Chinese Lexicography: A History from 1046 BC to AD 1911

CHI NESE LEXI C O G R A P H Y This page intentionally left blank CHINESE LEXICOGRAPHY A History from 1046 bc to ad ...

Author: Heming Yong | Jing Peng

224 downloads 1605 Views 3MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

CHI NESE LEXI C O G R A P H Y

This page intentionally left blank

CHINESE LEXICOGRAPHY A History from 1046 bc to ad 1911

Heming Yong Jing Peng

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß 2008 Heming Yong and Jing Peng The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 978-0-19-953982-6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface

xi xii xiii PA R T I

INTRODUCTION

1 Introduction PA R T I I

3

THE GENESIS AND EMERGENCE OF LEXICOGRAPHICAL C U LT U R E A N D WO R K S I N A N C I E N T C H I N A

(from the Zhou Dynasty, 1046 bc–256 bc to the Han Dynasty, 206 bc–ad 220) 2 The emergence of lexicographical culture in China 2.1 The origin of Chinese characters and their formation 2.2 Ancient Chinese literature and exegetic interpretation of characters 2.3 Theories on the origin of lexicography 3 The progress of exegetic practice and the advent of lexicographical works in China 3.1 Language studies during the Pre-Qin Dynasties 3.2 Teaching and explaining ancient characters and the emergence of lexicography 3.3 Literature in ancient times 3.4 The beginnings of Chinese lexicography

15 16 21 25

29 30 34 37 41

4 Historian Zhou’s Primer – the source of lexicographical culture in China 4.1 The historical background to HZP’s birth 4.2 The background and motivation for HZP’s compilation 4.3 The format and style of HZP 4.4 The cultural and academic implications of HZP

44 45 46 48 55

5 The Ready Guide – the initiator of thesaurus dictionaries in China 5.1 The historical background to RG’s birth 5.2 The background and motivation for RG’s compilation

59 59 63

vi

contents 5.3 The format and style of RG 5.4 The cultural and academic implications of RG

67 73

6 The Dictionary of Dialectal Words – the beginnings of dialect dictionaries in China 6.1 The historical background to DDW’s birth 6.2 The background and motivation for DDW’s compilation 6.3 The format and style of DDW 6.4 The academic value and cultural inXuence of DDW

76 76 80 84 90

7 An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters – the origin of character dictionaries in China 7.1 The historical background to EDCC’s birth 7.2 The background and motivation for EDCC’s compilation 7.3 The format and style of EDCC 7.4 The academic value and cultural inXuence of EDCC

95 96 100 102 109

8 The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms – the inception of etymological dictionaries in China 8.1 The historical background to DCCT’s birth 8.2 The background and motivation for DCCT’s compilation 8.3 The format and style of DCCT 8.4 The academic value and cultural inXuence of DCCT

114 115 118 120 128

9 Theoretical inquiries into lexicographical issues in ancient China: a survey 9.1 The origin of lexicography 9.2 The advent of lexicography 9.3 The formation of macro-level styles for dictionary making 9.4 The formation of micro-level format for dictionary making

134 135 136 141 146

PA R T I I I

T H E E X P L O R AT I O N A N D C U LT I VAT I O N OF LEXICOGRAPHY 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 10.1 The historical background 10.2 The academic background 10.3 An overall view between the Wei and Yuan Dynasties

155 155 159 165

contents 11 The development of Chinese character dictionaries 11.1 The historical background 11.2 The evolution of lexicographical theories 11.3 The development of format and style 11.4 A brief introduction to some representative character dictionaries 11.5 The academic value and cultural implications 12 The development of Chinese word dictionaries 12.1 The historical background 12.2 The evolution of lexicographical theories 12.3 The development of format and style 12.4 A brief introduction to some representative word dictionaries 12.5 The academic value and inXuence

vii 176 176 179 185 192 202 205 205 208 210 213 221

13 ClassiWed dictionaries – the encyclopedic dictionary in ancient China 13.1 The historical background to the birth of classiWed dictionaries 13.2 The emergence of classiWed dictionaries 13.3 A brief analysis of some important classiWed dictionaries 13.4 The social and academic inXuence

223 225 228 235

14 Rhyme dictionaries – a special dictionary type in ancient China 14.1 The historical background to the birth of rhyme dictionaries 14.2 The burgeoning growth of rhyme dictionaries 14.3 A brief analysis of some important rhyme dictionaries 14.4 The social and academic inXuence of rhyme dictionaries

237 238 243 245 252

PA R T I V

223

THE REFORM AND SHAPING

OF LEXICOGRAPHY 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 15.1 The historical background to the reform and shaping of Chinese lexicography 15.2 The academic background to the reform and shaping of Chinese lexicography

259 259 264

v iii

contents 15.3 A survey of dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 15.4 The characteristics of dictionary making in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

16 The formation of Chinese character dictionaries 16.1 The social and cultural background in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 16.2 The development of character dictionary compilation in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 16.3 The development of format and style in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 16.4 A brief introduction to the masterpieces of character dictionaries 16.5 The academic value and inXuence of character dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties 17 The formation of Chinese word dictionaries 17.1 The historical background 17.2 The evolution of lexicographical theories in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 17.3 The development of format and style in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 17.4 A brief introduction to the masterpieces of word dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 17.5 The academic value and inXuence of word dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 18 The evolution and reformation of special and encyclopedic dictionaries in China 18.1 The historical background in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 18.2 Lexicographical paradigm in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 18.3 The analysis of format and style in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 18.4 A short analysis of some representative dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 18.5 The academic value and inXuence of special and encyclopedic dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 19 The evolution and formation of rhyme dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 19.1 The historical background in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

268 275 280 280 282 286 290 293 298 298 300 301 304 313

319 320 321 324 328 342

347 347

contents 19.2 The development of lexicographical theories in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 19.3 The evolution of format and style in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 19.4 The representative dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties and their academic inXuence PA R T V

ix

348 352 357

C H I N E S E B I L I N G UA L L E X I C O G R A P H Y : A BRIEF OVERVIEW

(from the Tang Dynasty, 618–907 to the Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911) 20 The origin and emergence of Chinese bilingual lexicography 20.1 Buddhist preaching and the advent of bilingual lexicography 20.2 Buddhist sutras and the compilation of dictionaries of sounds and meanings 20.3 Dictionaries of sounds and meanings and the dawn of bilingual dictionaries 21 The archetype and evolution of Chinese bilingual dictionaries 21.1 Buddhist culture and the emergence of bilingual glossaries 21.2 Chinese socio-cultural life and the evolution of bilingual dictionaries 21.3 The writing of history books and bilingual glossary compilation 22 Ethnic minority languages and their bilingual dictionaries 22.1 Western Xia culture and Tangut bilingual dictionaries 22.2 Mongolian culture and Mongolian bilingual dictionaries 22.3 Turkish culture and Turkish bilingual dictionaries 22.4 Tibetan culture and Tibetan bilingual dictionaries 22.5 History studies and bilingual dictionaries for history books 23 Religious preaching from the West and Chinese bilingual dictionary compilation 23.1 Matteo Ricci’s contributions to Chinese bilingual lexicography 23.2 Robert Morrison and the Wrst Chinese–English dictionary 23.3 Dialect studies and Chinese bilingual dialect dictionaries 23.4 The end of missionary compilation of Chinese bilingual dictionaries

367 369 370 371 372 372 373 375 376 377 378 379 381 382

384 384 386 388 389

x

contents 24 Chinese government establishments and Chinese bilingual dictionary compilation 24.1 Government establishments and bilingual glossary compilation 24.2 Chinese–foreign language dictionaries and their three versions 24.3 The spread of Western learning and the compilation of specialized bilingual dictionaries 24.4 The compilation of Manchurian–Chinese bilingual and multilingual dictionaries in the Qing Dynasty

396

25 The characteristics and inXuence of early Chinese bilingual dictionaries 25.1 Early bilingual dictionaries and their characteristics 25.2 The socio-cultural inXuence of early bilingual dictionaries

399 399 401

Appendix I List of book titles from English to Chinese with English titles arranged in alphabetical order Appendix II List of book titles from Chinese to English with Chinese titles arranged in Pinyin order Appendix III 中国历代纪元表/ The chronology of Chinese history Bibliography Websites Index of Chinese names

391 392 393 395

403 422 445 447 452 453

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 thoughtprovoking 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 the Western 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 concept 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 partseparate 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 from within 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 ambitious 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

xiv

preface

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 interpretation (sacred texts), proper name lists and biographical records, bilingual wordbooks (e.g. early Sanskrit–Chinese, Tibetan–Chinese, etc.), and many hybrid 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 comparative methodologies, and for interpreting the function of such reference compendia 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 signposted. The terminology for describing linguistic features and functions is a pragmatic blend of traditional Chinese categories and Western 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. descriptions 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

preface

xv

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 arguments 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 examples and discussion of purposes and use-patterns, as well as review of retrospective 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, wellinformed, 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

xvi

preface

somewhat remarkable for native Chinese scholars. To have assembled and conducted this analysis of a complex language tradition in a foreign language is a striking achievement, valuable for this reason over and above the content because, 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 collaborative 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

preface

xvii

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

This page intentionally left blank

part i

INTRODUCTION

This page intentionally left blank

1

INTRODUCTION

T

HE 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 diachronic studies of lexicography in China, covering the status quo, the approaches 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 quo Chinese 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

4

introduction

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, however, 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, and collections of lexicographical articles. All the works listed above are limited to ancient wordbooks, neglecting dictionary compilation and theoretical generalization 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,

introduction

5

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 lexicography. 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 sociocultural needs. Lexicographical studies could go no further without some substantial 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: subsequent 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 indispensable role in the development of Chinese lexicography in modern and contemporary 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.

6

in t r o d u c t i o n

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 unchanged. 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.

Approaches Lexicography 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 theoretically coherent framework must be established into which that long span of lexicographic activity can be incorporated, reXecting the trajectory of lexicographical 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. Geographically, 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 dictionaries, 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 dictionaries, 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 contemporary 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

introduction

7

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 contemporary 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.

Methodology The basic methodology in the study of the history of lexicography should be a combination of sequence, evaluation, and generalization, following the diachronic sequence as the main thread of inquiry and exploration, making objective assessment of major lexicographical works, formulating theoretical generalizations, and eventually establishing a coherent framework to incorporate

8

introduction

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 development 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 dictionaries is contingent upon the prosperity or adversity of the nation, the development of the society, the transmission of religion and culture, and the progress of science and technology. Prominence must be given to the interactive relationships between socio-cultural advancement and dictionary production and development, 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 development 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

introduction

9

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 compilation 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 sociocultural evolution of the Chinese nation. Thus, a communicative approach should be introduced to establish a theoretical model for the study of the history of lexicography: integrating the compiler, the dictionary, and the user into a trinity so that the dictionaries and their development can be examined from a 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 perspective of dictionary itself. Thus, the ‘trinitarian’ approach will incorporate sociocultural and psycho-cognitive perspectives into the study of dictionary use, 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 evolution of 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 theoretical model for lexicographical communication. The communicative model for lexicography should be introduced into this study so that the analysis of speciWc works can be conducted under a general framework and can be eventually incorporated into it. It helps to examine the development of lexicography in China, work out methodologies and principles to reveal the regularities and patterns of dictionary development, discover the mechanisms of dictionary compilation and use, and inquire into the cognitive principles regulating dictionary use.

10

introduction

Historical Segmentation The segmentation of historical periods is considered one of the most fundamental 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 lexicography 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), representing 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 Dynasty, 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 characteristics 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 sixperiod 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 Kingdoms, 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);

introduction

11

(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 distinctive 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 lexicographical 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 lexicographic 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 development 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 lexicography, 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 framework 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.

12

introduction

Practical Implications For various reasons, historical, political, and linguistic, no in-depth, comprehensive, 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 lexicographical 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 farreaching 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 research, and eventually enhance the development of lexicography as a whole. Such studies will play a signiWcant role in pushing forward Chinese historical lexicography, 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.

part ii

THE GENESIS AND EMERGENCE OF LEXICOGRAPHICAL C U LT U R E A N D WO R K S I N ANCIENT CHINA (from the Zhou Dynasty, 1046 bc–256 bc to the Han Dynasty, 206 bc–ad 220)

This page intentionally left blank

2

THE EMERGENCE OF LEXICOGRAPHICAL CULTURE IN CHINA

T

HERE 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 Nu¨wa, 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

16

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 characters and 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 also mentioned in The Lu¨’s Spring and Autumn Annals (<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

genesis of lexicographical culture

17

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 from Heaven with 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 archaeology 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 proportion 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 Minister 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 carved with sharp instruments, the strokes are mainly in square forms and their structures look very delicate. The characters in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties 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.

18

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 stabilized, 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

genesis of lexicographical culture

19

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, pictographic 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 recognized 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 pictographic method while the second subtype must have occurred some time thereafter. 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 selfexplanatory 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.

20

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 characters 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 , whose meaning 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 and þþ, 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 explanatory 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

genesis of lexicographical culture

21

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, pictographic, 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 calligraphy. 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 exegetic interpretation 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

22

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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. The mushrooming 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, and The 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 to make 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 characters. Lu Deming (陆德明, 550–630) once stated: ‘诂 means the diVerent expressions 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 fundamental 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

genesis of lexicographical culture

23

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 characters 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 same work, 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 exploring 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 or wordbooks and dictionaries. This is the source of lexicographical culture in China. 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 and making explanations and interpretations of these specialized exegetic works that laid the foundation for the development of

24

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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; the methodologies in exegetic studies became more 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>) by Huang Kan (皇侃) in the Liang Dynasty (502–557), and The RectiWed 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

genesis of lexicographical culture

25

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 established 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 Explanatory 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 character learning should be considered as the fountainhead of Chinese lexicographical 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

26

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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’. Zhou Demei (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 something 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 vocabulary 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:

genesis of lexicographical culture

27

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 to Historian 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

28

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 – xiaozhuan. 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 explanations 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 grandsonin-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. Neither Historian 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 accumulation for dictionaries to emerge in the foreseeable future.

3

T HE PROG R ESS OF E X E G E T I C P R AC T I C E A N D T H E A DV E N T O F LEXICOGRAPHICAL WORKS I N C H I NA

W

HEN 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.

30

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

3.1 language studies during the pre-qin dynasties The Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods (770 bc–221 bc) witnessed 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.

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

31

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’. Gongsun Longzi is an eminent philosopher and thinker in the ideological history 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’, namely On Substance (<指物篇>) and On Name and Content (<名实篇>). He points out in On 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 characteristics and the names are just the symbols representing them. Since names were originally in correspondence with 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 relationships 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

32

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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. How does man work out diVerent names to designate diVerent contents? Xun Zi 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 existence, 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,

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

33

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 designated. 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 profundity of ancient Chinese philosophy and philology. Nor is it diYcult to see why Chinese classics, like Dao De Jing, passing down from generation to generation, 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 Xourishing 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.

34

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

3.2 teaching and explaining ancient characters 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), Gongyang Gao (公羊高), Gu Liangchi (榖梁赤), and others. Zuo Qiuming, following 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 originated 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

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

35

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

36

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 subcommentaries 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 interpreting 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 interpretations of 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 employment of contemporary words to explain ancient words, or the use of contemporary 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, diVerentiate senses of polysemous words, and classify deWnitions of senses in compiling philological dictionaries. The exegetic predecessors in Mao’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.

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

37

In interpreting and explaining the words and characters, he made 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 interpretation 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 for modern 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 to Mao’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 interpreting and explaining characters and words Wrst took place in Chinese lexicographical 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 wordbooks. 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.

38

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 synonyms 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

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

39

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 frequency 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(a¯ng) 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 (stop þ 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 explaining the meaning of a character by analysing and interpreting its pronunciation–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 in The Book of Rites (<礼记中庸>). This practice had its origin in the pre-Qin Dynasty classics. Semantic interpretation, without

40

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

recourse to the pronunciation or the form of the character, makes use of the context and expounds the meaning of a character or a word by means of more 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 interpretation mainly involved discriminating synonyms and generalizing the interpretations and explanations of words and phrases. In contemporary Chinese dictionaries no specialized terms can be found that are exclusively used in writing 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。

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

41

(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 The Chinese people have a long tradition of respecting ceremony and propriety and attaching great importance to education. In the Xia Dynasty (2070 bc–1600 bc), the heavenly order was revered; in the Shang Dynasty (1600 bc–1046 bc), the gods and ghosts were revered; and in the Zhou Dynasty, 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 the Zhou Dynasty a wholesome education system was established and teaching was 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 argumentations’. 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 had become almost unintelligible. Teaching and interpreting the characters and words became indispensable. Exegetic studies had become a distinctive feature

42

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

of language study in the Han Dynasty, which was well represented by large quantities of both exegetic interpretations of and notes to the ancient classics and the compilation of a series of monographs on language and characters. These works can be divided into three categories (Liu Yeqiu, 1983:2–3): Wrst, dealing with the form and meaning of characters, as represented by An 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 Jin Dynasties, such as The Dictionary 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 in Historian 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, xiaozhuan was 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 unprecedented uniWcation and social stability. There came tremendous prosperity in social, economic, and cultural life. Language studies and literacy education were elevated to a new level, which stimulated the demand for glossaries, wordbooks, and dictionaries. Glossaries, wordbooks, and dictionaries in the true sense sprang up

exegetic practice and lexicographical works

43

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 Popular Words – 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 ’S P R I M E R – THE SOU RC E OF LEXICOGRAPHICAL CULTURE IN CHINA

T

HE 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

h i s t o r i a n z h o u ’s p r i me r

45

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 (abbreviated 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

46

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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’. SpeciWcally, 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 compiling dictionaries of the Chinese language.

4.2 the background and motivation for hzp’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 ceremony what an important role an oYcial historian played in the Zhou Dynasty. 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.’

h i s t o r i a n z h o u’s p r i me r

47

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 performance 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 the West Han Dynasty, ‘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 originally collected in HZP 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 to HZP. The Cangjie Primer, which was 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 characters. When regular script became the standard writing system for the Chinese language, dazhuan soon became outdated. Moreover, characters will inevitably

48

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 coverage As 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 communication. 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.)

h i s t o r i a n z h o u’s p ri m er

49

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 inscriptions (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 pronunciation; 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 tool used for equal division in drawing; 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.)

50

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture 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 conceptualization. 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 construction 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 inscribed.) (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 Dictionary of Chinese Characters (i.e. zhuan characters, which are to be contrasted with ancient Zhou characters, form the focus for character selection), when deWnitional 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 means Xourishing; 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.)

h i s t o r i a n z h o u’s p ri m er

51

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 smallmouthed 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. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters 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 a word, all the things under the sun are recorded exclusively’ (Epilogue to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters). The characters explicitly marked as Zhou characters 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’.

52

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

Layout HZP 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 transformed 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-oriented In 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 recite The 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

h i s t o r i a n z h o u’s p r i me r

53

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, suppressed, 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 summoned and they should learn to be serious, cautious, respectful, and selfdisciplined. 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 citation There is now extremely limited source data directly obtained from HZP, 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 meaning 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,

54

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 lexicography 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.

Pronunciation There are some characters in HZP, though very few in number, whose pronunciations 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 earthenware. 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 inXuence of HZPon The Cangjie Primer and The Ready Guide is found chieXy in the arrangement of contents and the method of deWning characters. On the one hand, the arrangement of contents in both books is based on semantic relations and classiWcations. The contents of the Wrst version of The Cangjie Primer are classiWed, grouped, and arranged on a semantic basis, i.e. in the light of the concepts theydesignate, which is 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

h i s t o r i a n z h o u’s p r i me r

55

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, from whose 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 in HZP. Here are some more examples from The 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 explanation (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 academic implications 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.

