapters on Arithmetic 345

<旧五代史> The Old History of the Five

Dynasties

345

<开元文字音义> Sounds and Meanings of Kaiyuan

Characters

177, 220

<刊谬补缺切韵> RectiWcation on the Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes

245

<刊谬正俗> The RectiWcation of Classic

Interpretations

207

<康熙字典> The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi 267–9, 272–4, 276,

290–7

<考古图> The Pictorial Dictionary of

Archaeology

183

<考声切韵> The RectiWcation of Initial

Consonants and Vowels

220

<匡谬正俗> The RectiWcation and

Standardization of Chinese

Characters

94, 177

<困学记闻> The Records of Hard Learning 94


<老子疏> The Exegesis of Lao Zi 215

<乐> The Book of Music 21

<类聚> The ClassiWed Collection 225

<类林杂说> TheMiscellanies of Argumentations

Concerning ClassiWed

Dictionaries

172, 227

<类篇> The ClassiWed Chapters 165–71, 190, 191, 203

<离骚> Li Sao 81, 92

<礼>,<礼记> The Book of Rites 36, 39

<礼部韵略> The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes

for the Ministry of Rites

171, 174, 251

<礼记义疏> The Exegesis of the Book of Rites 24

<礼记正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of the

Book of Rites

214

<礼象> The Proprieties 217

<历代地理志韵编今释> A Contemporary Dictionary of

Ancient Names of Places in All

Dynasties

271, 336

<历代赋汇> A Collection of Fu-poems of

Previous Dynasties

340

<历代君臣事迹> The Stories of Emperors and Their

OYcials in Previous Dynasties

231

<练兵纪实> Records on Soldier Training 359

<梁书> The Book of the Liang Dynasty 192

<两体清文鉴>,<御制增订清文鉴>

The Augmented Imperial

Manchurian and Chinese

Dictionary

397

<辽国语解> Explanations of the Terms in the

History of the Liao Language

375, 382, 402

<辽金元三史国语解> Explanations of the Terms in the

Histories of the Liao, Jin, and

Yuan Dynasties

383

<辽史> The History of the Liao Dynasty 382, 383

<列子> Lie Zi 72

<柳氏家训> The Teachings of the Liu Family 156

<六经> The Six Classics 240

<六书本义> The Original Exegesis of Six-


201

<六书故> The Exegesis of Six-category

Characters

182, 200–4

<六书略> The Succinct Explication of Six-


182


<六书溯原直音> The Origins of Direct Phonetic

Notations of Six-category

Chinese Characters

201

<六书通> The Learned Exegesis of Six-


201

<六书通释> The General Interpretation of Six-


167, 200, 203

<六书统> The General Exegesis of Six-


182, 201

<六书系韵> The Phonological Exegesis of Six-


201

<六书音韵表> The Rhyme Diagram of Six

Categories of Chinese Characters

284, 350

<六书准> The Standardized Exegesis of Six-


201

<六书总要> The Overall Exegesis of Six-category

Chinese Characters

201

<六帖> The Six Writing Models 225

<龙龛手鉴> The Dragon Shrine Character

Manual

192, 198

<龙威秘书> The Secret Imperial History 381

<鲁论笺> Notes on Lu’s Arguments 304

<吕览> The Lu Survey 225, 240

<吕氏春秋> The Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals 38

<论气> On Ｑi 338

<论语> The Analects of Confucius 36, 39, 81

<论语义疏> The Exegesis of the Analects of

Confucius

24

<论语郑氏注> Zheng’s Annotated Analects of

Confucius

157

<毛诗古音考> The VeriWcation of Ancient

Phonetic Sounds in Mao’s Book

of Songs

349

<毛诗诂训传>,<毛传>, <毛诗>

Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of

Songs

22, 35–7, 70, 97

<毛诗故训传定本小笺> An Epilogue to the Standardized

Version of Mao Heng’s Exegesis

of Book of Songs

36

<毛诗后笺> An Epilogue to Mao’s Book of

Songs

307


<毛诗通义> The General Interpretation of Mao’s

Book of Songs

311

<毛诗正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of

Mao’s Book of Songs

210, 211, 214

<蒙古波斯语词典> The Mongolian–Persian Dictionary 378

<蒙古译语>,<至元译语>

Explanations of the Mongolian

Language

379, 392, 394

<孟子> Meng Zi 36, 60, 107

<梦溪笔谈> The Mengxi Collection of Written

Dialogues

234

<密州说> The Stories of Mizhou 300

<妙法莲华经音义> Sounds and Meanings of the

Lotus Sutra

219

<名理探> Explorations in Philosophical

Principles

320

<名实篇> On “Name” and “Content” 31

<明星事类> The Star Collection of Things

and Events

226

<穆天子传> The Mutianzi Biography 38

<内经> Classic Internal Medicine 323

<南史> The History of the Southern

Dynasty

242

<农桑辑要> Essentials of Agriculture and

Sericulture

345

<农政全书> The Compendium of Agriculture 322, 336, 337

<女真馆来文> Memorials from the Nuchen

Section

393

<女真馆杂字> The Nuchen Miscellaneous

Collection of Foreign Words

393

<女真译语> The Nuchen and Chinese

Glossary

393, 395

<滂喜篇> The Pangxi Primer 34, 35

<裴子语林> The Peizi Language Forest 236

<佩文韵府> A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles 276, 324, 332–4, 343

<佩觿> The Pei Xi Dictionary 197, 198

<埤仓> The Augmented Cangjie Glossary 186, 215, 254

<埤雅> The Augmented Ready Guide 170, 217–18

<埤雅广要> The Essentials of Augmented Ready

Guide

171, 217

<篇海> The MagniWcent Chapters 191, 192, 289

<骈雅> The Rhythmical Ready Guide 304–5, 317


<骈字类编> A Dictionary of Synonyms 276, 325, 334, 343

<葡汉词典> Dizionario Portoghese–Cinese 385

<七略> Seven Strategies 63, 83

<戚参军八音义便览> The General Survey of Eight Sounds

and Meanings for Qi Armymen

359

<戚林八音> The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds 359, 360

<戚林八音合订> The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds:

Bound Edition

359

<戚林八音字义> The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds

and Character Meanings

359

<齐史> The History of the Qi Dynasty 224

<汽机中西名目表> Vocabulary of Terms Relating to the

Steam Engine

396

<千金方> One Thousand Golden Medical

Prescriptions

227

<千字文> One Thousand Characters Text 57

<钱录> The Dictionary of Currencies 271, 335

<钱通> The General Survey of Currencies 271, 335

<潜研堂文集> The Collected Works of Qian Yan

Tang

350

<切韵> The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes 161–8, 171–4, 183–5,

243–6, 251–4, 350–3

<切韵考> The VeriWcation of the Dictionary

of Chinese Rhymes

254, 350–1

<切韵考外篇> Additional Notes on the

VeriWcation of the Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes

254

<切韵指南> A Guide to the Dictionary of

Chinese Rhymes

292

<清儒学案> Biographies of Confucian Scholars

in the Qing Dynasty

306

<清文补汇> The Supplements of the

Manchurian Language

398

<清文汇书> The Complete Collection of the

Manchurian Language

398

<清文鉴> The Dictionary of the Manchurian

Language

271, 396–7

<清文总汇> The Compendium of the

Manchurian Language

271, 396, 398

<穷理学> A Thorough Exploration in

Philosophy

320


<求是堂诗文集> The Collected Poems and Prose of

Qiushi Academy

307

<全芳备祖> The Botanic Compendium 173, 227, 234

<泉志> Records of Ancient Coins 227

<群芳谱> A Complete Collection of All

Beauties

271, 335, 336

<群经音辨> The Dictionary of Characters from

Classics and Scriptures with

Phonetic Discrimination

200, 212, 213

<群经韵谱> Rhymes of Various Classics 284

<群书新定字样> The New Manual of Character

Models from Classics and

Scriptures

177, 196

<三才图会> A Pictorial Collection of Heaven,

Earth, and Human

320

<三苍> Three Cang Primer 34, 35

<三传> Three Annals 216

<三国志> The Annals of the Three Kingdoms 119, 120, 121

<三教珠英> The Pearl Collection of Three

Religions

226

<三礼> The Book of Three Rites 120, 216

<三体清文鉴>,<御制满珠蒙古汉

字三合切音清文

鉴>, <满蒙汉字

三合切音清文鉴>

The Three-Language Dictionary:

Manchurian, Mongolian, and

Chinese

397, 398

<三字经> The Three-Character Primer 57

<散盘> San Pan 51

<山海经> The Shanhai Scriptures 38, 107

<尚书>, <书> The Book of Ancient Texts 21, 22, 107

<尚书正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of the

Book of Ancient Texts

214

<声类> The Dictionary of Initial

Consonants

174, 243–5, 347

<尸子> Shi Zi 38, 40

<诗经> <诗> The Book of Songs 35, 77, 349

<诗词通韵> General Rhymes for Poems and

Ci-poems

354, 362

<诗故> The Classic Account of Poetry 304

<诗讲义> Talks on Poetry 217


<诗经小学> The Book of Songs and the

Philological Studies

284

<诗经韵谱> Rhymes of the Book of Songs 284

<诗毛氏传疏> The RectiWcation of Mao’s Book of

Songs

35, 36

<诗疏> The Exegesis on Poetry 308

<诗疏补遗> Supplements to the Exegesis on

Poetry

311

<诗疑义释> The Interpretation of Poetry 311

<十驾斋养新录> New Collections of Shijiazhai 350

<十三经音略> A Brief Introduction to Phonetic

Sounds in Thirteen Scriptures

306

<十三经注疏> The Annotated RectiWcation of

Thirteen Scriptures

312

<十竹斋书画谱> Shizhuzai’s Chart of Painting and

Calligraphy

260

<史记> The Records of the Historian 65, 199

<史籀篇> Historian Zhou’s Primer 27, 42–9, 51–60, 136

<史籀篇疏证> The RectiWcation of Historian

Zhou’s Primer

58

<事林广记> The Broad Records of Things and

Events

228, 232–3, 378

<释名> The Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and Terms

114–133, 142–4

<释名疏证> The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters and Terms

131

<释名疏证补> Supplements to the RectiWed


and Terms

131

<蜀尔雅> The Ready Guide for the Shu

Dialect

302

<蜀语> The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect 303, 316–17

<水经注笺> Shui Jing Annotations and

Commentaries

304

<顺正理论> The Abhidharma Naya Anusara

Sutra

370

<说文解字> An Explanatory Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

5, 41–8, 95–113, 141,

147–52, 169–70,

178–203, 276–7,

282–9, 295–7

<说文解字读> AGuide to Reading An Explanatory


284


<说文解字诂林> The Modern Explanatory


112

<说文解字系传>,<说文系传>

The Comprehensive Studies in An


Chinese Characters

112, 179

<说文解字义证> The RectiWed Explanatory


112, 283

<说文解字注> The Annotated Explanatory


112, 132, 283–4

<说文释例> The ExempliWed Explanatory


283

<说文通训定声> An Explanatory Book of Phonetic

Sounds

285, 348

<说文音隐> The Phonetic Studies in An


Chinese Characters

112

<说雅> Studies in the Ready Guide 285

<四库全书> The Imperial Collection of Four

Branches of Literature

267, 327, 346

<四库全书总目提要> The General Catalogue and

Abstracts of the Imperial

Collection of Four Branches of

Literature

325

<四声篇海> The Four-tone MagniWcent

Chapters

196, 203

<四书大全> A Complete Collection of the Four

Books

264

<四书考异> The RectiWcation and

DiVerentiation of the Four Books

332

<四体清文鉴> The Manchurian Dictionary in

Four Languages

398

<宋高僧传> The Biographies of Great Monks of

the Song Dynasty

219

<宋会要> Collected Essentials of the Song

Dynasty

345

<宋史> The History of the Song Dynasty 377

<宋书> The Book of the Song Dynasty 239, 242

<素问> Simple Questioning 111

<隋书> The Book of the Sui Dynasty 112, 160

<太和正音谱> The Taihe Dictionary of Rhymes 174


<太平广记> The Imperial Records of the Taiping

Reign

226

<太平御览> The Imperial Digest of the Taiping

Reign

230–1

<太平总类> The General Digest of the Taiping

Reign

230

<太玄> The Deepest Mystery 81

<谈天> On the Skies 338

<唐梵两语双对集> The Sanskrit–Chinese Glossary 373

<唐梵文字> The Glossary of Sanskrit and

Chinese Characters

373

<唐书> The Book of the Tang Dynasty 178

<唐韵> The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes 171, 245, 350

<堂邑县志> The Annals of Tangyi County 328

<陶山集> The Taoshan Collection 217

<天工开物> The Book of Nature’s Engineering 336, 338, 344

<天竺字源> The Origin of Siddhim Characters 369

<通俗编> A Collection of Popular Expressions 330, 332, 343

<通俗文> The Dictionary of Popular Words 23, 275

<通雅> The General Ready Guide 72, 305

<通韵> General Rhymes 354, 355

<同姓名录> Records of Names of the Same

Family Names

276

<同义词词林> The Thesaurus of Chinese Words

and Expressions

142

<同源字典> The Cognate Dictionary of

Characters

133

<突厥语大词典> The Complete Turkish Dictionary,

Turki Tillar Diwani, Diwanu

Lught-it-Turk, Divanu Lugat-it-

Turk, Diwanu LuBatit-Turk, The

Compendium of the Turkic

Dialects

173, 379–81

<外台秘要> The Waitai Collection of Secret

Prescriptions

227

<万国舆图> The World Map 320

<万用正宗不求人> The Complete Guide to How to Do 229

<王仁昀刊谬补缺切韵> Wang Renyun’s RectiWcation of the

Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes

244, 246

<王文公文集> The Collected Works of Wang Anshi 181

<王文简公文集> Collected Works of Wang Yinzhi 329


<味根轩韵学> Rhyme Studies in Wei Gen Xuan 354, 355

<魏书> The Book of the Wei Dynasty 177, 215, 244

<文始> TheBeginnings ofChineseCharacters 133

<文思博要> The Essentials of Literature and

Thoughts

226, 230

<文献大成> The Comprehensive Dictionary of

Literature

339

<文献通考> The General RectiWcation of

Literature

302

<文选注> The Annotations of Selected Works 110

<文苑英华> The Academic Elites 164

<文字> Characters 244

<文字集略> The Essential Collection of Words 254

<文字音义> The Sounds and Meanings of

Characters

254

<文字指归> The Ultimate Designators of Words 254

<吴下方言考> The Dictionary of Textual

Researches on the Wu-Xia

Dialect

310–11, 317

<吴下谚联> Proverb Couplets of the Wu Dialect 330, 331, 343

<吴语> The Dictionary of the Wu Dialect 310

<五车韵瑞> Wuju Rhyme Dictionary 324, 330

<五方元音> Proto-sounds of Speech in All

Regions

352–3, 357–8

<五经> The Five Classics 214

<五经大全> A Complete Collection of the Five

Classics

264

<五经定本> The Standard Five Classics 161

<五经文字> The Collection of Characters from

Five Classics

195–6

<五经异义> The Interpretative Dictionary of the

Five Classics

101

<五经正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of Five

Classics

162, 214

<五体清文鉴> The Manchurian Dictionary in Five

Languages

398

<五音集韵> The Comprehensive Five-sound

Rhyme Dictionary

171, 251

<五音增改并类聚四

声篇海>The MagniWcent Chapters: with

Augmentations of Five Scales and

Categorizations of Four Tones

192

<物理论> On Physics 132

<物理小识> Fine Observations of Nature 305


<物性门类> The ClassiWcation of Things and

Objects

217