56

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 to Warring 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

h i s t o r i a n z h o u’s p ri m e r

57

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 seen drinking vessels and many diVerent 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 characters. 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

58

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 Dictionary 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 – T H E I N I T I ATOR O F T H E S AU RU S DICTIONARIES 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 compilation 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

60

g e n e s i s a n d e m e r g e n c e o f le x i c o g r a p h i c a l c u l t u re

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 the Han Dynasty, The Cangjie Primer was 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 conceptual meanings 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. RG was 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 Emperor Wen, people with the title of ‘doctor’, which roughly approximates 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, Qian Mu, 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 as The 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 was more 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 the Western Han

the ready guide

61

Dynasty. It can thus be safely assumed that RG was Wrst 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 Western Han Dynasty was mainly a time for revision. From the time of Emperor Hui 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 ‘fatherin-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 appointment 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 conceptual meanings of characters, words, and expressions. Linguistic problems, though

62

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 understanding of the character meaning. 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 disposition, 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 the means by which 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.)

the ready guide 8. 9. 10. 11.

63

胎, 生命之始。(胎: beginning of a human life.) 俶, 动作之始。(俶: initiating of a motion or an action.) 落, 木叶陨坠之始。(落: (of leaves) beginning to fall from trees.) 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 speaking, ‘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 motivation for 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

64

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

(<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. He was born in Lu State (now in Shandong Province) and was 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 is Mount Tai, where corn, Wsh, and salt are all produced), and in RG, 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 ranked Da Ye in Lu State as the Wrst of the Ten Marshes. Third, the author had a hostile attitude towards Qin State and Chu State. In the tomb of Zeng Houyi (曾侯乙), which was unearthed in 1978 in Sui County, Hubei Province, a picture was

the ready guide

65

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>) to provide 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 compiled 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

66

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 synonymous 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 implements 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;

the ready guide

67

<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 various 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 on words 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 farreaching inXuence on subsequent dictionaries.

Principles for entry selection and coverage RG 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 in Historian 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

68

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 in RG are far fewer than those in Historian Zhou’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 2,000 words 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 preQin 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 confusion’. 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).

the ready guide

69

Features of entry arrangement RG naturally follows the compilation style established in Historian Zhou’s Primer and The Cangjie Primer as they are the pioneers of similar endeavours. Entries in RG are arranged according to the meanings 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 conceptualized 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 the Heavens. 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 RG Though used as an instructional aid, RG was actually an indispensable explanatory complement to Historian Zhou’s Primer, in which explanatory notes were regretfully missing. RG aimed at explaining fully the diVerences between ancient and contemporary 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 interpretation (通训), separate interpretation (分训), mutual interpretation (互训), factorial interpretation (递训), antonymous interpretation (反训), phonetic interpretation (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)

70

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

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’. DiVerent words with identical interpretations Interpreting Exegesis contains 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). 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>). 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’. 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). 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. Phonetic interpretation Words are interpreted with words of similar or identical pronunciation. Interpreting Exegesis contains entries like 序, 绪也, and 晋, 进也, in which 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/. 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

the ready guide

71

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 citations RG’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’.)

72

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture 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 mightiness; 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 compilation. 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 inherited 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 Contemporary 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.

the ready guide

73

5.4 the cultural and academic implications 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 contemporary counterparts’ (The Book of the Han Dynasty). RG was especially beneWcial in helping children to appreciate meaning classiWcation and categorization 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

74

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 Mountains). 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

the ready guide

75

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 comprehensiveness, 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 behaviour 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.

6

T HE DICTIO NA RY O F D I A L E C TA L WO R D S – T H E BEGINNINGS OF DIALECT DICTIONARIES IN CHINA

S

OCIOLINGUISTICS, as an interdisciplinary branch of learning, emerged in the 1960s in America. Its principles and research methodology have been gradually 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

the dictionary of dialectal words

77

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 the Man (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 the Di (狄) people who wore 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 (interpreting 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 customs, likes and dislikes, and they cannot communicate with each other or understand one another. To make what they think and what they want understandable, the indispensable means is interpretation, which is called ji (寄) in the east, xiang (象) in the south, diti (狄鞮) in the west, 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

78

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 also made its contribution to the trend in the formation and development of the Chinese nation. The diVerences among the diVerent dialects would hinder or even prevent eYcient and eVective communication. 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 and customs in diVerent regions and acquaint himself with 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 Qin Dynasty (Duan Yucai et al., 2001:1434). There are records in the literature of the Han Dynasty about people who once had access 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

the dictionary of dialectal words

79

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, DDW was 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 ancient place names.)

80

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

In the light of the above three dividing lines of regional dialects, DDW divides 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 motivation for 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 no more than ten liang (equal to 0.5 kg) of gold and the grain in the barn was 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>), East of the River (<河东>), and The Feather Hunting (<羽猎>) in the form of a fu-poem

the dictionary of dialectal words

81

(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-hand materials 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 and make 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 accidental 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 concerned, 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>) the most 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,

82

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 DDW does not completely follow the same pattern as The Ready Guide in deWning 皆. In The Ready Guide, 皆 is deWned by means of synonyms or near synonyms, which are put together and interpreted as a whole; whereas DDW provides not only synonyms or near-synonym explanations but also more detailed information concerning dialectal use and other language varieties: which words and expressions belong to which regional dialects, which is the standard expression in the common language, and which are archaic and which have undergone changes in the Western Han Dynasty. As early as the Wrst century, Yang Xiong conducted such comprehensive and in-depth linguistic analyses of complicated language phenomena, which is a clear indication of the sophistication of his linguistic observation, analysis, and reasoning. To conclude, DDW imitated and was modelled on The Ready Guide. It was, however, not merely a product of imitation but a creative work with features that made it distinct from The 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,

the dictionary of dialectal words

83

he would call on them with his three-inch brush and a four-foot-long piece of oilsoaked 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 collecting data from actual language use, followed by quantitative data analyses and systematic and rigorous argumentation. The methodology developed by William Labov, the American sociolinguist, has attracted a lot of attention and has 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 nationwide dialectal investigation by scientiWc and rigorous means entirely by himself. DDW was originally designed in Wfteen volumes, but unfortunately only thirteen were completed. A year or two before Yang Xiong died, Liu Xin was 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 contradictory expressions and needs to be reconsidered and revised. There are more data to be collected and sorted and more doubtful questions to be clariWed.’ Obviously, when Liu Xin asked for the manuscript of DDW, the book was not complete. So he asked Liu Xin to wait and promised to send the book to him when it was Wnalized. Unfortunately, he died shortly afterwards. Through careful examination of DDW’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)

84

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 deWnitional explanations in each entry, without provision of further detailed information, 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 DDW originally 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 coverage Speaking 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)

the dictionary of dialectal words

85

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 DDW are 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)

86

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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,

the dictionary of dialectal words

87

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 own meanings, which were 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 expressions, but they were unfortunately unknown to later generations, which made it necessary to add interpretative notes to them.

The deWnition style of DDW Generally speaking, regional dialects diVer in three aspects: pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. What DDW aims 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

88

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 between Qi 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。 ’

the dictionary of dialectal words

89

(逢 and 逆 mean 迎 (against, towards), which is 逆 in the region east of the Pass, and is also 迎 in the region west of the Pass; it may also be 逢.) (from The 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 is married 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 in Ordinary 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 notation In DDW, some General Language characters were employed as phonetic symbols to denote dialectal characters. These characters were referred to by later generation scholars as ‘odd characters’. As early as 2,000 years ago, Yang Xiong employed General Language characters as phonetic symbols to denote the pronunciation 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)

90

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 pronounced as 呛, 釥 in the second citation as 俏, and 姡 in the third citation as 猾.

Illustrative citations One 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 examples 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 cultural influence 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 DDW Synchronically, 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

the dictionary of dialectal words

91

vocabulary of diVerent dialects. Occasionally, some vocabulary of General Language 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 DDW as 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 and Wei, 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 linguistic 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

92

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 and Chu, and is 寻 between Haidai and Daye.) (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 etymological 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

the dictionary of dialectal words

93

word in Wu (吴) and Yang (扬), which can be identiWed with 忙 in Modern Chinese.

The exegetic value of DDW DDW 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

94

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 colloquial 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 bestknown 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 DDW available to later scholars, Supplements to the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<方言疏证补>) by Wang 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

A N E X P L A NATO RY D I C T I O NA RY OF CH I N E S E CHARACTERS – T H E OR IGIN OF CH A R AC T ER DICTIONARIES IN CHINA

C

HINESE 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 characters’, 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

96

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

generally accepted as the earliest character dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography.

7.1 the historical background to 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 gradually 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 Confucian 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 argumentations and being more philosophy-oriented and the Classic School focusing rather on textual research and being more history-oriented.

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

97

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, however, the Classic School gradually gained the dominant position and there were many well-known scholars identifying themselves 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 phenomena 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 which was which and could discriminate between them by carefully examining, sorting, and diVerentiating. When initially creating characters, Cang Jie made 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 the meaning, and one as the sound form (element) standing for the pronunciation. This composite form of

98

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 nonexistent 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-explanatory; 1,167 are ideographic; and 7,697 are pictophonetic. One of the most important contributions Xu Shen made to the theory of Six Categories is its application to the practice of analysing the meanings of characters in the formation 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

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

99

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 Zuo Qiuming. During the Warring 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 for making 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.

100

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 motivation for 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 characters 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 standardization – ‘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 explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

1 01

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 philological 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 systematically 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

102

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 EDCC manuscript 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 arrangement Prior 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 relationships 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

a n e x p l a n a t o r y d i c t i o n a ry of c hi n e s e c h a r a c t e r s

1 03

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 coverage In 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 characters, and zhou characters, are listed as follows: the main sources for xiaozhuan are

104

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 EDCC The 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 same way as 融 without pronunciation omission.) 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

a n e x p l a n a t o r y d i c t i o n a ry of c hi n e s e c h a r a c t e r s

1 05

星, which was possibly simpliWed from 曐, that is, with two components (日日) omitted.)

DeWnition pattern in EDCC For 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 the meaning should be interpreted from the context in which the character is used in collocation with 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 ancient character 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 EDCC In 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 the meaning 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:

106

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

(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’, something 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 two diVerent interpretations of the writing 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 corecording 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

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

107

both ancient and modern 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 citations The 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 notation The 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 pronunciation, chieXy for the purpose of constructing the phonetic system of the

108

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 Chinese 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 information item in a deWnition is the original meaning and the illustrative citations are almost exclusively from written works, in spite of the reduction in the number of radical categories.

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

109

7.4 the academic value and cultural influence 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 explorations in this connection. His contributions lie especially in revealing the evolutional 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 development, his coherent philological thinking on Chinese characters, his systematic application of the ‘Six Categories’ theory to EDCC’s compilation, the prominence 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 characters 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 raising and cultivating a child; categorized into, and pronounced as 肉. The Yu Book (<虞书>) has the statement ‘to educate and foster the son’, and 育 was possibly categorized into 每.)

110

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 comparison with its contemporaries, EDCC achieved a lot in this regard, though there is still a great deal of room for improvement, or possibly even mistakes 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 phonetics, that is, data concerning the homophonic system of pictophonetic characters 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 Interpretation of Classics (<经典释文>) by Lu Deming in the Tang Dynasty, The Annotations 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):

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

111

(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 dictionaries, 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’.

112

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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). Unfortunately, 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 Dictionary 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 Characters (<说文解字注>, thirty-one volumes) focuses on revealing its style, correcting 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 Explanatory 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

an explanatory dictionary of chinese characters

113

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 ‘character thinking’ has been inXuencing the speech and behaviour of Chinese scholars generation after generation.

8

T HE DICTIO NA RY O F C HINE SE CHA R AC T ER S AND TERMS – T H E INCEPTION OF E T Y M O LO G I C A L DICTIONARIES IN CHINA

I

N 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 lexicographers who attempted to provide etymological information in a systematic fashion. Bailey later observed the practice in making his dictionary – A Universal 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

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

115

Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms (hereinafter abbreviated as DCCT). Its contribution to etymological studies of the Chinese language and to lexicographical 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 the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties. The impact of Scripture studies on the feudal reign of the Han Dynasty was felt in almost every aspect of its administration: in managing 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 adoption of the policy of ‘dismissing a hundred other 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. Liu Xin’s memorial to the throne triggered oV the Werce Wght between the Neo-classic and the Classic studies on Confucian Scriptures, which lasted for about two centuries, extending into the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the fourth year (i.e. 79) of Emperor Zhang’s reign, some well-known scholars were summoned to the court. The Emperor discussed with them the Five Scriptures in the White Tiger Temple. ‘Li Yu (李育), representing the Neo-classic School, questioned Jia Kui about Gong Yang. 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 this made it possible to foster an atmosphere for scholars to incorporate the achievements of both camps. Zheng Xuan was 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 to understand the essential principles and methods of this study’ (Fan Ye, 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 the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when the Neo-classic and Classic studies were still in the process of merging there came the representative accomplishment of

116

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 achievement 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 Jia Kui, 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 inherent meanings.’ The ‘meanings’ are embedded in ‘what the names designate and what semantic categorizations are based on’ (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 the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty. 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 confusable 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, although 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.

t h e d i c t i o n a r y o f c h i n e s e c h a r a c t e r s a n d te r m s

117

Dong Zhongshu, the initiator of Neo-classic study in the Western Han Dynasty, 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 earth manifest 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 is meant following what is told to them by man 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 exploration 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

118

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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’. DCCT makes 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 motivation for 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

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

119

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 continuity 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.

120

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 motivation 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), Interpreting 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);

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

121

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 Vessels (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 DCCT would be more than twenty-seven chapters. According to The 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 range The target words of DCCT are the common words that ‘common people use for reference in everyday life’. This could be justiWed by what Liu Xi 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 ceremonies, 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.

122

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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–predicates, 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 (‘abandon (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 compounds, 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. tranquility’, 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 layout The 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

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

123

instance, the section on Interpreting Hardware in The Ready Guide was subclassiWed into smaller groups, such as Interpreting Silk, Interpreting Ornaments, Interpreting Beds and Curtains, Interpreting Implements, Interpreting Army, Interpreting Vehicle, Interpreting Vessels. Second, new categories were added, such as Interpreting Physical Shape, Interpreting 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, Interpreting Woods, Interpreting Birds, Interpreting Creatures, Interpreting Fishes, Interpreting 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 alterations 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 DCCT As 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

124

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 established’ (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 teeth on the comb are loose, in contrast to the number of teeth on a 比[篦] (a Wne-toothed comb). 比 refers to the type of comb on which 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 for people to associate it with 疏, thanks to the same pronunciation 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 in DCCT. 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 DCCT The Ready Guide adopted the semantic interpretation as its fundamental principle 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

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

125

from these two dictionaries in adopting phonetic interpretation as the chief means to explore the etymology of words. The deWnitions in these three dictionaries do indeed share some common features, but their dissimilarities are important 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 and An 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 pronunciation, through which 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 the meaning of words. 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

126

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

character sharing identical or similar pronunciations but also semantically or by means of explaining why it is phonetically interpreted. The interpretations in DCCT are 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 DCCT There 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’.)

t h e d i c t i o n a r y o f c h i n e s e c h a r a c t e r s a n d te r m s

127

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 DCCT The 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 pronunciation 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 are pronounced with the body of the tongue. 天 is deWned as 显 ‘apparent and high up’ and is pronounced with the tip of the tongue in the regions of Qing and Xu, where 天 means 坦 ‘Xat, high up, and distant’.)

128

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 and manner 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 cultural influence 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 ‘understanding diYcult words and dissipating confusion’ (Preface to DCCT). It follows 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.

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

129

Academic Value of DCCT The value of DCCT may 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 by Wang 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:

130

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

(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 it was compiled. The deWnitions of names and objects, in essence, are a summary of human knowledge and wisdom accumulated at a certain stage in the process of civilization. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the most outstanding scientists are Zhang Heng (张衡), Cai Lun (蔡伦), Zhang Zhongjing (张仲景), and Hua Tuo (华佗), whose achievements are marked by scientiWc sophistication. DCCT contains a rich collection of human thought and knowledge of its time, which generally includes (a) historical knowledge about science and technology; (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

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

131

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 DCCT The 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 Supplements 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 from The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms (<释名疏证>) by Bi Yuan (毕沅). It also includes supplementary annotations 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.

132

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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’. Yang Quan (杨泉), a scholar of the Jin Dynasty, says in his On 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 socalled ‘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 as money 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 characters designating things with a texture will always have a component – 力

the dictionary of chinese characters and terms

133

(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 DCCT emerged another signiWcant work exploring the etymology of Chinese characters – Interpreting Bigness (<释大>) by Wang Niansun. His contribution to the theory of ‘seeking semantics from phonetics’ is well embodied 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>) and Wang 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 INQUIRIES I N TO L E X I C O G R A P H I C A L ISSUES IN ANCIENT C H I NA : A SU RV EY

T

HE 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 and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures (<大藏音义>) by Hui Lin (see Qian 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

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

135

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 characterlearning 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 initiated. 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 resources 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

136

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 deWning words, 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. Dictionary making can be traced back about 4,000 years from a worldwide perspective 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

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

137

dictionaries in the history of Chinese lexicography. The relatively short history of modern lexicography does mean that the basic notions, principles, and methodologies 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 undergone systematic generalization, due to time limitation or other conceivable factors. They were mainly embodied in the dictionaries or wordbooks themselves, in their organization and treatment of each entry word. Only when the compilers felt it necessary would they discuss these lexicographic issues collectively 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 preQin 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 lexicography 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 making 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 Be´joint,

138

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

1994:115). Many scholars (see Zgusta, 1971; Be´joint, 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: descriptive, 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’ (Be´joint, 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 became 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 enlightenment, pedagogy, and standardization, hence The Ready Guide came into being. The didactic and standardization functions are still dominant in many dictionaries 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 naı¨ve and embryonic understanding 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

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

139

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 community’ 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 manifested an apparent evolutionary process – from simple character lists to character 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 categorization 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

140

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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), eventdenoting (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 explanatory (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 Categories. 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

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

141

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 the methodology of character interpretation. An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters attempted to analyse diachronically 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 complete 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 styles for 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 paradigmatic structure, i.e. the macrostructure, and the horizontal syntagmatic structure, 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

142

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 Lexicographical Publishing House.

Thematic arrangement Thematic 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 established 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 lexicographers are the pioneers who Wrst applied the thematic method of entry arrangement 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

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

143

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 Terms will be the landmark in the theoretical formation of thematic arrangement in the sense that its thematic arrangement is more systematic, 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 Glossary was 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 consanguinity, 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 the week, 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 between The 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 categories. These classiWcations need to be further divided into sub-categories.

144

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

Due to insuYcient theoretical and technological support at the time of compilation, there remains a great deal of room for improvement in semantic categorization and lexical grouping in The Ready Guide and The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms.

Classifying characters into diVerent sections The 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 arrangement, or rhyming arrangement. This principle and the criteria and methods 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 categories, 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.

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

145

Relating characters by the radicals shared It 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, characterized 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

146

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 sections’, 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-level format 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 description’ (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 information, 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.

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

147

Coverage For 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.

148

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 Characters must 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 important 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 multidimensional 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 interpretation The 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

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

149

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 lexicography 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 originate from the practice of compiling wordbooks and dictionaries but, in more remote times, from textbook compilation for children to learn Chinese characters. 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 Cangjie Primer, from which 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 interpretation (形训), and semantic interpretation (义训) in traditional Chinese philology. Moreover, interpretations on extended meanings or multiple meanings 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

150

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

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 innovations serve as precedents and incentives for lexicographers, exercising a profound 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 synonyms’. Thirdly, one character is deWned with several characters. This mode was

theoretical inquiries in ancient china

151

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 breakthrough in both the practice and theory of dictionary making. In the history of lexicography in China, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters made 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 Explanatory 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 lexicographical accomplishments are not known to the Western world even today.

Phonetic notation In ancient Chinese dictionaries, such as The Ready Guide and The Dictionary of Dialectal Words, no phonetic notation is provided because direct phonetic

152

genesis and emergence of lexicographical culture

notation is almost impossible without the creation of fanqie. Phonetic interpretation is employed throughout The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms, using concurrent phonetic notation, that is, alliteration or vowel rhyming, 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 pictophonetic 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.

Citations Either 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.

part iii

T H E E X P L O R AT I O N A N D C U LT I VAT I O N OF LEXICOGRAPHY IN CHINA (from the Wei Dynasty, 220–265 to the Yuan Dynasty, 1206–1368)

This page intentionally left blank

10

AN OV ERVIEW OF CHINESE LEXICOGRAPHICAL CULTURE DUR I N G T H E PERIOD OF EXPLORATION AND CULTIVATION

T

HE period from the Wei 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

156

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 preliminary application Buddhism 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, Buddhism was 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 revelation of seal cutting and inscription rubbing, some wiser monks engraved characters 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 tremendously, 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 Dynasties The 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

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

157

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 composition. 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 enthusiasm 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 Dynasty Although engraving technology was invented for printing, its signiWcance was not fully appreciated by those in power. The major means 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 Xinjiang 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

158

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

popular in the Tang Dynasty, the number of its followers increased dramatically and more scriptures needed to be translated and copied for them. For instance, among the books discovered in Dunhuang (敦煌), except for a small proportion of printed books, the majority of the scriptures of the Tang and Five Dynasties (907–960) were copied by hand. The fascination with 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 Dynasties The 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 graduate students, and demarcating the land that an academy could own and manage. Despite all this, these academies played an indispensable role in general education, talent training, and academic study and exchange of thought.

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

159

Printing in the Song Dynasty Since 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 nongovernmental. 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, philosophy, 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-governmental 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 the words ‘Printing by 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 economy. Academic studies, however, progressed at this time.

Academic studies from the Wei to the Northern and Southern Dynasties The 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,

160

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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, chorography, 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 ‘metaphysics’ (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 culture from wei to yuan

161

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 Dictionary of Initial Consonants by Li Deng of the Wei 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 Taoism in the Sui and Tang Dynasties The reuniWcation in the Tang Dynasty put an end to the independent development 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 dominant 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 dominance, which became the foundation of China’s national policies. Under the elite selection system in the Tang Dynasty, 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

162

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 gradually formed the enormous volumes of Buddhist Classics. DiVerent interpretations 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 Fahsiang (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>), The ClassiWed 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 environment 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 thirtyletter alphabet is known as follows:

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

163

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。

Shou Wen (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 and Yuan Dynasties Strictly 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 and meaning 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 philosophy 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

164

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 ‘truth must 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 ‘concoction’ 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 Yuan Dynasties 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, advancement, 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, representative 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 lexicography, 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.

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

165

10.3 an overall view between the wei and yuan dynasties The period between the Wei and the Yuan Dynasty, 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 standardize 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 period As 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 dictionary 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 Contemporary 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.

166

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

It became customary for dictionaries of this period to include discussions regarding formats and styles, though these discussions were still rather elementary, 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 compilation. The whole section is as long as 1,500 Chinese characters, much more detailed than its predecessors. The Preface to The ClassiWed Chapters also included 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. Consequently, 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

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

167

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 lexicography 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 implications of appendix essays and their correspondence with the body of the dictionary 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 making Generally 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 macrostructure of the dictionary in this period was characterized by further improvements 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 the macrostructure 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 to The Rhyme Dictionary

168

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

(<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 ordering. 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 userfriendly 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 character. 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 incorporating more than 10,000 characters into these volumes, which are ‘Wnely analysed 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 intellectual’ (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 by Wang 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.

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

169

As for the microstructure of a dictionary, its core component is made up of semantic information which is further manifested in phonetic notation, deWnition, and illustrative examples. Firstly, under the inXuence of fanqie and the fourtone 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 scriptures, 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

170

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 description 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 information was given to each animal or plant name, describing their shapes, properties, and functions with quotations from ancient books as evidence of textual research, 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 period The history of Chinese lexicography experienced a long period of exploration subsequent 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>) by Yan Yuansun (颜元孙), a Tang Dynasty scholar, enjoyed wide circulation and great popularity. The Tang Dynasty witnessed the appearance of a series of dictionaries and character glossaries whose major function was to codify and standardize, hence falling into the category of ‘codifying character dictionary’. In the period of the Southern and

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

171

Northern Dynasties, the oYcial script in the Han Dynasty 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 dictionaries being compiled to serve the purpose, namely The Character Models (<字样>) by Yan Shigu, The Collection of Characters from Five Classics (<五经文字>) by Zhang Shen (张参, 714?–786?), and The New Collection of Character Models from Nine Classics (<新加九经字样>) by Xuan Du (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 by Wang Zhu (王洙) and Hu Xiu (胡宿) et al., The Exegesis of Sixcategory 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 Luo Yuan (罗愿), and The Essentials of Augmented Ready Guide (<埤雅广要>) by Niu Zhong (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>) by Qiu 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

172

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes by Zhou Deqing of the Yuan Dynasty, 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 Lu Yiwei (卢以纬) in the Yuan Dynasty and The Gem Dictionary 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

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

173

ancient period, adopted the collective interpretation method to deal with the meanings of characters from diVerent classics and scriptures. It could be classiWed 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 the Wei 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>) by Chen 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 inXuence The 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 introduction of Buddhism, brought forth innovations in the format and style of dictionary 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

174

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 Rhymes might 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 principles, 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

lexicographical culture from wei to yuan

175

(<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 Interpretation 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 conventionalization of these formats and styles, a greater variety of dictionary types, close interaction with contemporary academic research, and Wnally the farreaching 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.

11

THE DEVELOPMEN T OF C H I N E S E C H A R AC T E R DIC TIONA R I ES

W

HETHER 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 the Wei to the Yuan Dynasty. New types of dictionaries emerged, new theories concerning dictionary compilation appeared, and new incentives for development materialized. All this formed a strong driving force for Chinese lexicography to progress and prosper.

11.1 the historical background 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 character variants, which was instrumental in the birth of ‘character model’ dictionaries. 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

development of character dictionaries

177

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 Meticulously 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 erroneous 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

178

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

the contemporary: on some occasions, the same interpretation is suitable for diVerent characters, and, on other occasions, the same character allows for diVerent interpretations – 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; secondly, 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>, 100 volumes) 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 dictionaries 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.

development of character dictionaries

179

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 Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters was carried out by Li Yangning in the Tang Dynasty and the Brothers of Xu Xuan and Xu Kai (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 Junior Xu’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;

180

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

(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 meaning 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 Character 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

development of character dictionaries

181

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. A wood is divine and it cannot be secularly named. Its pronunciation is 赪 indicating ‘full-bloodied (赤) faithfulness (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 law of the world can be grasped’ (from The Collected Works of Wang Anshi (<王文公文集>), Volume 8). He also composed a poem which 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 compiling 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 discussed 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

182

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 expressing 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 understanding 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 Explanatory 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 Categories 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.

development of character dictionaries

183

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 lexicographical 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 Yuan Dynasty, inquiries into lexicographic issues were 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 to write An 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 supplement what has been left out in The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes’, embracing ‘names of states and counties’, ‘tales and legends, origins of family names, local produces, names of mountains and rivers, grasses and woods, birds, beasts, worms and Wsh’. As for phonetic notation and deWnition, Lu Deming pointed out that the

184

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

pronunciation of a character in a dictionary should be ‘put in the Wrst 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 and Meanings 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 dictionary 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 fundamental 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. Dictionary 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 dictionary making and the level of lexicographical research were noticeably enhanced.

development of character dictionaries

185

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 dictionaries 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 conWnements 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

186

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 subsequently 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.

development of character dictionaries

18 7

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 government 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 Characters: 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 extensively 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 Characters. Jiang Shi himself once commented on the dictionary that ‘it has removed

188

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

redundant characters’. It proved highly beneWcial for exegetic studies and dialectal 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 Characters, 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 in An 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:

development of character dictionaries

189

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 diVerentiation 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 methodologically 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 of Minute 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 instance, 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

190

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 characters 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

development of character dictionaries

191

would be noted after the character and sometimes its xiaozhuan form was 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 of many of its unique characteristics: . For characters with the same pronunciation but diVerent forms, they are coreferred; . 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. following 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 selfevident, 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 Explanatory 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

192

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

new method surprises the whole academic world’ (Han Daosheng: Preface to The MagniWcent Chapters). In 1208, Han Daozhao, the second son of Han Xiaoyan, 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 Chapters: 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 characters. 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 some representative 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 sixtythree. 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>), in addition 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 28 March, 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 Gu Yewang 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 Chapters was not directly ordered by the Emperor but by the prince – Taizong. In the ninth year of Datong in Emperor

development of character dictionaries

193

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 Sun Qiang (孙强) in the Tang Dynasty (674) and by Chen Pengnian and others in the Song Dynasty (1013). After all these revisions The Jade Chapters was 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 fundamentally 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

194

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

of its meaning. Some explanations are supported by citations and there are also situations where citations are directly employed as ‘deWnitions’. For those characters 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 characters 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 correspondences, court verdicts and legal charges. It is the Wrst character dictionary to diVerentiate the formal features of Chinese characters. Though originating from

development of character dictionaries

195

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 Interpretation 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

196

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

of characters in the classics and scriptures in the tradition of Yan’s Manual of Character Models, The New Manual of Character Models from Classics 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 cotextual 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 and writing 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 particularly 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 Fivescale 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>) and with much revision, amendments, and augmentation. The motivation 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

development of character dictionaries

197

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 Chinese 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 pictophonetic 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

198

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 characters. 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 diVerentiates 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 compilation in the Song Dynasty. The Dragon Shrine Character Manual was 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 renamed 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

development of character dictionaries

199

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 interpretation. 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 1181 with 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 dictionary 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 dictionary is not only useful for reading The Records of the Historian and The Book of

200

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 Discrimination (<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 pronunciations in voicing and rhyming, and characters whose pronunciations are confusable, 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 morphological 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 discrimination, dealing with the characters with the same spelling but diVerent pronunciations. 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

development of character dictionaries

201

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 meaning, 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 Sixcategory Chinese Characters (<六书本义>), The Overall Exegesis of Six-category Chinese 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

202

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

(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 inscriptions. 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 categories, i.e. self-explanatory and phonetic loaning, they are mainly based on the research conducted by the compiler himself.

11.5 the academic value and cultural 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 facilitated 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 generations is profound and far-reaching in their megastructural design, in their format and style, and in their theoretical explorations.

development of character dictionaries

203

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 dictionary 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 extensive, 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 lexicographical studies lies in radical simpliWcation and stroke-based character arrangement. 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:

204

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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. Consequently, 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 sun without 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 indispensable 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 OF C H I N E S E WO R D DICTIONA R I ES

B

ETWEEN 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 attached 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.

12.1 the historical background 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

206

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 knowledge 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

development of word dictionaries

207

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 understanding 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 semantic 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 academic 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 introduction and translation of Buddhist scriptures, the Indian and Chinese cultures

208

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

began to converge and exert inXuence upon each other, which promoted intercultural communication. There were some new words introduced from Buddhism 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

development of word dictionaries

209

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: Since An Explanatory Dictionary 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

210

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

(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 Sixcategory 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 thematic meaning. Fourth, more attention has been given to etymological investigation. 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 dealing with sense relations of Chinese words, proposed that ‘the meaning 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: In Mao 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 pronunciation 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.

development of word dictionaries

211

The principle of borrowed pronunciation carrying its meaning with it applies to those phonetically loaned characters. Let us have a look at the following 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 contemporary counterparts; (f) for those deviational characters resulting from circulation or copying, collate them and identify the proper one. In phonetic notation, work has been done to the diYcult characters, those with diVerent pronunciations, 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

212

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

phenomena. It is certain that quotations from the dialects and explanations of grammatical phenomena did not fall into the scope of previous wordbooks and dictionaries. What is especially worth noting is the appearance in the period of the Wei 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: 1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 6 (a) N ! V: * 2 level tone to there is ‘枕, 藉首木也, 章荏切。首在木曰枕, 章鸠切’. * rising tone, Category III. 3) entering tone to falling tone, Category IV. 1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 2 (b) V ! N: * 2 falling tone to level tone, there is ‘数, 计也, 色主切。数, 计目也, 尸故切’. * Category II. 1 rising tone to entering tone, Category I. For instance, in (c) V ! Adj.: * 2 falling tone to Volume 2 there is ‘数, 计也, 色主切。数, 屡, 色角切’. * level tone, Category II. 3) level tone to rising tone, Category III. 1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume (d) Adj. ! V: * 2 falling tone to level 1 there is ‘近, 迩也, 真谨切。近, 附也, 其靳切’. * tone, Category II. 3) falling tone to entering tone, Category IV. 1 rising tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 1 (e) N ! Adj.: * 2 fallthere is ‘跛, 足疾也, 波我切。跛, 偏任切, 彼义切, <礼>: 立无跛’. * ing tone to level tone, Category II.

development of word dictionaries

213

1 level tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in (f) Adj. ! N: * Volume 2 there is ‘敦, 厚也, 都屯切。敦, 器也, 都队切, <礼>: 珠盘玉 2 falling tone to level tone, Category II. 敦’. * (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’. 1 (i) Nouns without a change in part of speech but with a change in tone: * level 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. * 1 level (j) Verbs without a change in part of speech but with a change in tone: * tone to falling tone, Category I. For instance, in Volume 1 there is ‘分, 别也, 府 2 level tone to rising tone, Category III. 文切。分, 限也, 扶问切’. * (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 some representative word dictionaries The word dictionaries of the ancient Chinese language in the period from the Wei 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 Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures.

214

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 contemporary and ancient books and his argumentation was logical and convincing. Later, when Kong Yingda et al. were ordered to compile The RectiWed Interpretation 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 comprises 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 compilation 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 discarded’. Where disputes arose, they would be judged against the many notes added by scholars in the Han and Wei Dynasties. Thus, The RectiWed Interpretation 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 underwent 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 transformations made it very diYcult for people to read Pre-Qin classic literature. After a survey of various opinions

development of word dictionaries

215

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’s Spring 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 Filial Virtues, The Analects of Confucius, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and The Ready Guide. These classic works are arranged in chronological order and the quotations for interpreting 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) in Wei, 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

216

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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, Hengshan 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 mountains, 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>), and Standard Words, the appreciation and explanations of The Songs of Chu and Fupoems of the Han Dynasty, the records of divination combined with the mystical Confucian belief in the Qin and Han Dynasties and the diVerent theories contained in The Cangjie Primer, The Exegetic Primer, The Pangxi Primer, The Dictionary of

development of word dictionaries

217

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 Guide was 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 Supplements 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 Interpreting Fishes (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 ninetyWve were plant names, 189 were animal names, and thirteen were astrological

218

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 explanations 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 researchers 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

development of word dictionaries

219

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 semantically 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 treatment 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

220

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 individually 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 Dictionary 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 meanings 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 scriptures – 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.

development of word dictionaries

221

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 redundant 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 characteristics’. 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

222

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 and Meanings 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

CLASSIF I ED DIC TIONARI ES – T H E E N C YC LO P E D I C DICTIONA RY I N A N C I E N T C H I NA

A

CCORDING 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 dictionaries 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 encyclopedic dictionary in this chapter.

13.1 the historical background to the birth 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

224

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 advantage 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 other members 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 familiarize 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

emergence of classified dictionaries

225

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 dictionaries 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 megastructural conWguration, i.e. explicitly labelled classiWcations and sections, and the microstructure of The Lu¨ Survey (<吕览>) as the prototype of its microstructure. 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 by Du Gongzhan (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

226

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 Tang Dynasty, 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 Empress Wu 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 Hu Meng 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

emergence of classified dictionaries

227

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>, Wfteen volumes) 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 volumes) 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

228

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 important classified 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

emergence of classified dictionaries

229

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 common with a comprehensive encyclopedic 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 incarnations, emperors and kings, queens and princess, crown prince, human beings, rites, music, positions and oYcials, investiture, politics, criminal law, scribble, military, arms and weapons, settlements, industries, garments and hats, ceremonial ornaments, clothing ornaments, 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 the Wrst place, followed by theme-related poems. The works 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 combination’ (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 were mistakenly 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

230

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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>). The book 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 500 million characters in size. The book was classiWed into WftyWve parts – heaven, time sequence, earth, emperors and kings, chiefs of feudal princes, imperial relations, states and shires, residences, feudal systems, positions

emergence of classified dictionaries

231

and oYcials, soldiers, personnel, hermits, relatives of the same clan, rites, music, culture, study, administration, criminal law, Buddhism, Taoism, ceremonies, dressing badges, dressing utensils, arts of necromancy, diseases, arts and crafts, implements, 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 catalogue 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 ordered Wang 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, maternal 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 guardian, 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

232

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 compositions 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 involving sixteen categories, the second thirteen volumes involving nineteen categories, 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 procedures 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

emergence of classified dictionaries

233

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’ diagrams; 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, Xagmaking; in the musical category, there are diagrams of diVerent musical instruments; 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 illustrative 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 Collection (<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, administration, empowerment, arts and literature, calligraphy, crafts, utensils, miracles, alien things, falsehood, humour, jottings, medicine, etc. In his Introduction to the book, he stated:

234

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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, biographies, administrative schemes and regulations, examination systems, philosophy, 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 engineering, 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 characteristics in its content and style and came 300 years earlier than the Wrst book on botanic history in the West.

emergence of classified dictionaries

235

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 scientiWc 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 citations 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

236

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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

R H Y M E D I C T I O NA R I E S – A SPECIAL DICTIONARY TYPE I N ANCIENT C H I NA

I

N 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): ‘dictionaries 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 dictionary’ 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

238

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 background to 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 Dynasties 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 succession. Consequently, there was a melting pot of people from diVerent nations. There were more opportunities to communicate in diVerent languages or dialects, 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 stimulates 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

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

239

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 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, <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 Buddhism was 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

240

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 pronunciations 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 introduced 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 Characters and Terms, were there established the methods of analogy and phonetic loaning to

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

241

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

242

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 Wvecharacter-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

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

243

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 growth of rhyme dictionaries Rhyme dictionaries were compiled for examining pronunciation and diVerentiating 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.

244

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

As mentioned in The Book of the Sui Dynasty, The Dictionary of Initial Consonants originally consisted of ten volumes. According to Characters (<文字>), the second volume 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 according to the Wve tones without further division into sections’. Possibly, for each tone, there should be two volumes. Its arrangement diVered from An Explanatory Dictionary 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 similarities and diVerences of the previous rhyme dictionaries in the diVerentiation 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

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

245

Dictionary of Initial Consonants started a new era of compiling special dictionaries – rhyme dictionaries, and established the format and style for rhyme dictionaries and other dictionaries to follow.