<西都赋> Ode to the Western Capital 274

<西番译语> The Tibetan–Chinese Bilingual

Glossary

381, 395

<西儒耳目资> An Audio And Visual Guide for

Foreign Scholars

385

<西蜀方言> Western Mandarin, or the Spoken

Language of Western China; with

Syllabic and English Indexes

389

<西天馆译语> The Sanskrit and Chinese Glossary 395

<西药大成中西名目表> Vocabulary of Names of Materia

Medica Occurring in the

Translation of Royle’s Manual of

Materia Medica and

Therapeutics with Lists of Names

and Places Occurring in the Same

Work and in Various Treatises

and Allied Subjects

396

<悉昙字记> The Record of Siddhim Characters 369

<熹平石经> Xiping Stone Inscriptions 18, 195

<系传> Xi Zhuan 167

<暹罗馆译语> The Thai Language and Chinese

Glossary

395

<萧恺传> The Biography of Xiao Kai 192

<小尔雅> The Pocket Ready Guide 23, 72, 215

<小尔雅义疏> The RectiWcation of the Pocket

Ready Guide

307

<孝经> The Book of Filial Virtues 96, 107, 215

<校定<说文>> The Revised Explanatory


179

<新方言> The New Dictionary of Dialectal

Words

94

<新加九经字样> The New Collection of Character

Models from Nine Classics

171, 177, 196

<新修本草> The Newly Revised Materia Medica 227

<新字训解> The Exegetic Interpretation of New

Characters

254

<性理大全> A Complete Collection of

Philosophical Essays

264

<修文殿御览> The Imperial Survey of Xiuwen

Palace

230, 278


<虚字说> The Studies in Function Words 270, 302

<徐霞客游记> The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake 322

<续尔雅> The Extended Ready Guide 217–8

<续方言> The Augmented Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

270, 309, 312

<续方言补> Supplements to the Augmented


94

<续方言补正> Supplements and RectiWcations to

the Augmented Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

270, 309

<续方言稿> The Manuscripts of the Augmented


93

<续方言疏证> The RectiWcation of the Augmented


93

<续方言新校补> New Supplements and

RectiWcations to the Augmented


94, 270, 309

<续方言又补> New Supplements to the

Augmented Dictionary of

Dialectal Words

270, 310

<续高僧传> The Continuation to Biographies of

Great Monks

219

<续文献通考> A Continual to the General Survey

on Ancient Literature

278

<续一切经音义> The Extended Sounds and

Meanings of all the Buddhist

Scriptures

219–20, 371

<玄宗事类> Xuanzong’s Collection of Things

and Events

226

<学林> The Scholarly Circles 209

<荀子> Xun Zi 124

<训纂篇> The Exegetic Primer 47

<颜氏家训> The Teachings of the Yan Family 177

<颜氏字样> Yan’s Manual of Character Models 177, 194–6

<演说文> The Studies in An Explanatory


112

<野议> Miscellaneous Commentaries 338

<一切经音> Sounds of All the Buddhist Scriptures 207, 370

<一切经音义> Sounds and Meanings of All the

Buddhist Scriptures (also Sounds

and Meanings of the Whole

Canon)

110


<医经方> The Book of Secret Prescriptions 111

<仪礼> Etiquette and Rites 215

<仪礼古今义疏文> The Ancient and Contemporary

Exegesis of Etiquette and Rites

307

<艺文类聚> The ClassiWed Collection of Art and

Literary Works

224, 228, 229, 279

<异字苑> The Garden of Variant Characters 254

<易经>,<易> The Book of Changes 25, 26, 81

<音汉清文鉴> The Manchurian and Chinese

Dictionary

397

<音鉴> Sound DiVerentiation 356

<音谱> The Sound Family 254

<音韵阐微> An Explanatory Dictionary of

Sounds and Rhymes

353, 361

<殷周金文集成> A Collection of Inscription

Characters of the Yin and Shang

Dynasties

47

<英公唐本草> The Yinggongtang Materia Medica 227

<营造法式> Methods and Models in

Construction

345

<瀛环志略> A Brief Account of the Overseas

States

320, 321

<永乐大典> The Yongle Compendium 271, 279, 327, 339–40,

344–6

<游宦纪闻> The Travels of a Tourist OYcial 209

<虞书> The Yu Book 109

<虞箴> Yu Didactics 81

<羽猎> The Feather Hunting 80

<禹贡> Yu Gong 61

<语助> The Language Assistant 172, 227

<玉海> The Jade Sea 172, 227, 229

<玉函山房辑佚书> The Collection of Lost Books in

Yuhanshan House

224

<玉篇> The Jade Chapters 177–8, 184–5,

188–94, 202–3

<玉篇广韵校刊札记> Notes on the RectiWcation of the

Jade Chapters and the Dictionary

of Rhymes

254

<御制满蒙文鉴> The Imperial Manchurian and

Mongolian Dictionary

397

<御制清文鉴> The Imperial Dictionary of the

Manchurian Language

398


<渊鉴类函> The Categoric Chinese

Encyclopedic Dictionary

267, 276, 338

<元和姓纂> The Yuanhe Dictionary of Family

Names

227

<元尚篇> The Yuanshang Primer 25, 101, 136

<爰历篇> The Yuanli Primer 27, 28, 57

<月令广义> General Monthly Climates 320

<越言释> An Explanatory Dictionary of the

Yue Dialect

270, 310

<越谚> Proverbs of the Yue Dialect 303, 317, 330–1

<韵府群玉> The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes 172, 330

<韵府拾遗> The Additions to A Dictionary of

Rhymes and Styles

333

<韵海镜源> The Sources of Rhyme Ocean 178, 226, 330

<韵会> A Collection of Rhymes 292, 295

<韵集> The Collection of Rhymes 174, 243, 244

<韵镜> The Mirror of Rhymes 174

<韵略> The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes 171, 250, 254

<韵略汇通> A General Introductory Dictionary

of Rhymes

272

<韵略易解> An Interpretative Dictionary of

Rhymes

272

<韵诠> The Interpretative Manual of

Rhymes

220

<韵史> A Diachronic Dictionary of Chinese

Rhyme Studies

272

<韵学骊珠> The Pearls of Rhyme Studies 357, 362, 363

<韵英> Rhyme Essentials 220

<增修互补礼部韵略> Amendments to the Essential

Dictionary of Rhymes for the

Ministry of Rites

358

<正名篇> On Name RectiWcation 31

<正续一切经音义> The Supplement to Sounds and

Meanings of All the Buddhist

Scriptures

149

<正语作词起例> Standard Words for Writing Ci with

Examples

252

<正韵> The Dictionary of Standard Rhymes 292, 295

<正字通> The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

290–6

<证俗文> The RectiWcation of Popular Words 254


<直语补证> Direct Amendments on A

Collection of Popular

Expressions

332

<职方外纪> Areas Outside the Concern of the

Chinese Imperial Geographer

320

<止止堂集> The Zhizhitang Collection 359

<指物篇> On Substance 31

<枳园近稿> New Manuscripts from Citrange

Garden

304

<中国辞书编纂史略> A Brief History of Dictionary

Compilation in China

4

<中国辞书史话> A Narrative History of

Lexicography in China

3

<中国佛教史籍概论> An Introduction to Buddhist

Scriptures in China

220

<中国古代音乐史料辑

要>The Data Corpus of Ancient

Chinese Musical History

235

<中国古代字典辞典概

论>An Introduction to Ancient

Dictionaries in China

4

<中国学术名著提要�语言文字卷>

Essentials of the Well-known

Chinese Academic Works:

Language and Characters

218

<中国字典词典史话> Talks on the History of Chinese

Dictionaries

4

<中国字典史略> A Brief History of Chinese

Character Dictionaries

4

<中华大藏经> The Compendium of China’s

Buddhist Sutras

207

<中华大字典> The Great Character Dictionary of

China

292

<中文孝经> The Chinese Book of Filial Virtues 306

<中原音韵> The Central Plains Dictionary of

Sounds and Rhymes

167, 251–2

<中州乐府音韵类编> The ClassiWed Dictionary of

Zhongzhou Yuefu Rhymes

172

<中州全韵> A Comprehensive Dictionary of the

Rhymes of Zhongzhou State

362, 363

<中州音韵辑要> The Essentials of Sounds and

Rhymes of Zhongzhou State

357, 362

<重校方言> The RectiWed Dictionary of

Dialectal Words with New

RectiWcations

270, 309


<州箴> State Didactics 81

<周礼> The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty 41

<周礼汉读考> The Explanatory RectiWcation of

the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty

300

<周史> The History of the Zhou Dynasty 224

<周易文句义疏> The Exegesis of Words and

Sentences from the Book of

Changes

215

<周易正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of the

Book of Changes

214

<珠玉同声> The Sound Synchronization of

Pearls and Jades

359

<助字辨略> The Interpretative Dictionary of

Function Words

303, 314, 328

<庄子> Zhuang Zi 38

<庄子独见> Original Commentaries on Zhuang

Zi

311

<庄子文句义> The Exegesis of Words and

Sentences from Zhuang Zi

215

<梓人遗训> Teachings of the Deceased Natives 345

<字海> The MagniWcent Character

Dictionary

178

<字汇> The Comprehensive Dictionary of

Chinese Characters

269, 274, 286–91,

293–7

<字鉴> The Character Mirror 198, 199

<字类> The ClassiWed Characters 254

<字林> The Character Forest 185–8

<字母切韵要法> The Techniques for Segmenting

Rhymes

292

<字諟> The Character RectiWcation 101

<字说> The Character Dictionary 180–2, 218

<字通> The General Dictionary of Chinese

Characters

175, 197, 198

<字统> The Orthographical Manual of

Characters

220, 248, 254

<字样> The Character Models 171, 173, 254

<字音汇集> ACollection of Characters and

Sounds

357, 363, 364

<字苑> The Character Garden 254

<字指> The Character Designator 254

<纂文> On Composition 254

<遵义府志> The Annals of Zunyifu 303


Appendix ii i

中国历代纪元表 / The Chronology of Chinese History

中国历代纪元表 / THE CHRONOLOGY OF CHINESE HISTORY

朝代名称 / NAME OF DYNASTY 朝代时期和历史分期限 / DURATION AND DIVISION OF PERIODS

夏 / Xia Dynasty 前2070–前1600 (2070 bc–1600 bc)

商 / Shang Dynasty商前朝前1600–前1300 / Early Shang Dynasty 1600 bc–1300 bc

商后朝前1300–前1046 / Later Shang Dynasty 1300 bc–1046 bc

周 / Zhou Dynasty 西周前1046–前771 /Western Zhou Dynasty 1046 bc–771 bc

东周前770–前256 / Eastern Zhou Dynasty 770 bc–256 bc

秦 / Qin Dynasty 前221–前206 221 bc–206 bc

汉 / Han Dynasty 西汉前206–公元25 /Western Han Dynasty 206 bc–ad 25

东汉25–220 / Eastern Han Dynasty 25–220

三国 / Three Kingdoms 魏220–265 / Kingdom of Wei 220–265蜀汉221–263 / Kingdom of Shuhan 221–263

吴 222–280 / Kingdom of Wu 222–280

晋 / Jin Dynasty 西晋 265–420 /Western Jin Dynasty 265–420

东晋 317–420 / Eastern Jin Dynasty 317–420

南北朝 /Southern andNorthernDynasties

南朝 /SouthernDynasties

宋 420–479 / Song Dynasty 420–479

齐 479–502 / Qi Dynasty 479–502

梁 502–557 / Liang Dynasty 502–557

陈 557–589 / Chen Dynasty 557–589

北朝 /NorthernDynasites

北魏 386–534 / Northern Wei Dynasty 386–534

东魏 534–550 / Eastern Wei Dynasty 534–550

北齐 550–577 / Northern Qi Dynasty 550–577

西魏 535–556 /Western Wei Dynasty 535–556

北周 557–581 / Northern Zhou Dynasty 557–581

隋 / Sui Dynasty 581–618

唐 / Tang Dynasty 618–907

五代 / Five Dynasties 后梁 907–923 / Later Liang Dynasty 907–923

后唐 923–936 / Later Tang Dynasty 923–936

后晋 936–947 / Later Jin Dynasty 936–947

后汉 947–950 / Later Han Dynasty 947–950

后周 951–960 / Later Zhou Dynasty 951–960

宋 / Song Dynasty 北宋 960–1127 / Northern Song Dynasty 960–1127

南宋 1127–1279 / Southern Song Dynasty 1127–1279

辽 / Liao Dynasty 907–1125

金 / Jin Dynasty 1115–1234

元 / Yuan Dynasty 1206–1368

明 /Ming Dynasty 1368–1644

清 / Qing Dynasty 1616–1911

中华民国 / The Republic of China 1912–1949

中华人民共和国 / The People’s Republic of China 1949–

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http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/cbeta/result/app/T54/2133b001.htm

http://www.buddhist-canon.com/REF/misc/T54N2133B.htm

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http://cbeta.twbbs.org/result/T54/T54n2128.htm