14.3 a brief analysis of some important 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 only Wnd some remnant volumes and pages 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 a milestone 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 were modelled on it. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhangsun Neyan (长孙讷言) and Guo Zhixuan (郭知玄) started to revise it and the revision was Wnished in 677. Then, Wang Renxu (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 to The Tang Dictionary 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 renamed The Revised Dictionary of Rhymes of the Song Dynasty (<大宋重修广韵>), shortened to The Dictionary of Rhymes.

246

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 characters. 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 Explanatory 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.

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

247

(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 interpretation of character meanings. As for its format and style, The Dictionary of Rhymes normally gave the deWnition of a character in the Wrst 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 accordingly. 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-used with 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).

248

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

(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).

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

249

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 pronunciations. 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 interpretation 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

250

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 appropriate 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 in The Dictionary of Rhymes are more 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 Dictionary 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 expressions 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

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

251

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. Subsequently, 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 Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes, The Dictionary of Rhymes, The Rhyme Dictionary, and The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites. The rhyme classiWcation 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 according to the seven sounds, four degrees, and the thirty-six-alphabet. The classiWcation of rhyme sections and initial consonant types are all based on the actual situation of language use at that time. The most 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

252

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 Cipoems 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 influence of 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

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

253

important role in standardizing and facilitating Chinese literary production, but their role was much neglected both as part of and as a propeller for lexicographical 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 selection, 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

254

exploration and cultivation of lexicography

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 VeriWcation 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, and Notes 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>), The ClassiWed Characters (<字类>), On Composition (<纂文>), The Exegetic Interpretation 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 RectiWcation of Popular Words (<证俗文>), The Dictionary of Initial Consonants, The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes, The Sound Family (<音谱>), etc. Those citations have 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

emergence of rhyme dictionaries

255

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.

This page intentionally left blank

part iv

THE REFORM AND SHAPING OF LEXICOGRAPHY IN CHINA (from the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644 to the Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911)

This page intentionally left blank

15

A N I N S I G H T I N TO C H I N E S E LEXICOGRAPHICAL CULTURE IN THE MING AND QING DYNA STIES

T

HE Ming and Qing Dynasties were a special period in China’s social development, during which China saw great economic prosperity and weakness, 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 increasingly evident expansion in the social, cultural, and academic inXuence dictionaries exerted. All this highlights the distinctively conspicuous features of the evolution in dictionary compilation, research and style.

15.1 the historical background to the reform and shaping of chinese lexicography Printing in the prosperous period of the Ming Dynasty With 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, like wood type, copper type, lead

260

reform and shaping of lexicography

type, register printing, biconcave printing, wax printing, copy printing, and photolithograph 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 in which 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, which was 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 to write with a brush, with a piece of transparent paper spread on the Song Dynasty block-printed models and depicting every stroke, with a view to making 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 the way for the development and spread of dictionaries in the Ming and Qing 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 Dynasties OYcial education in the Ming 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

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

261

included province-owned schools (府学), state-owned schools (州学), prefectureowned 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 were medical schools (医学), martial arts schools (武学), and Yin Yang (Astronomy) schools (阴阳学), which undertook vocational education, 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, prefectureowned 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 attention was 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 evaluation was 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 administration of education and intensiWcation of the role of education. The development and popularization of education created social needs for dictionaries.

Academies of classical learning in the Ming and Qing Dynasties The 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

262

reform and shaping of lexicography

(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 bestknown 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 Dynasties As 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 the Ming 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 the monopolization and loss of books. The institutions for book collection located in the capital city were generally called ‘Court Collection of Books’ (内廷藏书), the biggest of which was the Wenyuan Library (文渊阁). All the oYcials working in the

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

263

Wenyuan Library were chosen from among those who had passed imperial examinations, particularly those who had served as oYcials in the Imperial Academy. Those institutions of high reputation outside the capital were the Wenhui 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 Strategies was in the charge of the Ministry of Military and Political AVairs. 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 the beginning years of the Qing Dynasty. ‘Red books’ refer to memorials to the throne, which were read through and commented on by the Emperor using red writing brushes. ‘Honest records’ are the books on the histories of former emperors. The organizations for book collection in the Ming and Qing Dynasties provided precious literature and materials for the compilation and study of dictionaries of the time.

The reform of the educational system in the Qing Dynasty Originating 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, which was diVerent from that of preparing people for imperial examinations and to be government oYcials. The content of teaching mainly focused on Western 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 arrangements. 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

264

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 intellectuals 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 motivations for the development of dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

15.2 the academic background to the reform and shaping 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 by Zhu Xi was 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>), and A Complete Collection of Philosophical Essays (<性理大全>) revised by the oYcial scholars, the academic spirit came to be guided by the ideas of Zhu Xi 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

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

265

helped scholars free themselves from the shackles of books. Second, he transformed the realm of the sages from being both sacred inside and royal outside into the realm of being sacred only, which greatly promoted scholars’ selfconWdence. 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 diVusion 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 summarizing 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 geography 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, experienced 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

266

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 Lu¨xiang (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 Confucianism 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 standards 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

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

267

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 Manchurian language be compiled and entitled The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language (<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 Compendium 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 compilation 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 accomplishments 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 essentially 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,

268

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 transformation in the late Qing Dynasty, the learning of the Qing Dynasty still functioned as groundwork. The scholars in the late Qing Dynasty, resorting to methods of modern Western 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 ming and 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

l e x i c o g r a p h i c a l c u l t u r e f r o m m i n g to q i n g

269

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 dictionaries The compliers of character dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties not only adopted the merits of the preceding wordbooks and dictionaries but also managed 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 dictionaries The dictionaries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties could be approximately segmented 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 dictionaries 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>) by Wu Yujin (吴玉搢) of the Qing Dynasty, and The Alternating Ready Guide (<叠雅>) by Shi Menglan (史梦兰) of the Qing Dynasty. The Ready Guide 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 replenishing The Dictionary of Dialectical Words and new compilations. The dialect dictionaries of the Ming Dynasty include The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words <方言据> by Yue Yuansheng (岳元声), A Categoric Dictionary of Dialectal Words (<方言类聚>) by ChenYujiao (陈与郊), and The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect. The more

270

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 as New 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 Hu Wenying, 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 practicality 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 of The 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 Interpretative 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 dictionaries The Ming and Qing Dynasties witnessed the early Xowering of bilingual dictionaries in China. There appeared a large number of Chinese bilingual dictionaries and specialized dictionaries, including not only the medium-sized dictionary

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

271

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 dictionaries In 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 European missionaries 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-volume A Dictionary 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 A Complete Collection 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>) by Wang Hao (汪灏) in the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty 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 the Qing Dynasty and was the earliest to check and inquire into historical place names of previous dynasties, The Compendium of Materia Medica (<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 dictionaries The 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 Compendium, a classiWed dictionary, was well known around the world. The Compendium

272

reform and shaping of lexicography

of Ancient and Contemporary Books, compiled successively by Chen Menglei (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 Zhang Ying (张英) and Wang 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 dictionaries The 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 Interpretative 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 bestdeveloped stylistic rules and formats for Chinese character dictionary compilation, 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 signiWcant 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

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

273

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 ameliorated 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 characters 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 and meaning’, 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 dictionaries. Fifth, illustrative citations were to a large extent improved and strengthened. The previous character glossaries and dictionaries contained no illustrative

274

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 Dynasties, 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.

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

275

15.4 the characteristics of dictionary making in 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 dictionary 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 incongruity 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 microstructure. 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 dictionary of folk words, i.e. The Dictionary of Popular Words, and the Wrst etymological 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

276

reform and shaping of lexicography

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, represented by The Ready Guide, An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, and The Dictionary of Rhymes respectively, indicating three clear-cut paths of evolution 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, wellconceived 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 Compendium 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

lexicographical culture from ming to qing

277

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 dictionaries 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 retrieval. 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 Chinese character dictionaries and word dictionaries, was formulated during the

278

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 diYculties, and ancient Chinese dictionaries were compiled to meet such needs. Consequently, 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 standardized 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 dictionaries 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

l e x i c o g r a p h i c a l c u l t u r e f r o m m i n g to q i n g

279

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 classiWcation 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 knowledge 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 OF C H I N E S E C H A R AC T E R DIC TIONA R I ES

T

HE 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 background in 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 nationalities led to the comprehensive development of the cultural undertaking, which in turn greatly accelerated the political union and social stabilization. The

formation of character dictionaries

281

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 allinclusive 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

282

reform and shaping of lexicography

systematic dictionary format, these encyclopedic dictionaries are not only unparallelled 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 Imperial 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 commented 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 pronunciations’ 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 Xourishing 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 dictionary compilation 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

formation of character dictionaries

283

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 Fu merely 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 Characters. 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 achievements in diVerentiating various forms of Chinese characters. Among the ‘Four Masters’, Duan Yucai and Zhu Junsheng were undoubtedly the most distinguished. Duan Yucai, whose courtesy name was Ruoying with Maotang 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

284

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 Categories 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 signiWcant 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 Dictionary 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, Philosophy, 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 Yunqian, was born in Wuxian County, Jiangsu Province in 1788 and died in 1858.

formation of character dictionaries

285

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 teachings 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 homophonic 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 interchangeability 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 dictionary 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 theoretical foundation for polysemic studies and the theoretical basis for the detailed

286

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 pronunciation 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 style in the ming and qing dynasties The dictionaries prior to the Ming Dynasty were mostly modelled on An Explanatory 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 Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters with extensive innovations in its format, which was representative of Chinese character dictionaries. Mei Yingzuo simpliWed the radicals in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, established 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

formation of character dictionaries

287

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 Contemporary 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 included 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 character, 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

288

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 characters 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 blockprinted 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 dictionary 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

formation of character dictionaries

289

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 phonetic 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 meanings 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 publication of the new edition of Ci Hai, which is an obvious manifestation of the profound inXuence of the principle.

290

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 masterpieces of 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 Characters. 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 attributed 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 Wenying, 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 characters were improved and enhanced in the light of the format of The Comprehensive

formation of character dictionaries

291

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 Dictionary 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

292

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 occupies 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 Guidelines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds and Rhymes, with sixteen parts and twentyfour 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, A Collection of Rhymes (<韵会>), The Dictionary of 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 meanings 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)

formation of character dictionaries

293

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 of character 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 dictionaries 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 Characters, 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 dictionary 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,

294

reform and shaping of lexicography

and meanings illustrated in other dictionaries or collected from common examples 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 collection. 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 two words 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 while The 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 pronunciation, 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 exempliWcation by paying greater attention to the integrality of quoted examples and

formation of character dictionaries

295

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 compilation 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 compilation. 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 Comprehensive 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 diVerences 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 pronunciations 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 listed with the titles of the texts and arranged in chronological order.

296

reform and shaping of lexicography

Fourthly, this dictionary carries on the inheritance and development of previous 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 Comprehensive 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 Characters, and these are summarizations and simpliWcations in The RectiWed Dictionary 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 achievement 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

formation of character dictionaries

297

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 OF CHINESE WORD DIC TIONA R I ES

T

HE character dictionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties occupy a signiWcant 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 dictionaries 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).

17.1 the historical background 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

formation of word dictionaries

299

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 interpretation would 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 the Ming and Qing 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 ‘rulegoverning’ 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 academic 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.

300

reform and shaping of lexicography

17.2 the evolution of lexicographical theories in 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 methodology 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 interchangeable 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 methodology for commanding this system, stating that characters had their basic meaning, 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

formation of word dictionaries

301

Autumn Classics (<春秋经杀弑二字辨别考>) (see A Collection 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 quotations 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 style in 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.

302

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 exempliWcations 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 discrimination 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 involving ‘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

formation of word dictionaries

303

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 summarization 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 Dialect made 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.

304

reform and shaping of lexicography

17.4 a brief introduction to the masterpieces of 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 provided 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 family The most immediate inXuence of the publication of The Ready Guide on the evolution of Chinese culture over the past two thousandyears Wnds expression in the formation of 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 dictionaries derived from each of them have collectively woven the three main historical threads of the development of Chinese dictionaries. Compared with 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, essentially shaping their particular compiling styles, formats, and patterns. The Rhythmical Ready Guide was compiled by Zhu Mouwei in 1587. Zhu Mouwei, whose courtesy names were Mingfu and Yuyi and who was from Haozhou, had perused a wide collection of classics and historical works. He was acquainted with 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 on Lu’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.

formation of word dictionaries

305

The dictionary mostly provided the classiWcation and explanation of alliterated or two-syllable rhymed compounds collected from the classics, historical and philosophical 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 dictionary was divided into thirteen categories, explaining archaic words, exegetic words, appellations, words for buildings, garments and foods, utensils, astronomy, geography, herbs, woods, insects, worms and Wshes, birds and beasts. The Rhythmical Ready Guide was helpful in the study of alliterative or rhyming compounds. Its major defect resulted from Zhu Mouwei’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 institutions; 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

306

reform and shaping of lexicography

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>, thirteen volumes), 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 scriptures 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 indispensability 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, astronomy, 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 Dissertation, 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, common 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 the Western Regions, Holy Mountains 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

formation of word dictionaries

307

animals, such as insects, aquatics (including reptiles), various kinds of birds and beasts, etc.; (h) utensils and stuV, such as instruments and vestments for Buddhist 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, doctrines, and analects. However, the linguistic obscurity of the translations required additional annotation of the words and characters from the scriptures. Furthermore, indexing in most translations turned out to be inconvenient. By contrast, The Buddhist Ready Guide distinguishes itself with its highly convenient arrangement 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>), and The 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 explanation 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 distinguished themselves with their concentrated specialization and elaborated classiWcation. 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

308

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 documented 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 dictionaries 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 thirteenvolume 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 convergence 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

formation of word dictionaries

309

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 interchangeability, 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 rectiWcation of various feudal superstitions handed down from previous dynasties. The dictionary, being phonetics-oriented, employed the method of phonetic interpretation in its endeavour to annotate The Ready Guide and explain and diVerentiate 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 family The 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 dictionaries 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 Interpretation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Qian Yi, and Supplements to the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words by Wang Niansun; (b) dictionaries 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

310

reform and shaping of lexicography

Words with Supplements by Cheng Xianjia, and New Supplements to the Augmented 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 Dictionary 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 Dialect was compiled by Li Shi, who lived in seclusion in Suzhou for thirty years after the fall of the Ming 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 sociolinguistics gained some momentum. The background to and motive for Li Shi’s compilation 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 Fu Dingmiao (傅定淼, Fu Dingmiao, 1987), Li Shi’s year of birth was 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

formation of word dictionaries

311

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 Kangxi while 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 instruments, 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 and was 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 of Wu 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 documentation 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 Changzhou, Wuxi, and Suzhou regions and arranged them in twelve volumes, Wrst according to the pingshui rhyme and then the order of the four tones. Each entry was signiWed by the original form of the character, which was 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

312

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 dictionaries 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 explanation Although 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 compilation with Sun Yuanru (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 names were Boyuan and Yuntai, had been appointed Grand Scholar of Tiren Library and Governor of Hunan and Hubei, Guangdong and Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces. The compilation was carried out during his oYce of Administrator of Education in Zhejiang Province. Led by Zang Yongtang (臧镛堂, also Zang Yong, 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, 349 Chinese 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

formation of word dictionaries

313

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 Dictionary were 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. Polyphonic characters were categorized according to diVerent rhymes into their respective 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 word dictionaries 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 ideologies 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

314

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 developments 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 signiWcance to Chinese exegesis. The General Ready Guide made 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. Regardless 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.

formation of word dictionaries

315

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 summarization concerning dictionary format became more 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 interchangeability 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 compilation 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 exempliWcation 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 exemplifying 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.

316

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 Dictionary 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 justiWable 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 summarization 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.

formation of word dictionaries

317

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 comparative 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 conditions, 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 linguistic 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

318

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 compilation 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 AND REFORMATION OF SPECIAL AND E N C YC LO P E D I C DICTIONARIES IN CHINA

A

S indicated in the Introduction, dictionaries are classiWed into two major categories – general and special dictionaries – on the basis of their functions. 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 classiWed 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.

320

reform and shaping of lexicography

18.1 the historical background in the ming 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 surrounding 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 Principles (<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. When Wei Yuan wrote An Illustrated

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

321

Gazette of Overseas States, he mainly quoted from two kinds of books, that is, those written by Chinese scholars, involving oYcial history books, decrees and regulations, 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 comparison 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 the ming 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 the Ming and Qing Dynasties, 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

322

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 history of China, Xu Guangqi’s major contributions resided in the introduction of science and technology and research methodology from the West, and the research he himself conducted. In 1606, together with Matteo Ricci, he translated Euclid’s Elements (<几何原本>) into Chinese. Geometry was mainly 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 summarized 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 combination 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

323

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 investigations into the preservation of the eVectiveness of the medicine. The Compendium of Materia Medica put forward many signiWcant points in the light of the theories established in Classic Internal Medicine (<内经>). Almost every argument in The Compendium of Materia Medica is supported by citations from classic medical works, laying emphasis on the basic theories of Chinese medicine, 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 mechanisms 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.

324

reform and shaping of lexicography

18.3 the analysis of format and style in 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: A Dictionary 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 pronunciation 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, and Anthology. If a word or a phrase cooccurs in several books, the Wrst quotation is usually the original one, with the others in chronological order. The ‘Supplement’ is followed by antithetical quotations (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 quotations’ 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

325

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 Lu¨xiang (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 Lu¨xiang (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 classiWcation; the notion 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, 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.

326

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 indispensable 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 of Materia Medica is the most 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 pharmacology 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 contemporary 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

327

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, geography, 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 paragraphs from a wide range of sources and without any revision or modiWcation. Though such a practice gives the impression of inconsistency, it has wholesomely 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 extremely 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’.

328

reform and shaping of lexicography

18.4 a short analysis of some representative dictionaries 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 dictionaries, 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 words A 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 Dictionary 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 included The Annals of Tangyi County (<堂邑县志>) and The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words. The latter (Wve volumes) was published in 1711 with a coverage of 476 function characters (or words) from the Classics, Histories, Philosophy, and Anthology, in addition to those from poetry and colloquial

evolution of special & encyclopedic dictionaries

329

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 characteristics 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 interpretation (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), interrogation (疑辞), exclamation (咏叹辞), abruption (急辞), recuperation (缓辞), initiative (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), terminator (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, a well-known Qing Dynasty scholar of exegetic studies. It was Wnished 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>). The Dictionary of Function Words 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 function words, 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 Function Words 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 conWguration, from An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which was of radical classiWcation, and from The Dictionary of Rhymes, which was of rhyme classiWcation. It was arranged according to the initial consonants of the 160 head characters, 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

330

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 consonantbased 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 messiness. 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 expressions Dictionaries 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 dictionary 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 expressions in the Ming and Qing Dynasties are Proverbs of the Yue Dialect, Proverb Couplets 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 Yue Dialect was compiled by Fan Yin (范寅, 1830–1911, or 1827–1897 according to another account), who was 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 and published in three volumes in 1882. The Wrst volume dealt with language and consisted of eighteen texts, namely meditating on past events,

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

331

present warnings 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 Expressions’, 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 by Wang 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 the Wu 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 interpreted. The arrangement of the entries was also delicate, innovative, and interesting. 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.