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/cbeta/result/app/T54/2133b001.htm

http://www.buddhist-canon.com/REF/misc/T54N2133B.htm

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http://www.buddhist-canon.com/REF/misc/T54N2129.htm

http://cbeta.twbbs.org/result/T54/T54n2128.htm

index of chinese names

Bai Juyi 白居易 225, 226

Ban Gu 班固 46, 64, 77, 140, 274

Bao Chang 宝唱 369

Bi Gongzhai 毕拱窄 272

Bi Yuan 毕沅 131

Cai Lun 蔡伦 130

Cai Shipan 蔡士泮 359, 360

Cao Pi 曹丕 225

Cao Xian 曹宪 221

Chen Di 陈第 294, 349

Chen Huan 陈奂 36

Chen Jingyi 陈景沂 173, 227, 234

Chen Li 陈澧 241, 254, 350, 351

Chen Menglei 陈梦雷 272

Chen Pengnian 陈彭年 5, 171, 173, 193, 245

Chen Shuda 陈叔达 224

Chen Ta 陈他 359, 360

Chen Tingjing 陈廷敬 108, 269, 291, 332

Chen Yuan 陈垣 220

Chen Yuanjing 陈元靓 232, 233, 378

Chen Yuanlong 陈元龙 272, 340

Chen Yujiao 陈与郊 269

Chen Zhensun 陈振孙 195

Chen Zilong 陈子龙 337, 338

Cheng Bing 程秉 119

Cheng Jisheng 程际盛 94, 270, 309, 312

Cheng Miao 程邈 99

Cheng Rongjing 成蓉镜 131

Cheng Xianjia 程先甲 270, 310

Cheng Yi 程颐 163

Confucius 孔子 21, 23, 31, 60

Dai Dongyuan 戴东原 312

Dai Tong 戴侗 182, 200, 204, 209

Dai Zhen 戴震 20, 282, 313, 349

Dao Hui 道慧 207, 370

Deng Xianhe 邓显鹤 254

Ding Du丁度 171, 173, 190, 249, 251

Ding Fubao丁福保 112, 222

Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 96, 107, 117, 124

Du Gongzhan 杜公瞻 225

Du Lin 杜林 28, 97, 101, 107

Du Xuxu 杜煦序 270, 310

Du Yanye 杜延业 177

Duan Yucai 段玉裁 20, 41, 125, 132, 282–4

Fa Hu 法护 369

Fa Yue 法月 372

Fa Yun 法云 369

Fan Qin 范钦 262

Fan Shanzhen 范善臻 362

Fan Tengfeng 樊腾凤 358

Fan Yin 范寅 330

Fan Zhen 范镇 190

Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 163

Fan Zuan 范纉 340

Fang Houshu 方厚枢 3, 27

Fang Xuanling 房玄龄 214

Fang Yizhi 方以智 72, 265, 269, 305

Fang Yuegong 方岳贡 338

Fu Dali 傅达礼 397

Fu Heng 傅恒 397

Fu Yi 傅毅 107

Gao Gong 高拱 340

Gao Shilian 高士廉 226

Ge Tuan 葛湍 180

Gongsun Longzi 公孙龙子 31

Gongyang Gao 公羊高 34

Gou Zhongzheng 句中正 180

Gu Liangchi 榖梁赤 34

Gu Yanwu 顾炎武 265, 349, 350, 356

Gu Yewang 顾野王 177, 178, 192, 194

Guan Pu 官溥 107

Gui Fu 桂馥 112, 282, 283

Gulemaocai 骨勒茂才 378

Guo Zhixuan 郭知玄 245

Guo Zhongshu 郭忠恕 198

Han Chun 韩醇 159

Han Daosheng 韩道升 191, 192, 196

Han Daozhao 韩道昭 171, 192, 196, 251

Han Fei 韩非 107

Han Xiaoyan 韩孝彦 191, 192

Hang Shijun 杭世骏 93, 270, 309, 312

Hao Yixing 郝懿行 74, 269, 309

He Xuan 何萱 272

Hong Liangji 洪亮吉 72, 269, 308

Hong Mai 洪迈 235

Hong Yanzu 洪焱祖 217

Hong Zun 洪遵 227

Hu Chenggong 胡承珙 307

Hu Huan 胡桓 354, 355, 356

Hu Meng 扈蒙 172, 226

Hu Shi 胡适 268

Hu Wenying 胡文英 94, 270, 310, 311

Hu Wokun 胡我琨 271

Hu Wujing 胡毋敬 27, 57

Hu Xiu 胡宿 171, 190

Hu Yuan 胡瑗 163

Hu Zhengyan 胡正言 260

Hua Tuo 华佗 130

Huang Gongshao 黄公绍 171, 173

Huang Kan 皇侃 24

Huang Kan 黄侃 22, 104, 112, 203

Huang Zhijun 黄之隽 340

Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲 265

Hubilie 忽必烈 392

Hui Lin 慧琳 110, 219–20, 222

Hui Yuan 慧苑 219, 220, 369, 370

Huoyuanjie 火源洁 393

Jia Changchao 贾昌朝 200, 212

Jia Kui 贾逵 97, 100, 102, 115, 116

Jiang Qiang 江强 187

Jiang Qiong 江琼 187

Jiang Shaoxing 江绍兴 187

Jiang Shi 江式 165, 169, 183, 186, 187, 215

Jiang Tingxi 蒋廷锡 272

Jiang Xuehai 江学海 363

Jiang Yong 江永 349

Jie Zhou 芥舟 362

Jing Fang京房 107

Kong Fu 孔鲋 72, 215

Kong Guangshen 孔广森 349

KongYingda孔颖达 24, 35, 161, 206,210,214

Kui Ji 窥基, also 大乘基 219

Lan Mao 兰茂 272

Lao Zi 老子 30, 31

Li Chang 李长 25

Li Congzhou 李从周 198

Li Deng 李登 42, 161, 174, 241, 244, 347

Li Diaoyuan 李调元 270, 310

Li Fang 李昉 172, 226, 230

Li Guangdi 李光地 272, 353, 354, 361

Li Ji 李勣 227

Li Rulong 李如龙 360

Li Sengbo 李僧伯 199

Li Shan 李善 110

Li Shangyin 李商隐 302

Li Shi 李实 94, 310, 316

Li Shizhen 李时珍 265, 321, 336, 337, 343

Li Si 李斯 17, 27, 52, 57, 136, 179

Li Songshi 李松石 356

Li Wenzhong 李文仲 199

Li Yan 利言 372, 373

Li Yangning 李阳冰 112, 179

Li Yanji 李延基 398

Li Yong 李颙 266

Li Yu 李育 115, 116

Li Yuan 李渊 224

Li Zhaoluo 李兆洛 271, 336

Li Zhizao 李之藻 265

Li Zhou 李舟 246

Li Zuoxian 李佐贤 271

454 index of chinese names

Liang Qichao 梁启超 268

Liang Tongshu 梁同书 332

Liang Zhangju 梁章钜 334

Liao Wenying 廖文英 290

Liao Yingzhong 廖莹中 159

Lin Bao 林宝 227

Lin Bishan 林碧山 359, 360

Linghu Defen令狐德棻 224

Linlu Wengru 林闾翁孺 78, 79

Liu Bozhuang 刘伯庄 217

Liu Ji 刘基 264

Liu Jian 刘鉴 292

Liu Pin 柳玭 156

Liu Qi 刘淇 270, 302, 314, 328

Liu Xi 刘熙 118–21, 124, 129

Liu Xiaobiao 刘孝标 207

Liu Yu 柳豫 207

Liu Yuan 刘渊 251

Liu Zhen 刘珍 101

Lou Ji 娄机 171, 195

Lu Chen 吕忱 173, 186, 244

Lu Dalin 吕大临 183, 227

Lu Deming 陆德明 22, 183–4, 206

Lu Dian 陆佃 72, 171, 217

Lu Fayan 陆法言 161, 168, 245

Lu Jing 吕静 42, 161, 174, 244

Lu Jiuyuan 陆九渊 158, 163, 164

Lu Qing 履青 362

Lu Shiyi 陆世仪 266

Lu Wenshao 卢文绍 270, 309

Lu Yiwei 卢以纬 172, 227

Lu Zuqian 吕祖谦 158

Luo Dunyan 罗惇衍 285

Luo Qinshun 罗钦顺 265

Luo Yuan 罗愿 171, 217, 218

Ma Erhan 马尔汉 397

Ma Guohan 马国翰 244

Ma Nianzu 马念祖 231

Ma Qi 马齐 397

Ma Rong 马融 97, 101

Mahmud Khashgari 麻赫穆德·喀什噶

里 173, 379, 380

Mao Huang 毛晃 358

Mao Jin 毛晋 262

Mei Jiaju 梅家驹 142

Mei Yingzuo 梅膺祚 108, 269, 286

287, 291

Mo Zi (or Mo-tse) 墨子 30, 31, 40

Nian Xiyao 年希尧 352

Niu Zhong 牛衷 171, 217

Ouyang Rong 欧阳融 177

Ouyang Xiu 欧阳修 163, 164

Ouyang Xun 欧阳洵 172, 224, 226, 229

Pan Hui 潘徽 161

Pei Ju 裴矩 224

Piao Yinzi 朴隐子 354

Qi Jiguang 戚继光 359, 360

Qi Lun 戚纶 171

Qian Daxin 钱大昕 73, 130, 266, 350

Qian Longchi乾隆敕 271

Qian Renlin 钱人麟 311

Qian Xizuo 钱熙祚 303

Qian Yi 钱绎 94, 270, 309

Qiu Yong丘雍 171, 245, 251

Qu Yuan 屈原 207, 274

Quan Zhen 全真 373

Ruan Yuan 阮元 270, 312, 314, 315

Seng Xingjun 僧行均 198

Shang Yang 商鞅 64

Shao Jinhan 邵晋涵 74

Shen Chenglin 沈乘麐 362

Shen Kuo 沈括 208, 233, 234

Shen Qiliang 沈启亮 397

Shen Yue 沈约 239, 241, 242, 352

Shen Ling 沈龄 93, 94

index of chinese names 455

Shi Jiao 尸佼 38

Shi Menglan 史梦兰 269, 308

Shi Xie 士燮 119

Shi You 史游 25, 144

Shou Wen 守温 163

Sima Guang 司马光 163, 165, 173, 190

Sima Qian 司马迁 199

Sima Xiangru 司马相如 25, 81, 107

Song Lian 宋濂 272, 347, 357

Song Qi 宋祁 171

Song Yingxing 宋应星 265, 338

Su Jing 苏敬 227

Sun Fu 孙复 163

Sun Hao 孙皓 120

Sun Mian 孙愐 180, 245

Sun Mu 孙穆 375

Sun Qiang 孙强 193

Sun Qifeng 孙奇逢 266

Sun Shuyan 孙叔言 241

Sun Simiao 孙思邈 227

Sun Yan 孙炎 39

Sun Yirang 孙诒让 131

Sun Yuanru 孙渊如 312

Tan Zhang 谭长 107

Tuoketuo 脱脱 382, 383

Wang Anshi 王安石 180–2, 218

Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 265

Wang Gang 王纲 159

Wang Guanguo 王观国 209

Wang Guowei 王国维 47, 56, 58, 268

Wang Hao 汪灏 271, 336

Wang Jun 王筠 112, 362

Wang Lansheng 王兰生 272, 361

Wang Mingshou 王明寿 172, 227

Wang Niansun 王念孙 94, 221, 301

Wang Qinruo 王钦若 172, 227, 231

Wang Renxu 王仁煦 245

Wang Rong 王融 242

Wang Shengmei 王圣美 208

Wang Shizhen 王士祯 272

Wang Shouren 王守仁 262

Wang Tao 王焘 227

Wang Tingxiang 王廷相 265

Wang Weigong 王惟恭 180

Wang Xiangjin 王象晋 271

Wang Xianqian 王先谦 131

Wang Yangming 王阳明 264

Wang Yi 王逸 129

Wang Yinglin 王应麟 94, 172, 227

Wang Yinzhi 王引之 70–1, 301, 329

Wang Youguang 王有光 331

Wang Yu 王育 107

Wang Yuezhen 汪曰桢 307, 308

Wang Yumi 王与秘 191

Wang Yun 王筠 282, 283

Wang Zheng 王征 265