332

reform and shaping of lexicography

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, etiquette, congratulations and invitations, items, behaviours, communication, circumstances, 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

333

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 and Wuju Rhyme Dictionary, i.e. ‘things are characteroriented, and characters are governed by rhymes’. In addition to these two rhyme dictionaries, there were also extensive collections from Classics, Histories, Philosophy, 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,

334

reform and shaping of lexicography

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. A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations (thirty-two volumes) was compiled by Liang 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 Emperor, the wives 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 Demography, 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 v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

335

(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, Department 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 carpenters; (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, matchmakers, 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 dictionaries Specialized 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

336

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 characterized 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 distinguished pharmacologist of the Ming Dynasty. Li Shizhen, whose courtesy name was as Dong Bi, was born in Qizhou, present-day Qichun County, Hubei Province. He gave up the opportunity to becoming an oYcial but took his father as a role model to follow. He pursued medicine 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

337

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 appearance 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 Shizhen made a reference to more than 800 medical books and cited from 758 medical books. Through careful investigation and veriWcation, he rectiWed the errors in Materia 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 everywhere 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 8 November 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, two more volumes on related sericultural aVairs, four on planting, one on animal husbandry, one on manufacturing, and eighteen volumes on relieving famines. It was in 1635 that Chen Zilong borrowed the original manuscript from the grandson of Xu Guanngqi and presented it to the Imperial Inspector in Yingtian (i.e. Nanjing, present-day Jiangsu Province), Zhang Guowei (张国维) who appreciated its value and commended it as

338

reform and shaping of lexicography

‘a book of everlasting value for state management’. Chen Zilong then presented it to Fang Yuegong (方岳贡) for review, who was 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 Dynasties The 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

339

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 Emperor 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, culture, education, literature, arts, history, geography and agriculture, industry, astronomy, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, medicine, construction 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 Compendium was so enormous that it was diYcult to print. It could only be hand-copied and the only copy was stored at Wenyuan 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

340

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 Compendium 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 Yuanlong, 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 Fupoems 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

evolution of special & encyclopedic dictionaries

341

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, drinking 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, furniture, 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 geological 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, embroidery, damask, gauze, damask silk, silk yarn, gunny cloth, cotton cloth, Wreproofed 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.

342

reform and shaping of lexicography

18.5 the academic value and influence of special and 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 instantiated 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 comprehensively studying the examples – observing the contexts in which they were used

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

343

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 learners’ 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 reference books for consulting the meaning of proverbs, dialectal colloquial expressions 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 compiled 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 lexicography in China. In terms of linguistic data, the materials involved in A Dictionary 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

344

reform and shaping of lexicography

Materia Medica is a monumental work in the lexicographical history of China. It accumulates massive valuable experience for later generations of special dictionaries, encyclopedic dictionaries, and encyclopedias: it has improved the method of the categoric arrangement of entries, highlighted the role of entries in explaining 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, production, 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 dictionary, 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 encyclopedias. 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

e v o l u t i o n o f s p e c i a l & en c y c l o p e d i c d i c t i o n a r i e s

345

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 concerning 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 history 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.

346

reform and shaping of lexicography

The Yongle Compendium also adopts an editing policy of exhaustiveness, speciWcity, and completeness, which is of signiWcance to the compilation of encyclopedias. 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 AND FO RMATION OF R H YME D I C T I O NA R I E S I N T H E MING AND QI N G DYNASTIES

L

IKE 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 the ming 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 discriminate speech sounds, and to assist literati in composing poems or fu-poems. At the very beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes was compiled. In the Preface, the author, Song Lian, mentioned his motivation for compilation: Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang happened to consult rhyme dictionaries and

348

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 summoned the oYcials who were 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 contemporary 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 lexicographical theories 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,

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

349

especially the Qing Dynasty, reached the peak of ancient phonological studies in China. Chen Di, a Ming Dynasty scholar, initiated the scientiWc studies of phonology 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 pronunciation, 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

350

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 supportive 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 achievements made 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 the Qing Dynasty. He wrote The VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

351

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 character must 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 achievements 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

352

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 the ming 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>) are rhyme 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

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

353

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 Manchurian 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.

354

reform and shaping of lexicography

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 entitled General Rhymes (<通韵>), because twenty basic rhyme sections were 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), mouthclosing (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 breathingouts’ to the arrangement of the characters. ‘For rhymes, there are four breathingouts, seven basic sounds, and thirty-one classes. There is ‘‘open’’ or ‘‘close’’ for breathing-outs, gong (宫) or shang (商) for sound discrimination, 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

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

355

Wei Gen Xuan (<味根轩韵学>) and published in 1888. It consisted of twentyWve 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>) Wrst listed 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 wellestablished method for serious study to approach from their diVerent ways of pronunciations. 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. Diagrams 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 categorized 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 consonants 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 tones into 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 were made 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 liproundings. Within each type were listed the Wve tones – yin-levelling, yanglevelling, 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

356

reform and shaping of lexicography

(<平侧声七条>), he said that ‘it is compiled for enlightenment and it will simply follow Sound DiVerentiation (<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 yanglevel 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 pronunciation. . . . 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 contributions 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

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

357

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 rhymes were mainly found in poems; the omissions were written in the form of 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 dictionaries in the ming and qing dynasties and their academic influence The major inXuential rhyme dictionaries in the period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties are Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes, 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 A Collection of Characters and Sounds (<字音汇集>).

Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes Immediately 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 Rhymes with the rhyme dictionaries of the

358

reform and shaping of lexicography

Ming and Qing Dynasties, occupying a very important position in the development 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 Regions Proto-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,

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

359

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 liprounding. 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 Sounds The 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>). The former 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 Synchronization 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

360

reform and shaping of lexicography

(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 Examinations 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

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

361

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 phonological 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 the modern 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 Rhymes In 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 shortcomings 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.

362

reform and shaping of lexicography

The Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes of Zhongzhou State The 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 Dictionary 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 Studies The 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

evolution of rhyme dictionaries

363

Studies made 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 Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes Dictionary. In A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Rhymes of Zhongzhou State, the levelling and the falling tones were each discriminated 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 Sounds A 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

364

reform and shaping of lexicography

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)

A Collection 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.

part v

C H I N E S E B I L I N G UA L L E X I C O G R A P H Y: A B R I E F OVE RV I EW (from the Tang Dynasty, 618–907 to the Qing Dynasty, 1616–1911)

This page intentionally left blank

20

THE ORIGIN AND E M E RG E N C E O F C H I N E S E B I LI NG UAL LEX I C OG R A PH Y

L

ANGUAGE 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 dictionary describes and records language, which makes it possible for language elements to be preserved and transmitted from generation to generation. Modern linguists have to resort to ancient glossaries, wordbooks, vocabularies, dictionaries, 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, from which its attributes are engendered. Standardization is the most representative attribute of lexicographical culture, permeating

368

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 background 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, ways of thinking, religion, moral values and social customs of that nation, and reXected in its language, developing into its linguistic conventionality. 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 interdisciplinary 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 civilizational 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

chinese bilingual lexicography

369

inception of bilingual lexicography and is of immediate relevance and interest to lexicographical studies.

20.1 buddhist preaching and the advent of bilingual 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 Buddhism and the Buddhist languages, preparing themselves for the task of preaching 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). Translating 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>) written by 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.

370

chinese bilingual lexicography

20.2 buddhist sutras and the compilation of dictionaries 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 them with 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 dictionary 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 454 Mahayana 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 ‘hardword’ 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 combination 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

chinese bilingual lexicography

371

twenty-Wve years selecting a vast number of Buddhist terms from previous glossaries and from among over 1,300 Buddhist sutras and scriptures and compiled 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 and the 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 awkwardly translated as Sanskrit Thousand Character Text by Watters (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, followed 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 transliterated 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 dictionaries. 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.

21

T H E A RC H E T Y P E AND EVOLUTION OF C H I N E S E B I L I N G UA L DICTIONA R I ES

S

IMULTANEOUS 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 Sanskrit. 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 bisyllabic 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 emergence of bilingual glossaries The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary was prefaced with a text of one thousand Chinese characters, and its headwords were mainly transliterated

chinese bilingual dictionaries

373

Sanskrit words. A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms was, however, diVerent 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 Sanskrit Terms also collected quite a number of proper terms, together with their Sanskrit translations. For instance, the Sanskrit equivalent for 京师 was Kumudana, 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 SanskritChinese 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>, Dazheng Buddhist 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. Compared with Yi Jing’s glossary, some deletion was made in the book, except for the last 400 entry characters. Quan Zhen was 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 the evolution 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

374

ch i n e s e b i l i n g u a l l e x i c o g r a p h y

through the translation of religious scriptures and preaching, particularly apparent 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 addition 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 wellknown 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 compilation, particularly bilingual dictionaries of science and technology. From the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220), the Han Cultural Rim was beginning to take shape, and Chinese culture was widely found in China’s neighbouring countries 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 produced with the title of A Chinese–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,

chinese bilingual dictionaries

375

when Sun Mu (孙穆), a Chinese ambassador to Korea, produced a KoreanChinese 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 and bilingual 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.

22

ETHNIC MINORITY L A N G UAG E S A N D THEIR BILINGUAL DIC TIONA R I ES

T

HE translation of the Buddhist sutras was beginning to decline with Buddhism 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 Manchurians 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

minority languages and bilingual dictionaries

377

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 tangut bilingual 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 presentday Ningxia, north Shanxi, northwest Gansu, northeast Qinghai, and western 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 characters, Yuan Hao and Yelirenrong, using The Ready Guide as a model, 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 – A Timely 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

378

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 translational 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 mongolian bilingual 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 language 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 elements 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

minority languages and bilingual dictionaries

379

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 turkish bilingual 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 the mid-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

380

ch i n e s e b i l i n g u a l l e x i c o g r a p h y

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. In order to spread the Turkish cultures to the Islamic world, he made amazing eVorts to conduct language surveys, collect data relating to the Tujue ethnic people and the tribal languages, and classify and sort the data. He compiled The 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 the most crystallized language.’ The manuscript of this landmark work has not been discovered yet, and the currently available version was hand-copied in 1266, 200 years after the Wrst appearance of the original version, and is kept in the National Library of Turkey. In 1917, a new edition of the dictionary was issued in Turkey, and, in 1981, a three-volume Uygurian edition was published in China. Ever since 1931, a large amount of research has been conducted concerning the dictionary and its compiler both in Western 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 from more 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 round maps drawn by the compiler himself to show the territories of the Karakhanid Dynasty and Central Asia. It can be assumed that Mahmud Kashkarii 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, humanities 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,

m i n o r i t y l a n g u a g e s a n d bi l i n g u a l d i c t i o n a r i e s

381

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 important 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 comparative 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 tibetan bilingual 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 provinces 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

382

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 introduction 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 bilingual dictionaries for history books The compilation of bilingual dictionaries for the purpose of assisting in the reading of history books started with the writing of The History 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 vocabulary 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

minority languages and bilingual dictionaries

383

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 history book 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 seventytwo 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 increased 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 pronunciation 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 PREACHING FROM TH E W EST AND CHINESE BILINGUAL DICTIONARY C OMPIL AT I ON

A

T 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 chinese bilingual lexicography Among the Wrst missionaries to arrive in China was Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary. He came to Canton (now Guangzhou) by boat and started his Christian mission in China in 1582. In 1601 he went to Peking to meet Chinese Emperor Wanli, 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

religious preaching from the west

385

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 indication 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 vestidura’ 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 is reliable 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 dictionary 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, Franc¸ais et Latin (<汉法拉辞典>, 1813), probably the Wrst multilingual combination of Chinese with both French and Latin. About half a century later, in 1869, Paul Perny ‘de la congre´gation des missions-e´trange`res’ completed another combination 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 and Chinese explanations and their corresponding phonetic transcriptions.

386

chinese bilingual lexicography

23.2 robert morrison and the first chinese–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 ChineseEnglish, 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 compilation 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 Presbyterian 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

religious preaching from the west

387

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, ‘contained 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 ChineseEnglish 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, Vietnamese, 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

388

ch i n e s e b i l i n g u a l l e x i c o g r a p h y

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 bilingual dialect dictionaries In the nineteenth century Western missionaries also became increasingly interested 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 dialect–English bilingual lexicography. As a result, Chinese dialect and English bilingual dictionaries appeared one after another. In 1828, Morrison took the lead in publishing A Vocabulary 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

r e l i g i o u s p r e a c h i n g f r o m t h e we s t

389

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’ A Vocabulary 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 of chinese 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 individual 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 alphabetically according to groups of characters having the same Romanized pronunciation, rather than adopt the Wade–Giles system. In addition, the characters

390

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 dictionary Mathews’ 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 dictionary 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, advertisements, 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 and more sophisticated information technology as from the latter part of the twentieth century.

24

CHINESE G OV E R N M E N T ESTABL ISHMEN T S AND CHINESE BILINGUAL DICTIONARY C OMPIL AT I ON

T

HE 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. To maintain the relations and promote communication with foreign countries, the Ming Dynasty government founded the Foreign AVairs Establishment aYliated to the Hanlin Academy (翰林院), which was in 1644 transformed into the Foreign Studies School (四译馆). The Foreign AVairs 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

392

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 government organizations provided strong support for the compilation of Chinese bilingual 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 and bilingual glossary compilation According to textual research, 译语 (literally ‘translated languages’) had three implications: interpreter, interpretation and translation, and languages translated. 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 educational 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 languages 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, Utensils, Human Body, Numerals, Jewellery, Garments, and Colours. Each entry

chinese government establishments

393

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. Huoyuanjie (火源洁), an ethnic Mongolian, was commissioned to add Chinese explanations 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 dictionaries and 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 socalled miscellany of foreign words was actually Chinese–foreign language bilingual 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 heading of The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries (<华夷译语>). The Nuchen Miscellaneous Collection of Foreign Words was divided in much the same way as The Yellow River West Bilingual Glossary into nineteen categories, covering over 800 entry words. In each entry the Nuchen words were matched to their corresponding Chinese words, phonetically notated by means of Chinese transliterated Nuchen words. The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries were

394

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 Establishment 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 Ming Dynasty, the last Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty 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 Glossary 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 Augmented 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 documents. 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

chinese government establishments

395

Words (<高昌馆杂字>), A Miscellany of Persian Words (<回回馆杂字>), The Persian 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, whichwas compiled by the Huitongguan (the Huitong Mansions) in the late period of the Ming Dynasty, included those bilingual glossaries compiled by the Korean House, 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 transliteration 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 the compilation 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

396

ch i n e s e b i l i n g u a l l e x i c o g r a p h y

issue to compile bilingual dictionaries and manuals of technical terms to standardize 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 translators’ workshops, typically the Jiangnan Arsenal. The Translation Department of the Jiangnan Arsenal collected technical terms and published specialized vocabularies, 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 compilations 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-chinese bilingual 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.

chinese government establishments

397

A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing Dynasty, compiled by Shen Qiliang (沈启亮) in the Qing Dynasty, was the Wrst unabridged ManchurianChinese bilingual dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography. It comprised twelve volumes and included over 12,000 entries. It was divided into the Manchurian 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 completed 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, and was reckoned to be the foundation of oYcial compilations of Manchurian dictionaries. The appearance of The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language and its bilingual 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 Manchurian 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

398

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 perhaps the Wrst polyglot dictionary series in the history of Chinese lexicography. The massive size of the Qing Dynasty can be best exempliWed by The Compendium 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 dictionaries. 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 Manchurian studies even today.

25

THE CHARACTERISTICS A ND INFLUENCE OF EA R LY C H I N E S E B I L I N G UA L DIC TIONA R I ES

T

HE 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 and their characteristics When examined from the microstructural point of view, entries in early bilingual glossaries and dictionaries generally consisted of headwords, deWnitions, and

400

chinese bilingual lexicography

phonetic notations. The headwords were, in most cases, transliterated Chinese characters of foreign words, and a small number of them adopted foreign language 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 the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chinese bilingual dictionaries turned out to be distinct and signiWcant in several respects. First, they became more 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 bilingual dialect dictionaries and bilingual minority language dictionaries were 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 Romanized 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

influence of bilingual dictionaries

401

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 Romanization 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, forewords, compilation plans, guidelines, and other relevant monologues. The Translation Department of the Jiangnan Arsenal, for example, stipulated, prior to translating Western works, that it should be obligatory to employ already established 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 or more 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 early bilingual dictionaries The early Chinese bilingual wordbooks and glossaries are a mirror reXecting the society, politics, economy, culture, and regional transformations of ancient

402

chinese bilingual lexicography

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 achievements. 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 A Brief Account of the Overseas States A Brief History of Chinese Character Dictionaries A Brief History of Dictionary Compilation in China A Brief Introduction to Phonetic Sounds in Thirteen Scriptures A Categoric Dictionary of Chinese Words A Categoric Dictionary of Dialectal Words A Chinese–English Dictionary A Chinese–Foreign Language Vocabulary A Collection of Characters and Sounds A Collection of Classic Rhyme House A Collection of Fu-poems of Previous Dynasties A Collection of Inscription Characters of the Yin and Shang Dynasties A Collection of Popular Expressions A Collection of Rhymes A Complete Collection of All Beauties A Complete Collection of Philosophical Essays A Complete Collection of the Five Classics A Complete Collection of the Four Books A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing Dynasty A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Rhymes of Zhongzhou State

CHINESE TITLES <瀛环志略> <中国字典史略>

PAGE NUMBER 320, 321 4

<中国辞书编纂史略> 4 <十三经音略>

306

<分类字锦> <方言类聚> <华英词典> <华夷译语> <字音汇集> <经韵楼集> <历代赋汇> <殷周金文集成>

267 269, 309 386, 387 271, 374 357, 363, 364 284, 300, 301 340 47

<通俗编> <韵会> <群芳谱> <性理大全> <五经大全> <四书大全> <大清全书>

330, 332, 343 292, 295 271, 335, 336 264 264 264 271, 396, 397

<中州全韵>

362, 363

404

book titles from english to chinese <历代地理志韵编今释> <续文献通考>

A Contemporary Dictionary of Ancient Names of Places in All Dynasties A Continual to the General Survey on Ancient Literature A Diachronic Dictionary of Chinese Rhyme Studies A Dictionary of Ancient Currencies A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles

<韵史> <古泉汇> <佩文韵府>

A Dictionary of Synonyms

<骈字类编>

A Dictionary of the Chinese Language

<华英词典–五车韵府> <称谓录>

A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations

A Famed Record of the Spring and Autumn Period A General Introductory Dictionary of Rhymes A Guide to Reading An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters A Guide to the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms A Miscellaneous Collection of Things and Events A Miscellany of Persian Words A Miscellany of the Ouigourian Words A Narrative History of Lexicography in China A Pictorial Collection of Heaven, Earth, and Human A Tangut-Chinese Ready Guide A Thorough Exploration in Philosophy A Timely Gem Dictionary Tangut–Chinese Additional Notes on the VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes Amendments to the Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites An Annotated Collection of Materia Medica An Audio And Visual Guide for Foreign Scholars An Epilogue to Mao’s Book of Songs An Epilogue to the Standardized Version of Mao Heng’s Exegesis of Book of Songs An Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds

<春秋戴记> <韵略汇通> <说文解字读> <切韵指南> <梵语杂名> <鸡林类事> <回回馆杂字> <高昌馆杂字> <中国辞书史话> <三才图会> <番尔雅> <穷理学> <番汉合时掌中珠> <切韵考外篇>

271, 336 278 272 271, 335 276, 324 332–4, 343 276, 325, 334, 343 386 324, 326, 334, 335, 343 304 272 284 292 372, 373 375, 400 395 394, 395 3 320 377 320 377, 378 402 254

<增修互补礼部韵略> 358 <本草经集注> <西儒耳目资> <毛诗后笺> <毛诗故训传定本小笺> <说文通训定声>

227 385 307 36 285, 348

book titles from english to chinese An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters

<说文解字>

An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes An Explanatory Dictionary of the Yue Dialect An Illustrated Gazette of Overseas States An Interpretative Dictionary of Rhymes An Introduction to Ancient Dictionaries in China An Introduction to Buddhist Scriptures in China Ancient and Contemporary Characters Ancient and Modern Rhyme Standards Annals of Water Transportation Areas Outside the Concern of the Chinese Imperial Geographer Ban Gui Bibliographies of Yizhai Library Biographies of Confucian Scholars in the Qing Dynasty Brief Stories in Eastern Capital Character Index Characters Ci Hai Ci Yuan Classic Internal Medicine Collected Essentials of the Song Dynasty Collected Poems: Sun-loving Hall Collected Works of Wang Yinzhi Collections of Cangjie Exegesis Collections of Jiaguwen Characters Collections of Jin Inscriptions DaoDe Jing, TaoTe Ching Dictionnaire Chinois, Franc¸ais et Latin Direct Amendments on A Collection of Popular Expressions Disciplines and EVects: A New Book

<音韵阐微> <越言释> <海国图志> <韵略易解> <中国古代字典辞典概论> <中国佛教史籍概论> <古今文字> <古今韵准> <漕运志> <职方外纪> <班簋> <一斋书目> <清儒学案> <东都事略> <检字> <文字> <辞海> <辞源> <内经> <宋会要> <爱日堂诗集> <王文简公文集> <仓颉训纂> <甲骨文编> <金文编> <道德经> <汉法拉辞典> <直语补证> <纪效新书>

405

5, 41–8, 95–113, 141, 147–52, 169–70, 178–203, 276–7, 282–9, 295–7 353, 361 270, 310 320, 321 272 4 220 169, 187, 188 285, 348 320 320 50 306 159 274 244 39, 289, 361 39, 326, 361 323 345 340 81, 101 105 105 30, 33 385 332 359

406

book titles from english to chinese

Dizionario Portoghese–Cinese East of the River Eight Sounds and Character Meanings Elements Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture Essentials of the Well-known Chinese Academic Works: Language and Characters Etiquette and Rites Explanations of the Mongolian Language

<葡汉词典> <河东> <八音字义> <几何原本> <农桑辑要> <中国学术名著提要语言文字卷> <仪礼> <蒙古译语>, <至元译语> <辽金元三史国语解>

Explanations of the Terms in the Histories of the Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties Explanations of the Terms in the History of the Jin Dynasty Explanations of the Terms in the History of the Liao Language Explorations in Philosophical Principles Fine Observations of Nature General Examples of Sounds and Rhymes in All Human Speeches General Monthly Climates General Rhymes General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems Gongyang’s Spring and Autumn Annals Guliang’s Spring and Autumn Annals Historian Zhou’s Primer

<月令广义> <通韵> <诗词通韵> <春秋公羊传> <春秋榖梁传> <史籀篇>

Hong Lie Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes

<鸿烈> <洪武正韵>

Huai Nan Huai Nan Zi Hui Lin’s Sounds and Meanings Jian Rhymes Lao zi Lectures on Ancient Wordbooks Li Sao Lie Zi Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs

<淮南> <淮南子> <慧琳音义> <柬韵> <老子> <古代词书讲话> <离骚> <列子> <毛诗诂训传>, <毛诗>, <毛传>

385 80 359 322 345 218 215 379, 392, 394 383

<金国语解>

383

<辽国语解>

375, 382, 402

<名理探> 320 <物理小识> 305 <古今中外音韵通例> 354, 355 320 354, 355 354, 362 215, 216 215, 216 27 42–9, 51–60, 136 216 347–8, 352, 357–8 240 72, 107 220, 222 285 107, 160, 215 4 81, 92 72 22, 35–7, 70, 97

book titles from english to chinese

407

<女真馆来文> <孟子> <营造法式> <分毫字样> <野议> <老子> <十驾斋养新录> <枳园近稿> <续方言新校补>

393 36, 60, 107 345 189 338 107 350 304 94, 270, 309

<续方言又补>

270, 310

<鲁论笺> <广韵校勘记>

304 254

Memorials from the Nuchen Section Meng Zi Methods and Models in Construction Minute DiVerences in Character Formations Miscellaneous Commentaries Mo zi New Collections of Shijiazhai New Manuscripts from the Citrange Garden New Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words New Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words Notes on Lu’s Arguments Notes on the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Rhymes Notes on the RectiWcation of the Jade Chapters and the Dictionary of Rhymes Ode to the Western Capital On ‘Name’ and ‘Content’ On Composition On Destiny On Name RectiWcation On Physics On Qi On Substance On the Skies One Thousand Characters Text One Thousand Golden Medical Prescriptions Original Commentaries on Zhuang Zi Peripheral Amendments on the Ready Guide Proto-sounds of Speech in all Regions

<西都赋> <名实篇> <纂文> <辨命论> <正名篇> <物理论> <论气> <指物篇> <谈天> <千字文> <千金方> <庄子独见> <尔雅补郭> <五方元音>

Proverb Couplets of the Wu Dialect Proverbs of the Yue Dialect

<吴下谚联> <越谚>

Recorded Studies on the Meaning of Classics

<经义述闻>

Records of Ancient Coins Records of Names of the Same Family Names Records on Soldier Training RectiWcation on the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes Rhyme Essentials

<泉志> <同姓名录> <练兵纪实> <刊谬补缺切韵> <韵英>

<玉篇广韵校刊札记> 254 274 31 254 207 31 132 338 31 338 57 227 311 332 352–3, 357–8 330, 331, 343 303, 317, 330–1 70, 71, 301, 329 227 276 359 245 220

408

b o o k ti t l e s f r o m e n g l i s h t o c h i n e s e

Rhyme Studies in Wei Gen Xuan Rhymes of the Book of Songs Rhymes of Various Classics San Pan Seven Strategies Shi Zi Shizhuzai’s Chart of Painting and Calligraphy Shui Jing Annotations and Commentaries Simple Questioning Sound DiVerentiation Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures

<味根轩韵学> <诗经韵谱> <群经韵谱> <散盘> <七略> <尸子> <十竹斋书画谱> <水经注笺> <素问> <音鉴> <大藏音义>

Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures (also Sounds and Meanings of the Whole Canon) Sounds and Meanings of Kaiyuan Characters Sounds and Meanings of Maha Parinibbana Sutta Sounds and Meanings of the Avatamsaka Sutra Sounds and Meanings of the Lotus Sutra Sounds and Meanings of the Ready Guide Sounds of All the Buddhist Scriptures Standard Words Standard Words for Writing Ci with Examples State Didactics Studies in the Ready Guide Studies on the Dictionary of Rhymes Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words Supplements to the Compendium of Materia Medica Supplements to the Exegesis on Poetry Supplements to the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words Supplements to the RectiWed Broad Ready Guide Supplements to the RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms Talks on Poetry Talks on the History of Ancient Word Books and Dictionaries

<一切经音义>

354, 355 284 284 51 63, 83 38, 40 260 304 111 356 170–3, 206, 219, 220, 222, 370–1 110

<开元文字音义> <大般涅槃经音义> <华严经音义> <妙法莲华经音义> <尔雅音义> <一切经音> <法言> <正语作词起例> <州箴> <说雅> <广韵研究> <续方言补正>

177, 220 219 185, 219 219 39, 241 207, 370 81, 216 252 81 285 254 270, 309

<续方言补>

94

<本草纲目拾遗>

337

<诗疏补遗> <方言疏证补>

311 93

<广雅疏证补正> <释名疏证补>

61 131

<诗讲义> <古代辞书史话>

217 4

book titles from english to chinese Talks on the History of Chinese Dictionaries Teachings of the Deceased Natives The Abhidharma Naya Anusara Sutra The Academic Elites The Additions to A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles The Alternating Ready Guide The Analects of Confucius The Ancient and Contemporary Exegesis of Etiquette and Rites The Ancient Interpretation of the Ready Guide The Annals of Tangyi County The Annals of the Three Kingdoms The Annals of Wuxing, Jiatai The Annals of Zunyi Prefecture The Annotated Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Annotated Huai Nan Zi The Annotated Interpretation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Annotated Ready Guide The Annotated RectiWcation of Thirteen Scriptures The Annotations of Selected Works The Arithmetic Classics of the Islands The Augmented Cangjie Glossary The Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Augmented Imperial Manchurian and Chinese Dictionary The Augmented Ready Guide The Avatamsaka Sutra The Bai’s Collection of Classics, Histories and Events The Beginning of Chinese Characters The Beitang Collection of Copied Books The Biographies of Great Monks of the Song Dynasty The Biography of Xiao Kai The Book of Ancient Texts The Book of Changes The Book of Family Names The Book of Filial Virtues The Book of Late Han Dynasty The Book of Music

409

<中国字典词典史话> <梓人遗训> <顺正理论> <文苑英华> <韵府拾遗>

4 345 370 164 333

<叠雅> <论语> <仪礼古今义疏文>

276, 308 36, 39, 81 307

<尔雅古义> <堂邑县志> <三国志> <嘉泰吴兴志> <遵义府志> <方言注> <说文解字注> <淮南子注> <方言笺疏> <尔雅注> <十三经注疏> <文选注> <海岛算经> <埤仓> <续方言> <两体清文鉴>,<御制增订清文鉴> <埤雅> <华严经> <白氏经史事类> <文始> <北堂书钞> <宋高僧传> <萧恺传> <尚书><书> <易经>,<易> <百家姓> <孝经> <后汉书> <乐>

307 328 119, 120, 121 308 303 24, 90, 148 112, 132, 283–4 101 94, 270, 309 24, 62, 73, 74 312 110 345 186, 215, 254 270, 309, 312 397 170, 217–18 370 226 133 172, 224–6 219 192 21, 22, 107 25, 26, 81 57 96, 107, 215 110 21

410

b o o k t i t l e s fr o m e n g l i s h t o c h i n e s e

The Book of Nature’s Engineering The Book of Rites The Book of Secret Prescriptions The Book of Songs The Book of Songs and the Philological Studies The Book of the Chen Dynasty The Book of the Han Dynasty

<天工开物> <礼记>, <礼> <医经方> <诗经> <诗> <诗经小学> <陈书> <汉书>

The Book of the Jin Dynasty The Book of the Late Han Dynasty The Book of the Liang Dynasty The Book of the Song Dynasty The Book of the Sui Dynasty The Book of the Tang Dynasty The Book of the Wei Dynasty The Book of Three Rites The Botanic Compendium The Broad Cangjie Primer The Broad Ready Guide The Broad Records of Things and Events

<晋书> <后汉书> <梁书> <宋书> <隋书> <唐书> <魏书> <三礼> <全芳备祖> <广苍> <广雅> <事林广记>

The Broadly Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words with Supplements The Buddhist Book of Filial Virtues The Buddhist Ready Guide The Burmese Language and Chinese Glossary The Cangjie Primer The Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes The Character Designator The Character Dictionary The Character Forest The Character Garden The Character Mirror The Character Models The Character RectiWcation The Chinese Book of Filial Virtues The Chinese-Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries The Classic Account of Poetry The ClassiWcation of the Thirty-letter Alphabet

<广续方言及拾遗>

336, 338, 344 36, 39 111 35, 77, 349 284 192 35, 60, 64–6, 79–81, 101 38 101 192 239, 242 112, 160 178 177, 215, 244 120, 216 173, 227, 234 254 172, 215–17 228, 232–3, 378 270, 310, 312

<佛孝经> <佛尔雅> <百译馆译语> <仓颉篇> <渊鉴类函> <中原音韵>

306 306, 318 395 28, 35, 52–60 267, 276, 338 167, 251–2

<字指> <字说> <字林> <字苑> <字鉴> <字样> <字諟> <中文孝经> <华夷译语>

254 180–2, 218 185–8 254 198, 199 171, 173, 254 101 306 393–5

<诗故> <归三十字母例>

304 162

book titles from english to chinese The ClassiWcation of Things and Objects The ClassiWed Chapters The ClassiWed Characters The ClassiWed Characters of Banma The ClassiWed Collection The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners The ClassiWed Dictionary of Zhongzhou Yuefu Rhymes The Cognate Dictionary of Characters The Collected Poems and Prose of Qiushi Academy The Collected Works of Qian Yan Tang The Collected Works of Wang Anshi The Collection of Ancient Records The Collection of Characters from Ancient Books The Collection of Characters from Five Classics The Collection of Characters from Nine Classics The Collection of Lost Books in Yuhanshan House The Collection of Meanings of Terms in Translation The Collection of Rhymes The Compendium of Agriculture The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books The Compendium of China’s Buddhist Sutras The Compendium of Materia Medica

The Compendium of Scriptures and Classics The Compendium of the Manchurian Language The Complete Collection of Terms and Meanings in Translation The Complete Collection of the Manchurian Language The Complete Guide to How to Do The Complete Manual of Taxes and Services

411

<物性门类> <类篇>

217 165–71, 190, 191, 203 <字类> 254 <班马字类> 171, 199 <类聚> 225 <艺文类聚> 224, 228, 229, 279 <初学记> 226, 230 <中州乐府音韵类编> 172 <同源字典> <求是堂诗文集>

133 307

<潜研堂文集> <王文公文集> <集古录> <古文尚书>

350 181 164 211, 215

<五经文字> <九经文字> <玉函山房辑佚书>

195–6 174 244

<翻译名义集>

369

<韵集> <农政全书> <古今图书集成>

174, 243, 244 322, 336, 337 233, 271–2

<中华大藏经> <本草纲目>

<经世大典> <清文总汇> <翻译名义大集>

207 322–3, 336–7, 343–4 172 271, 396, 398 382

<清文汇书>

398

<万用正宗不求人> <赋役全书>

229 320

412

book titles from english to chinese

The Complete Turkish Dictionary, Turki Tillar Diwani, Diwanu Lught-it-Turk, Divanu Lugat-it-Turk, Diwanu LuBatit-Turk, The Compendium of the Turkic Dialects The Comprehensive Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters

<突厥语大词典>

173, 379–81

<古今韵会>

171, 287

<字汇>

<文献大成> <五音集韵>

The Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature The Comprehensive Five-sound Rhyme Dictionary The Comprehensive Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Contemporary Annotated Ready Guide The Continuation to Biographies of Great Monks The Contrastive Ready Guide The Dadai Book of Etiquette The Data Corpus of Ancient Chinese Musical History The Deepest Mystery The Dialectal Dictionary of Literary Embellishments The Dictionary of Ancient Character Exegesis The Dictionary of Buddhist Studies The Dictionary of Chao-shan Dialect The Dictionary of Characters from Classics and Scriptures with Phonetic Discrimination The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms

<释名>

The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes

<切韵>

The Dictionary of Currencies The Dictionary of Dialectal Words

<钱录> <方言>

<说文解字系传> <说文系传> <尔雅今注> <续高僧传>

269, 274, 286–91, 293–7 339 171, 251 112, 179 74 219

<比雅> <大戴礼> <中国古代音乐史料辑要> <太玄> <方言藻>

81 270, 310

<复古编> <佛学大辞典> <潮汕方言> <群经音辨>

175, 197, 198 222 94 200, 212, 213

72, 269, 308 117 235

114–33, 142–4 161–8, 171–4, 183–5, 243–6, 251–4, 350–3 271, 335 43, 76, 79, 80–94, 142, 148

book titles from english to chinese The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies The Dictionary of Initial Consonants The Dictionary of Meticulously RectiWed Characters from Classics The Dictionary of Popular Words The Dictionary of Rhymes The Dictionary of Standard Rhymes The Dictionary of Textual Research on the Wu-Xia Dialect The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect The Dictionary of the Wu Dialect The Distinctive Ready Guide The Dragon Shrine Character Manual The Essential Collection of Words The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites The Essentials of Augmented Ready Guide The Essentials of Literature and Thoughts The Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes of Zhongzhou State The Everlasting Prosperity Collection The Exegesis of the Cang Jie Primer The Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary Characters The Exegesis of Lao Zi The Exegesis of Six-category Characters The Exegesis of the Analects of Confucius The Exegesis of the Book of Rites The Exegesis of the Ready Guide The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from the Book of Changes The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from Zhuang Zi The Exegesis on Poetry The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics

<经传释词> <声类> <经典分毫正字> <通俗文> <广韵>

413

328–30, 342 174, 243–5, 347 177

<正韵> <吴下方言考>

23, 275 170, 174, 246–54 292, 295 310–11, 317

<清文鉴> <蜀语> <吴语> <别雅> <龙龛手鉴> <文字集略> <古今韵会举要>

271, 396–7 303, 316–17 310 269, 276, 308 192, 198 254 172–4

<韵略> <礼部韵略>

171, 250, 254 171, 174, 251

<埤雅广要> <文思博要> <中州音韵辑要>

171, 217 226, 230 357, 362

<长兴集> <苍颉故> <古今字诂>

233 101 186, 188

<老子疏> <六书故> <论语义疏> <礼记义疏> <尔雅义疏> <周易文句义疏>

215 182, 200–4 24 24 74, 309 215

<庄子文句义>

215

<诗疏> <经典释文>

308 165–6, 211, 221–2

414

book titles from english to chinese

The Exegetic Interpretation of New Characters The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics

<新字训解> <经籍纂诂>

The Exegetic Primer The ExempliWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Explanatory RectiWcation of the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty The Extended Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Extended Ready Guide The Extended Ready Guide The Extended Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures The Extensive Miscellany of Minute Things The Feather Hunting The Feng’s Records of Things and Events The Five Classics The Five-scale Compendium of Chinese Characters: with Revisions and Four-tone ClassiWcations The Four-tone MagniWcent Chapters The Foushan Collection The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Garden of Variant Characters The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature The General Dictionary of All Beauties The General Dictionary of Chinese Characters The General Dictionary of the Chinese Language The General Digest of the Taiping Reign The General Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters The General Interpretation of Mao’s Book of Songs The General Interpretation of Six-category Chinese Characters The General Primer The General Ready Guide The General RectiWcation of Literature The General Survey of Currencies

<训纂篇> <说文释例>

254 302, 312–15, 318 47 283

<周礼汉读考>

300

<广干禄字书>

195

<尔雅翼> <续尔雅> <续一切经音义>

171, 217, 308 217–18 219–20, 371

<海录碎事> <羽猎> <封氏闻见记> <五经> <改并五音类聚四声篇>

229 80 244 214 196

<四声篇海> <浮山集> <干禄字书> <异字苑> <韵府群玉> <四库全书总目提要>

196, 203 305 194–6 254 172, 330 325

<广群芳谱> <字通> <辞通> <太平总类> <六书统>

271, 336 175, 197, 198 315 230 182, 201

<毛诗通义>

311

<六书通释>

167, 200, 203

<凡将篇> <通雅> <文献通考> <钱通>

25, 144 72, 305 302 271, 335

book titles from english to chinese The General Survey of Eight Sounds and Meanings for Qi Armymen The Glossary of Sanskrit and Chinese Characters The Grand Dictionary of Classics The Great Character Dictionary of China The Great Chinese Character Dictionary The Guidelines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds and Rhymes The Guiyuan Collection of Characters The Historical Records of Cefu

415

<戚参军八音义便览> 359 <唐梵文字> <经典大典> <中华大字典> <汉语大字典> <等韵切音指南> <桂苑珠丛> <册府元龟>

373 227 292 79–81, 101 292 178 227, 231–2, 279 224 383 382, 383 224 377 242 224 78 193 267, 327, 346

The History of the Chen Dynasty The History of the Jin Dynasty The History of the Liao Dynasty The History of the Qi Dynasty The History of the Song Dynasty The History of the Southern Dynasty The History of the Zhou Dynasty The Huayang National Annals The Immensely Augmented Jade Chapters The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi

<陈史> <金史> <辽史> <齐史> <宋史> <南史> <周史> <华阳国志> <大广益会玉篇> <四库全书>

The Imperial Dictionary of the Manchurian Language The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign The Imperial Manchurian and Mongolian Dictionary The Imperial Records of the Taiping Reign The Imperial Survey The Imperial Survey of Xiuwen Palace The Instant Primer The Interpretation of Poetry The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words The Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics The Interpretative Manual of Rhymes The Jade Chapters

<御制清文鉴>

267–9, 272–4, 276, 290–7 398

<太平御览> <御制满蒙文鉴>

230–1 397

<康熙字典>

<太平广记> <皇览> <修文殿御览> <急就篇>,<急就> <诗疑义释> <助字辨略> <五经异义> <韵诠> <玉篇>

226 225, 278 230, 278 57, 144 311 303, 314, 328 101 220 177–8, 184–5, 188–94, 202–3

416

book titles from english to chinese

The Jade Sea The Jigu Library Revision to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Language Assistant The Later Spring and Autumn Annals The Learned Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters The Lu¨ Survey The Lu¨’s Spring and Autumn Annals The MagniWcent Chapters The MagniWcent Chapters: with Augmentations of Five Scales and Categorizations of Four Tones The MagniWcent Character Dictionary The Manchurian and Chinese Dictionary The Manchurian Dictionary in Five Languages The Manchurian Dictionary in Four Languages The Manuscripts of the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues The Mirror of Rhymes The Miscellaneous Collection The Miscellaneous Notes in Reading The Miscellaneous Record of Dialectal Words The Miscellanies of Argumentations Concerning ClassiWed Dictionaries The Modern Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Mongolian–Persian Dictionary The Mutianzi Biography The National Language The New Collection of Character Models from Nine Classics The New Dictionary of Dialectal Words The New Manual of Character Models from Classics and Scriptures The New Meanings of the Ready Guide The Newly Revised Dazheng Buddhist Scriptures The Newly Revised Materia Medica The Nine Chapters on Arithmetic The Nuchen and Chinese Glossary The Nuchen Miscellaneous Collection of Foreign Words

<玉海> <汲古阁说文订>

172, 227, 229 284

<语助> <春秋后传> <六书通>

172, 227 217 201

<吕览> <吕氏春秋> <篇海> <五音增改并类聚四声篇海>

225, 240 38 191, 192, 289 192

<字海> <音汉清文鉴> <五体清文鉴> <四体清文鉴> <续方言稿>

178 397 398 398 93

<梦溪笔谈> <韵镜> <别录> <读书杂志> <方言别录> <类林杂说>

234 174 63 301 94 172, 227

<说文解字诂林>

112

<蒙古波斯语词典> <穆天子传> <国语> <新加九经字样>

378 38 36, 72, 135 171, 177, 196

<新方言> <群书新定字样>

94 177, 196

<尔雅新义> <大正新修大藏经> <新修本草> <九章算术> <女真译语> <女真馆杂字>

217 373 227 345 393, 395 393

book titles from english to chinese The Old History of the Five Dynasties The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary The Origin of Siddhim Characters The Original Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters The Origins of Direct Phonetic Notations of Sixcategory Chinese Characters The Orthographical Manual of Characters The Overall Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters The Pangxi Primer The Pearl Collection The Pearl Collection of Three Religions The Pearls of Rhyme Studies The Pei Xi Dictionary The Peizi Language Forest The Persian Language and Chinese Glossary The Phonetic Interpretation of the Extended Ready Guide The Phonetic Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Phonological Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters The Pictorial Dictionary of Archaeology The Pocket Ready Guide The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences The Preliminary Annotation to the Ready Guide The Probe into Ancient Novels The Proprieties The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds and Character Meanings The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds: Bound Edition The Ready Guide

417

<旧五代史> <梵语千字文> <天竺字源> <六书本义>

345 371–3, 375 369 201

<六书溯原直音>

201

<字统> <六书总要>

220, 248, 254 201

<滂喜篇> <编珠> <三教珠英> <韵学骊珠> <佩觿> <裴子语林> <回回馆译语> <尔雅翼音释>

<六书系韵>

34, 35 225, 228 226 357, 362, 363 197, 198 236 395 217 93 112 94, 270, 309 201

<考古图> <小尔雅> <格致镜原> <尔雅初注> <古小说钩沉> <礼象> <戚林八音> <戚林八音字义>

183 23, 72, 215 327, 339–41 306 236 217 359, 360 359

<戚林八音合订>

359

<说文音隐>

<尔雅>

3, 40–3, 59–75, 122–5, 142–5, 147–52, 168, 215–18, 269

418

b o o k t i t l e s fr o m e n g l i s h t o c h i n e s e

The Ready Guide for the Shu Dialect The Ready Guide of the Huzhou Prefecture The Record of Siddhim Characters The Records of Hard Learning The Records of Internal Classics of the Tang Dynasty The Records of the Historian The RectiWcation and DiVerentiation of the Four Books The RectiWcation and Standardization of Chinese Characters The RectiWcation of Ancient and Contemporary Characters The RectiWcation of Classic Interpretations The RectiWcation of Historian Zhou’s Primer The RectiWcation of Initial Consonants and Vowels The RectiWcation of Mao’s Book of Songs The RectiWcation of Popular Words The RectiWcation of the Annotated Ready Guide The RectiWcation of the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWcation of the Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics The RectiWcation of the Pocket Ready Guide The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words with New RectiWcations The RectiWed Exegesis of the Ready Guide The RectiWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics The RectiWed Interpretation of Mao’s Book of Songs The RectiWed Interpretation of the Ancient Texts

<蜀尔雅> <湖雅> <悉昙字记> <困学记闻> <大唐内典录>

302 307, 308 369 94 219

<史记> <四书考异>

65, 199 332

<匡谬正俗>

94, 177

<古今正字>

220

<刊谬正俗> <史籀篇疏证> <考声切韵>

207 58 220

<诗毛氏传疏> <证俗文> <尔雅注疏> <续方言疏证>

35, 36 254 74 94, 270, 309

<方言疏证> <驳五经异义>

147

<小尔雅义疏> <广雅疏证> <正字通> <释名疏证>

307 216, 221 290–6 131

<方言据> <重校方言>

269, 309 270, 309

<尔雅正义> <说文解字义证>

74 112, 283

<五经正义> <毛诗正义>

162, 214 210, 211, 214

<尚书正义>

214

book titles from english to chinese The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Changes The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Rites The RectiWed Interpretation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWed Interpretation of Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals The ReWned Ready Guide The Revised Dictionary of Rhymes of the Song Dynasty The Revised Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Rhyme Diagram of Six Categories of Chinese Characters The Rhyme Dictionary

The Rhythmical Ready Guide The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty The Sanskrit and Chinese Glossary The Sanskrit–Chinese Glossary The Scholarly Circles The Scholarly Primer The Secret Imperial History The Shanhai Scriptures The Six Classics The Six Writing Models The Songs of Chu The Sound Family The Sound Synchronization of Pearls and Jade The Sounds and Meanings of Characters The Sources of Rhyme Ocean The Spring and Autumn The Spring and Autumn Exegesis The Standard Five Classics The Standardized Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters The Standardized Ready Guide The Standards of Ancient Rhymes The Star Collection of Things and Events The Stemmata of the Gu Family The Stories of Emperors and Their OYcials in Previous Dynasties

419

<周易正义>

214

<礼记正义> <方言校笺>

214 94

<春秋左传正义>

214

<彬雅> <大宋重修广韵>

307, 316 245

<校定说文>

179

<六书音韵表>

284, 350

<集韵>

<骈雅> <周礼> <西天馆译语> <唐梵两语双对集> <学林> <博学篇> <龙威秘书> <山海经> <六经> <六帖> <楚辞> <音谱> <珠玉同声> <文字音义> <韵海镜源> <春秋> <春秋传> <五经定本> <六书准>

168, 170, 249–51, 277 304–5, 317 41 395 373 209 18, 57 381 38, 107 240 225 194, 216 254 359 254 178, 226, 330 34, 135 99 161 201

<尔雅> 定本 <古韵标准> <明星事类> <顾氏谱传> <历代君臣事迹>

61 349 226 192 231

420

book titles from english to chinese

The Stories of Mizhou The Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Studies in Function Words The Succinct Explication of Six-category Chinese Characters The Supplement to Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures The Supplement to the Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds The Supplements of the Manchurian Language The Sweet Spring The Taihe Dictionary of Rhymes The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes The Taoshan Collection The Teachings of the Liu Family The Teachings of the Yan Family The Techniques for Segmenting Rhymes The Thai Language and Chinese Glossary The Thesaurus of Chinese Words and Expressions The Three-Character Primer The Three-Language Dictionary: Manchurian, Mongolian, and Chinese

The Tibetan–Chinese Bilingual Glossary The Translated Documents of Huihe (Ouigour) Section The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake The Travels of a Tourist OYcial The Ultimate Designators of Words The VeriWcation of Ancient Phonetic Sounds in Mao’s Book of Songs The VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes The Waitai Collection of Secret Prescriptions The Word RectiWcation The World Map The Yellow River West Bilingual Glossary

<密州说> <演说文>

300 112

<虚字说> <六书略>

270, 302 182

<正续一切经音义>

149

<加订戚林八音>

360

<清文补汇> <甘泉> <太和正音谱> <唐韵> <陶山集> <柳氏家训> <颜氏家训> <字母切韵要法> <暹罗馆译语> <同义词词林>

398 80 174 171, 245, 350 217 156 177 292 395 142

<三字经> <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> <西番译语> <高昌馆译书>

381, 395 394

<徐霞客游记> <游宦纪闻> <文字指归> <诗古音考>

322 209 254 349

<切韵考>

254, 350–1

<外台秘要> <别字> <万国舆图> <河西译语>

57 397, 398

227 320 392–4

book titles from english to chinese The Yinggongtang Materia Medica The Yongle Compendium

<英公唐本草> <永乐大典>

The Yu Book The Yuanhe Dictionary of Family Names The Yuanli Primer The Yuanshang Primer Three Annals Three Cang Primer Translating Sanskrit Vocabulary of Mineralogical Terms Occurring in the Manual Vocabulary of Names and Substances Occurring in Various Words on Chemistry: ChieXy in Bloxam’s Chemistry 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 Vocabulary of Terms Relating to the Steam Engine Wang Renyun’s RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes Western Mandarin, or the Spoken Language of Western China; with Syllabic and English Indexes Wuju Rhyme Dictionary Xi Zhuan Xiping Stone Inscriptions Xuanzong’s Collection of Things and Events Xun Zi Yan’s Manual of Character Models Yu Didactics Yu Gong Zheng’s Annotated Analects of Confucius The Zhizhitang Collection Zhuang Zi Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals

<虞书> <元和姓纂> <爰历篇> <元尚篇> <三传> <三苍> <翻梵语> <金石中西名目表> <化学材料中西名目表> <西药大成中西名目表>

<汽机中西名目表> <王仁昀刊谬补缺切韵> <西蜀方言>

<五车韵瑞> <系传> <熹平石经> <玄宗事类> <荀子> <颜氏字样> <虞箴> <禹贡> <论语郑氏注> <止止堂集> <庄子> <春秋左传>, <左传>

421

227 271, 279, 327, 339–40, 344–6 109 227 27, 28, 57 25, 101, 136 216 34, 35 369 396 396

396

396 244, 246 389

324, 330 167 18, 195 226 124 177, 194–6 81 61 157 359 38 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> <八音字义>

Collected Poems: Sun-loving Hall Eight Sounds and Character Meanings The Bai’s Collection of Classics, Histories and Events The Book of Family Names The Burmese Language and Chinese Glossary Ban Gui The ClassiWed Characters of Banma The Beitang Collection of Copied Books The Compendium of Materia Medica Supplements to the Compendium of Materia Medica An Annotated Collection of Materia Medica The Contrastive Ready Guide The Pearl Collection On Destiny The Miscellaneous Collection The Distinctive Ready Guide The Word RectiWcation The ReWned Ready Guide The RectiWcation of the Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics

340 359

<白氏经史事类> <百家姓> <百译馆译语> <班簋> <班马字类> <北堂书钞> <本草纲目> <本草纲目拾遗> <本草经集注> <比雅> <编珠> <辨命论> <别录> <别雅> <别字> <彬雅> <驳五经异义>

226 57 395 50 171, 199 172, 224–6 322–3, 336–7, 343–4 337 227 72, 269, 308 225, 228 207 63 269, 276, 308 101 307, 316 147

book titles from chinese to english <博学篇> <仓颉篇> <苍颉故> <苍颉训纂> <漕运志> <册府元龟> <长兴集> <潮汕方言> <陈史> <陈书> <称谓录> <初学记> <楚辞> <春秋> <春秋传> <春秋戴记> <春秋公羊传> <春秋榖梁传> <春秋后传> <春秋左传>, <左传> <春秋左传正义> <辞海> <辞通> <辞源> <大般涅槃经音义> <大藏音义> <大戴礼>

The Scholarly Primer The Cangjie Primer The Exegesis of the Cang Jie Primer Collections of Cangjie Exegesis Annals of Water Transportation The Historical Records of Cefu The Everlasting Prosperity Collection The Dictionary of Chao-shan Dialect The History of the Chen Dynasty The Book of the Chen Dynasty A Dictionary of Titles and Appellations The ClassiWed Dictionary for Beginners The Songs of Chu The Spring and Autumn The Spring and Autumn Exegesis A Famed Record of the Spring and Autumn Period Gongyang’s Spring and Autumn Annals Guliang’s Spring and Autumn Annals The Later Spring and Autumn Annals Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals The RectiWed Interpretation of Zuo’s Spring and Autumn Annals Ci Hai The General Dictionary of the Chinese Language Ci Yuan Sounds and Meanings of Maha Parinibbana Sutta Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures The Dadai Book of Etiquette

423

18, 57 28, 35, 52–60 101 81, 101 320 227, 213–32, 279 233 94 224 192 324, 326, 334, 335, 343 226, 230 194, 216 34, 135 99 304 215, 216 215, 216 217 39, 216 214 39, 289, 361 315 39, 326, 361 219 170–3, 206, 219, 220, 222, 370–1 117

424

book titles from chinese to english

<大广益会玉篇> <大清全书> <大宋重修广韵> <大唐内典录> <大正新修大藏经> <道德经> <等韵切音指南> <叠雅> <东都事略> <读书杂志> <尔雅>

<尔雅> 定本 <尔雅补郭> <尔雅初注> <尔雅古义> <尔雅今注> <尔雅新义> <尔雅义疏> <尔雅翼> <尔雅翼音释> <尔雅音义> <尔雅正义> <尔雅注> <尔雅注疏> <法言> <番尔雅>

The Immensely Augmented Jade Chapters A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Great Qing Dynasty The Revised Dictionary of Rhymes of the Song Dynasty The Records of Internal Classics of the Tang Dynasty The Newly Revised Dazheng Buddhist Scriptures DaoDe Jing, TaoTe Ching The Guidelines for Segmenting Phonetic Sounds and Rhymes The Alternating Ready Guide Brief Stories in Eastern Capital The Miscellaneous Notes in Reading The Ready Guide

The Standardized Ready Guide Peripheral Amendments on the Ready Guide The Preliminary Annotation to the Ready Guide The Ancient Interpretation of the Ready Guide The Contemporary Annotated Ready Guide The New Meanings of the Ready Guide The Exegesis of the Ready Guide The Extended Ready Guide The Phonetic Interpretation of the Extended Ready Guide Sounds and Meanings of the Ready Guide The RectiWed Exegesis of the Ready Guide The Annotated Ready Guide The RectiWcation of the Annotated Ready Guide Standard Words A Tangut–Chinese Ready Guide

193 271, 396, 397 245 219 373 30, 33 292 276, 308 159 301 3, 40–3, 59–75, 122–5, 142–5, 147–52, 168, 215–18, 269 61 332 306 307 74 217 74, 309 171, 217 217 39, 241 74 24, 62, 73, 74 74 81, 216 377

book titles from chinese to english <番汉合时掌中珠> <翻梵语> <翻译名义大集> <翻译名义集> <凡将篇> <梵语千字文> <梵语杂名> <方言> <方言别录> <方言笺疏> <方言据> <方言类聚> <方言疏证> <方言疏证补> <方言校笺> <方言藻> <方言注> <分毫字样> <分类字锦> <封氏闻见记> <佛尔雅> <佛孝经> <佛学大辞典> <浮山集>

A Timely Gem Dictionary Tangut– Chinese Translating Sanskrit The Complete Collection of Terms and Meanings in Translation The Collection of Meanings of Terms in Translation The General Primer The One Thousand Sanskrit Character Glossary A Miscellaneous Collection of Sanskrit Terms The Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Miscellaneous Record of Dialectal Words The Annotated Interpretation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words A Categoric Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words Supplements to the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWed Interpretation of the Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Dialectal Dictionary of Literary Embellishments The Annotated Dictionary of Dialectal Words Minute DiVerences in Character Formations A Categoric Dictionary of Chinese Words The Feng’s Records of Things and Events The Buddhist Ready Guide The Buddhist Book of Filial Virtues The Dictionary of Buddhist Studies The Foushan Collection

425

377, 378, 402 369 382 369 25, 144 371–3, 375 372, 373 43, 76, 79, 80–94, 142, 148 94 94, 270, 309 269, 309 269, 309 94, 270, 309 94, 270, 309 94 270, 310 24, 90, 148 189 267 244 306, 318 306 222 305

426

book titles from chinese to english

<复古编>

The Dictionary of Ancient Character Exegesis <赋役全书> The Complete Manual of Taxes and Services <改并五音类聚四声篇> The Five-scale Compendium of Chinese Characters: with Revisions and Four-tone ClassiWcations <干禄字书> The Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters <甘泉> The Sweet Spring <高昌馆译书> The Translated Documents of Huihe (Ouigour) Section <高昌馆杂字> A Miscellany of the Ouigourian Words <格致镜原> The Practical ClassiWed Dictionary of Sciences <公羊> Gong Yang <古代词书讲话> Lectures on Ancient Wordbooks <古代辞书史话> Talks on the History of Ancient Word Books and Dictionaries <古今图书集成> The Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Books <古今文字> Ancient and Contemporary Characters <古今韵会> The Comprehensive Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes <古今韵会举要> The Essential Dictionary of Ancient and Contemporary Rhymes <古今韵准> Ancient and Modern Rhyme Standards <古今正字> The RectiWcation of Ancient and Contemporary Characters <古今中外音韵通例> General Examples of Sounds and Rhymes in All Human Speeches <古今字诂> The Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary Characters <古泉汇> A Dictionary of Ancient Currencies <古文尚书> The Collection of Characters from Ancient Books <古小说钩沉> The Probe into Ancient Novels <古韵标准> The Standards of Ancient Rhymes

175, 179, 198 320 196

194–6 80 394 394, 395 327, 339–41 96, 115 4 4 233 169, 187, 188 171, 287

172–4 285, 348 220 354, 355 186, 188 271, 335 211, 215 236 349

book titles from chinese to english <顾氏谱传> <广苍> <广干禄字书> <广群芳谱> <广续方言及拾遗>

<广雅> <广雅疏证> <广雅疏证补正> <广韵> <广韵校勘记> <广韵研究> <归三十字母例> <桂苑珠丛> <国语> <海岛算经> <海国图志> <海录碎事> <汉法拉辞典> <汉书> <汉语大字典> <河东> <河西译语> <洪范> <鸿烈> <洪武正韵> <后汉书>