Wang Zhu 王洙 171, 173, 190

Wang Zishao 王子韶 132

Wei Hong 卫宏 107

Wei Jing 惟净 369

Wei Qu 卫觊 187

Wei Yao 韦曜 119, 120

Wei Yuan 魏源 320

Wei Zheng 魏征 214

Weng Donghui 翁东辉 94

Wu Cheng 吴澄 164

Wu Yujin 吴玉搢 269, 308

Wu Zetian 武则天 162, 178, 226

Xi Lin 希麟 219, 220, 369, 371

Xiao Gang 萧纲 193

Xiao Kai 萧恺 192, 193

Xiao Zixian 萧子显 193

Xie Jin 解缙 339

Xie Tiao 谢脁 242

Xie Zeng 谢增 285

Xing Bing 邢昺 74

Xiong Zhong 熊忠 172, 251

Xu Chong 许冲 102, 116

Xu Ci 许慈 120


Xu Guangqi 徐光启 265, 321, 322, 337

Xu Heng 许衡 164

Xu Jian 徐坚 172, 226, 230

Xu Jie 徐阶 340

Xu Jing 许靖 120

Xu Jishe 徐继畲 320

Xu Kai 徐铠 112, 167

Xu Kai 徐锴 179, 180

Xu Miao 徐邈 186

Xu Naichang 徐乃昌 270, 309

Xu Shaokui 徐绍煃 338

Xu Shen 许慎 16, 27, 97–102, 106–10, 140

151, 169

Xu Xiake 徐霞客 265, 321, 322

Xu Xuan 徐铉 112, 179, 180

Xuan Du 玄度 171, 196

Xuan Ying 玄应 184, 219–20, 370

Xuan Zang 玄奘 370

Xue Zong 薛综 119

Xun Zi 荀子 30–3, 123, 137

Yan Fu严复 268

Yan Junping严君平 78, 79

Yan Shigu 颜师古 94, 177, 194, 214

Yan Yuansun 颜元孙 170, 194, 195

Yan Zhenqing 颜真卿 172, 195, 226, 330

Yan Zhitui 颜之推 186, 240–1, 244

Yang Heng 杨恒 201, 202

Yang Huan 杨桓 182

Yang Quan 杨泉 132

Yang Runlu 杨润陆 4

Yang Shoujing 杨守敬 222

Yang Xiong 扬雄 80–3, 89, 94

Yang Yi 杨亿 172, 227, 231

Yang Zhu 杨朱 31

Yao Yan 姚炎 340

Yelirenrong 野利仁荣 377

Yi Jing义净 370, 371, 373

Yin Shifu 阴时夫 172, 228, 330

Yu Changzuo 余长祚 304

Yu Min 俞敏 358

Yu Shinan 虞世南 172, 224

Yu Yanmo 庾俨默 112

Yu Zhining于志宁 227

Yuan Hao 元昊 377

Yuan Renlin 袁仁林 270, 302

Yuan Zhen 元稹 225

Yue Ke 岳珂 159

Yue Shao乐韶 272

Yue Shaofeng乐韶凤 357

Yue Yuansheng 岳元声 269

Yun Gong云公 219

Zang Yongtang (also Zang Yong) 臧镛堂,

臧镛 312

Zhai Hao 翟灏 332

Zhan Ruoshui 湛若水 262

Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 94, 112, 130, 268

Zhang Changzong 张昌宗 226

Zhang Chengsun 张成孙 356

Zhang Cili 张次立 190

Zhang Dingsi 张鼎思 326

Zhang Guowei 张国维 337

Zhang Heng 张衡 130

Zhang Huiyan 张惠言 356

Zhang Lin 张林 107

Zhang Luxiang 张履祥 266, 325

Zhang Qian 张骞 374

Zhang Shen 张参 171, 195

Zhang Shenyi 张慎仪 94, 270, 310

Zhang Shi 张栻 158

Zhang Shijun 张士俊 200

Zhang Shilu 张世禄 254

Zhang Shinan 张世南 209

Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 133

Zhang Tingyu 张廷玉 333

Zhang Yan 张晏 60

Zhang Yi 张揖 72, 215, 221

Zhang Ying 张英 272

Zhang You 张有 198

Zhang Yue 张说 172, 226, 230

Zhang Yushu 张玉书 108, 269, 291, 332

index of chinese names 457

Zhang Zhidong 张之洞 263

Zhang Zhongjing 张仲景 130

Zhang Zilie 张自烈 108, 269, 290, 291

Zhangsun Neyan 长孙讷言 245

Zhangsun Wuji 长孙无忌 227

Zhao Gao 赵高 27, 57

Zhao Guangyi 赵光义 224

Zhao Heng 赵恒 231

Zhao Jing 赵敬 198

Zhao Qi 赵淇 159

Zhao Shiyan 赵世延

Zhao Xuemin 赵学敏 337

Zheng Qiao 郑樵 182

Zheng Xuan 郑玄 22, 35, 115, 147, 240

Zheng Yuwu 郑玉吴 164

Zheng Zhong 郑众 98, 140

Zhi Guang 智广 369

Zhou Ang 周昂 362

Zhou Chun 周春 306, 317

Zhou Congzhi 周从之 172

Zhou Deqing 周德清 167, 172

Zhou Yong 周颙 241, 242

Zhou Zhongfu 周中孚 293, 327

Zhou Zumo 周祖谟 94, 239, 254

Zhu Di 朱棣 339

Zhu Houcong 朱厚熜 340

Zhu Jingrong 朱镜蓉 285

Zhu Junsheng 朱骏声 98, 282–5, 348

Zhu Mouwei 朱谋玮 269, 304, 305

Zhu Shaohe 朱少河 312

Zhu Sihe 朱笥河 312

Zhu Xi 朱熹 158, 163, 164, 264

Zhu Yizun 朱彝尊 200

Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋 347, 352, 357

Zhuge Ying 诸葛颖 178

Zi Xia (also Bu Shang) 子夏,卜商

23, 36

Zuo Qiuming 左丘明 34, 99


Chinese Lexicography - A History From 1046 BC to AD 1911

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ancient china

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