The Stemmata of the Gu Family The Broad Cangjie Primer The Extended Ganlu Dictionary of Chinese Characters The General Dictionary of All Beauties The Broadly Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words with Supplements The Broad Ready Guide The RectiWed Broad Ready Guide Supplements to the RectiWed Broad Ready Guide The Dictionary of Rhymes Notes on the RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Rhymes Studies on the Dictionary of Rhymes The ClassiWcation of the Thirty-letter Alphabet The Guiyuan Collection of Characters The National Language The Arithmetic Classics of the Islands An Illustrated Gazette of Overseas States The Extensive Miscellany of Minute Things Dictionnaire Chinois, Franc¸ais et Latin The Book of the Han Dynasty The Great Chinese Character Dictionary East of the River The Yellow River West Bilingual Glossary Hong Fan Hong Lie Hong Wu Dictionary of Standard Rhymes The Book of Late Han Dynasty

192 254 195 271, 336 270, 310, 312

172, 215–17 216, 221 61 170, 174, 246–54 254 254 162 178 36, 72, 135 345 320, 321 229 385 35, 60, 64–6 79–81, 101 80 392–4 70 216 347–8, 352, 357–8 101

427

428

book titles from chinese to english

<湖雅>

The Ready Guide of the Huzhou Prefecture <华严经音义> Sounds and Meanings of the Avatamsaka Sutra <华严经> The Avatamsaka Sutra <华阳国志> The Huayang National Annals <华夷译语> A Chinese–Foreign Language Vocabulary <华夷译语> The Chinese–Foreign Language Bilingual Glossaries <华英词典> A Chinese–English Dictionary <华英词典>– A Dictionary of the Chinese 五车韵府 Language <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 <淮南> Huai Nan <淮南子> Huai Nan Zi <淮南子注> The Annotated Huai Nan Zi <皇览> The Imperial Survey <回回馆译语> The Persian Language and Chinese Glossary <回回馆杂字> A Miscellany of Persian Words <慧琳音义> Hui Lin’s Sounds and Meanings <鸡林类事> A Miscellaneous Collection of Things and Events <汲古阁说文订> The Jigu Library Revision to An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters <急就篇>,<急就> The Instant Primer <集古录> The Collection of Ancient Records <集韵> The Rhyme Dictionary <几何原本> Elements <纪效新书> Disciplines and EVects: A New Book <加订戚林八音> The Supplement to the Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds <嘉泰吴兴志> The Annals of Wuxing, Jiatai <甲骨文编> Collections of Jiaguwen Characters <柬韵> Jian Rhymes <检字> Character Index <金国语解> Explanations of the Terms in the History of the Jin Dynasty

307, 308 185, 219 370 78 271, 374 393–5 386, 387 386 396

240 72, 107 101 225, 278 395 395 220, 222 375, 400 284

57, 144 164 168, 170, 249–51, 277 322 359 360 308 105 285 274 383

book titles from chinese to english <金石中西名目表> <金史> <金文编> <晋书> <经传释词> <经典大典> <经典分毫正字>

<经典释文> <经籍纂诂> <经世大典> <经义述闻> <经韵楼集> <九经文字> <九章算术> <旧五代史> <开元文字音义> <刊谬补缺切韵> <刊谬正俗> <康熙字典> <考古图> <考声切韵> <匡谬正俗>

<困学记闻>

Vocabulary of Mineralogical Terms Occurring in the Manual The History of the Jin Dynasty Collections of Jin Inscriptions The Book of the Jin Dynasty The Dictionary of Function Words in Lections and Biographies The Grand Dictionary of Classics The Dictionary of Meticulously RectiWed Characters from Classics The Exegetic Interpretation of Classics The Exegetic Interpretations of Ancient Classics The Compendium of Scriptures and Classics Recorded Studies on the Meaning of Classics A Collection of Classic Rhyme House The Collection of Characters from Nine Classics The Nine Chapters on Arithmetic The Old History of the Five Dynasties Sounds and Meanings of Kaiyuan Characters RectiWcation on the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes The RectiWcation of Classic Interpretations The Imperial Dictionary of Kangxi The Pictorial Dictionary of Archaeology The RectiWcation of Initial Consonants and Vowels The RectiWcation and Standardization of Chinese Characters The Records of Hard Learning

429

396 383 105 38 328–30, 342 227 177

165–6, 211, 221–2 302, 312–15, 318 172 70, 71, 301, 329 284, 300, 301 174 345 345 177, 220 245 207 267–9, 272–4, 276, 290–7 183 220 94, 177

94

430

book titles from chinese to english

<老子疏> <乐> <类聚> <类林杂说>

The Exegesis of Lao Zi The Book of Music The ClassiWed Collection The Miscellanies of Argumentations Concerning ClassiWed Dictionaries <类篇> The ClassiWed Chapters <离骚> Li Sao <礼>,<礼记> The Book of Rites <礼部韵略> The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites <礼记义疏> The Exegesis of the Book of Rites <礼记正义> The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Rites <礼象> The Proprieties <历代地理志韵编今释> A Contemporary Dictionary of Ancient Names of Places in All Dynasties <历代赋汇> A Collection of Fu-poems of Previous Dynasties <历代君臣事迹> The Stories of Emperors and Their OYcials in Previous Dynasties <练兵纪实> Records on Soldier Training <梁书> The Book of the Liang Dynasty <两体清文鉴>, The Augmented Imperial <御制增订清文鉴> Manchurian and Chinese Dictionary <辽国语解> Explanations of the Terms in the History of the Liao Language <辽金元三史国语解> Explanations of the Terms in the Histories of the Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties <辽史> The History of the Liao Dynasty <列子> Lie Zi <柳氏家训> The Teachings of the Liu Family <六经> The Six Classics <六书本义> The Original Exegesis of Sixcategory Chinese Characters <六书故> The Exegesis of Six-category Characters <六书略> The Succinct Explication of Sixcategory Chinese Characters

215 21 225 172, 227

165–71, 190, 191, 203 81, 92 36, 39 171, 174, 251 24 214 217 271, 336

340 231 359 192 397

375, 382, 402 383

382, 383 72 156 240 201 182, 200–4 182

book titles from chinese to english <六书溯原直音>

The Origins of Direct Phonetic Notations of Six-category Chinese Characters <六书通> The Learned Exegesis of Sixcategory Chinese Characters <六书通释> The General Interpretation of Sixcategory Chinese Characters <六书统> The General Exegesis of Sixcategory Chinese Characters <六书系韵> The Phonological Exegesis of Sixcategory Chinese Characters <六书音韵表> The Rhyme Diagram of Six Categories of Chinese Characters <六书准> The Standardized Exegesis of Sixcategory Chinese Characters <六书总要> The Overall Exegesis of Six-category Chinese Characters <六帖> The Six Writing Models <龙龛手鉴> The Dragon Shrine Character Manual <龙威秘书> The Secret Imperial History <鲁论笺> Notes on Lu’s Arguments <吕览> The Lu¨ Survey <吕氏春秋> The Lu¨’s Spring and Autumn Annals <论气> On Ｑi <论语> The Analects of Confucius <论语义疏> The Exegesis of the Analects of Confucius <论语郑氏注> Zheng’s Annotated Analects of Confucius <毛诗古音考> The VeriWcation of Ancient Phonetic Sounds in Mao’s Book of Songs <毛诗诂训传>, Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of <毛传>, <毛诗> Songs <毛诗故训传定本小笺> An Epilogue to the Standardized Version of Mao Heng’s Exegesis of Book of Songs <毛诗后笺> An Epilogue to Mao’s Book of Songs

201

201 167, 200, 203 182, 201 201 284, 350 201 201 225 192, 198 381 304 225, 240 38 338 36, 39, 81 24 157 349

22, 35–7, 70, 97 36

307

431

432

book titles from chinese to english

<毛诗通义> <毛诗正义> <蒙古波斯语词典> <蒙古译语>, <至元译语> <孟子> <梦溪笔谈> <密州说> <妙法莲华经音义> <名理探> <名实篇> <明星事类> <穆天子传> <内经> <南史> <农桑辑要> <农政全书> <女真馆来文> <女真馆杂字> <女真译语> <滂喜篇> <裴子语林> <佩文韵府> <佩觿> <埤仓> <埤雅> <埤雅广要> <篇海> <骈雅>

The General Interpretation of Mao’s Book of Songs The RectiWed Interpretation of Mao’s Book of Songs The Mongolian–Persian Dictionary Explanations of the Mongolian Language Meng Zi The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues The Stories of Mizhou Sounds and Meanings of the Lotus Sutra Explorations in Philosophical Principles On “Name” and “Content” The Star Collection of Things and Events The Mutianzi Biography Classic Internal Medicine The History of the Southern Dynasty Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture The Compendium of Agriculture Memorials from the Nuchen Section The Nuchen Miscellaneous Collection of Foreign Words The Nuchen and Chinese Glossary The Pangxi Primer The Peizi Language Forest A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles The Pei Xi Dictionary The Augmented Cangjie Glossary The Augmented Ready Guide The Essentials of Augmented Ready Guide The MagniWcent Chapters The Rhythmical Ready Guide

311 210, 211, 214 378 379, 392, 394 36, 60, 107 234 300 219 320 31 226 38 323 242 345 322, 336, 337 393 393 393, 395 34, 35 236 276, 324, 332–4, 343 197, 198 186, 215, 254 170, 217–18 171, 217 191, 192, 289 304–5, 317

book titles from chinese to english <骈字类编> <葡汉词典> <七略> <戚参军八音义便览> <戚林八音> <戚林八音合订> <戚林八音字义> <齐史> <汽机中西名目表> <千金方> <千字文> <钱录> <钱通> <潜研堂文集> <切韵> <切韵考> <切韵考外篇>

<切韵指南> <清儒学案> <清文补汇> <清文汇书> <清文鉴> <清文总汇> <穷理学>

A Dictionary of Synonyms Dizionario Portoghese–Cinese Seven Strategies The General Survey of Eight Sounds and Meanings for Qi Armymen The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds: Bound Edition The Qilin Manual of Eight Sounds and Character Meanings The History of the Qi Dynasty Vocabulary of Terms Relating to the Steam Engine One Thousand Golden Medical Prescriptions One Thousand Characters Text The Dictionary of Currencies The General Survey of Currencies The Collected Works of Qian Yan Tang The Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes The VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes Additional Notes on the VeriWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes A Guide to the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes Biographies of Confucian Scholars in the Qing Dynasty The Supplements of the Manchurian Language The Complete Collection of the Manchurian Language The Dictionary of the Manchurian Language The Compendium of the Manchurian Language A Thorough Exploration in Philosophy

433

276, 325, 334, 343 385 63, 83 359 359, 360 359 359 224 396 227 57 271, 335 271, 335 350 161–8, 171–4, 183–5, 243–6, 251–4, 350–3 254, 350–1 254

292 306 398 398 271, 396–7 271, 396, 398 320

434

book titles from chinese to english

<求是堂诗文集> <全芳备祖> <泉志> <群芳谱> <群经音辨>

<群经韵谱> <群书新定字样>

<三才图会> <三苍> <三传> <三国志> <三教珠英> <三礼> <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> <三字经> <散盘> <山海经> <尚书>, <书> <尚书正义> <声类> <尸子> <诗经> <诗> <诗词通韵> <诗故> <诗讲义>

The Collected Poems and Prose of Qiushi Academy The Botanic Compendium Records of Ancient Coins A Complete Collection of All Beauties The Dictionary of Characters from Classics and Scriptures with Phonetic Discrimination Rhymes of Various Classics The New Manual of Character Models from Classics and Scriptures A Pictorial Collection of Heaven, Earth, and Human Three Cang Primer Three Annals The Annals of the Three Kingdoms The Pearl Collection of Three Religions The Book of Three Rites The Three-Language Dictionary: Manchurian, Mongolian, and Chinese

The Three-Character Primer San Pan The Shanhai Scriptures The Book of Ancient Texts The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Ancient Texts The Dictionary of Initial Consonants Shi Zi The Book of Songs General Rhymes for Poems and Ci-poems The Classic Account of Poetry Talks on Poetry

307 173, 227, 234 227 271, 335, 336 200, 212, 213

284 177, 196

320 34, 35 216 119, 120, 121 226 120, 216 397, 398

57 51 38, 107 21, 22, 107 214 174, 243–5, 347 38, 40 35, 77, 349 354, 362 304 217

book titles from chinese to english <诗经小学> <诗经韵谱> <诗毛氏传疏> <诗疏> <诗疏补遗> <诗疑义释> <十驾斋养新录> <十三经音略> <十三经注疏> <十竹斋书画谱> <史记> <史籀篇> <史籀篇疏证> <事林广记> <释名> <释名疏证> <释名疏证补>

<蜀尔雅> <蜀语> <水经注笺> <顺正理论> <说文解字>

<说文解字读>

The Book of Songs and the Philological Studies Rhymes of the Book of Songs The RectiWcation of Mao’s Book of Songs The Exegesis on Poetry Supplements to the Exegesis on Poetry The Interpretation of Poetry New Collections of Shijiazhai A Brief Introduction to Phonetic Sounds in Thirteen Scriptures The Annotated RectiWcation of Thirteen Scriptures Shizhuzai’s Chart of Painting and Calligraphy The Records of the Historian Historian Zhou’s Primer The RectiWcation of Historian Zhou’s Primer The Broad Records of Things and Events The Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms Supplements to the RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters and Terms The Ready Guide for the Shu Dialect The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect Shui Jing Annotations and Commentaries The Abhidharma Naya Anusara Sutra An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters

A Guide to Reading An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters

435

284 284 35, 36 308 311 311 350 306 312 260 65, 199 27, 42–9, 51–60, 136 58 228, 232–3, 378 114–133, 142–4 131 131

302 303, 316–17 304 370 5, 41–8, 95–113, 141, 147–52, 169–70, 178–203, 276–7, 282–9, 295–7 284

436

book titles from chinese to english

<说文解字诂林> <说文解字系传>, <说文系传> <说文解字义证> <说文解字注> <说文释例> <说文通训定声> <说文音隐>

<说雅> <四库全书> <四库全书总目提要>

<四声篇海> <四书大全> <四书考异> <四体清文鉴> <宋高僧传> <宋会要> <宋史> <宋书> <素问> <隋书> <太和正音谱>

The Modern Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Comprehensive Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The RectiWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters The ExempliWed Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters An Explanatory Book of Phonetic Sounds The Phonetic Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters Studies in the Ready Guide The Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature The General Catalogue and Abstracts of the Imperial Collection of Four Branches of Literature The Four-tone MagniWcent Chapters A Complete Collection of the Four Books The RectiWcation and DiVerentiation of the Four Books The Manchurian Dictionary in Four Languages The Biographies of Great Monks of the Song Dynasty Collected Essentials of the Song Dynasty The History of the Song Dynasty The Book of the Song Dynasty Simple Questioning The Book of the Sui Dynasty The Taihe Dictionary of Rhymes

112 112, 179

112, 283 112, 132, 283–4 283 285, 348 112

285 267, 327, 346 325

196, 203 264 332 398 219 345 377 239, 242 111 112, 160 174

book titles from chinese to english <太平广记>

The Imperial Records of the Taiping Reign <太平御览> The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign <太平总类> The General Digest of the Taiping Reign <太玄> The Deepest Mystery <谈天> On the Skies <唐梵两语双对集> The Sanskrit–Chinese Glossary <唐梵文字> The Glossary of Sanskrit and Chinese Characters <唐书> The Book of the Tang Dynasty <唐韵> The Tang Dictionary of Rhymes <堂邑县志> The Annals of Tangyi County <陶山集> The Taoshan Collection <天工开物> The Book of Nature’s Engineering <天竺字源> The Origin of Siddhim Characters <通俗编> A Collection of Popular Expressions <通俗文> The Dictionary of Popular Words <通雅> The General Ready Guide <通韵> General Rhymes <同姓名录> Records of Names of the Same Family Names <同义词词林> The Thesaurus of Chinese Words and Expressions <同源字典> The Cognate Dictionary of Characters <突厥语大词典> The Complete Turkish Dictionary, Turki Tillar Diwani, Diwanu Lught-it-Turk, Divanu Lugat-itTurk, Diwanu LuBatit-Turk, The Compendium of the Turkic Dialects <外台秘要> The Waitai Collection of Secret Prescriptions <万国舆图> The World Map <万用正宗不求人> The Complete Guide to How to Do <王仁昀刊谬补缺切韵> Wang Renyun’s RectiWcation of the Dictionary of Chinese Rhymes <王文公文集> The Collected Works of Wang Anshi <王文简公文集> Collected Works of Wang Yinzhi

226 230–1 230 81 338 373 373 178 171, 245, 350 328 217 336, 338, 344 369 330, 332, 343 23, 275 72, 305 354, 355 276 142 133 173, 379–81

227 320 229 244, 246 181 329

437

438

book titles from chinese to english

<味根轩韵学> <魏书> <文始> <文思博要> <文献大成> <文献通考> <文选注> <文苑英华> <文字> <文字集略> <文字音义> <文字指归> <吴下方言考>

<吴下谚联> <吴语> <五车韵瑞> <五方元音> <五经> <五经大全> <五经定本> <五经文字> <五经异义> <五经正义> <五体清文鉴> <五音集韵> <五音增改并类聚四声篇海> <物理论> <物理小识>

Rhyme Studies in Wei Gen Xuan The Book of the Wei Dynasty The Beginnings of Chinese Characters The Essentials of Literature and Thoughts The Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature The General RectiWcation of Literature The Annotations of Selected Works The Academic Elites Characters The Essential Collection of Words The Sounds and Meanings of Characters The Ultimate Designators of Words The Dictionary of Textual Researches on the Wu-Xia Dialect Proverb Couplets of the Wu Dialect The Dictionary of the Wu Dialect Wuju Rhyme Dictionary Proto-sounds of Speech in All Regions The Five Classics A Complete Collection of the Five Classics The Standard Five Classics The Collection of Characters from Five Classics The Interpretative Dictionary of the Five Classics The RectiWed Interpretation of Five Classics The Manchurian Dictionary in Five Languages The Comprehensive Five-sound Rhyme Dictionary The MagniWcent Chapters: with Augmentations of Five Scales and Categorizations of Four Tones On Physics Fine Observations of Nature

354, 355 177, 215, 244 133 226, 230 339 302 110 164 244 254 254 254 310–11, 317

330, 331, 343 310 324, 330 352–3, 357–8 214 264 161 195–6 101 162, 214 398 171, 251 192

132 305

book titles from chinese to english <物性门类>

The ClassiWcation of Things and Objects <西都赋> Ode to the Western Capital <西番译语> The Tibetan–Chinese Bilingual Glossary <西儒耳目资> An Audio And Visual Guide for Foreign Scholars <西蜀方言> Western Mandarin, or the Spoken Language of Western China; with Syllabic and English Indexes <西天馆译语> The Sanskrit and Chinese Glossary <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 <悉昙字记> The Record of Siddhim Characters <熹平石经> Xiping Stone Inscriptions <系传> Xi Zhuan <暹罗馆译语> The Thai Language and Chinese Glossary <萧恺传> The Biography of Xiao Kai <小尔雅> The Pocket Ready Guide <小尔雅义疏> The RectiWcation of the Pocket Ready Guide <孝经> The Book of Filial Virtues <校定<说文>> The Revised Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters <新方言> The New Dictionary of Dialectal Words <新加九经字样> The New Collection of Character Models from Nine Classics <新修本草> The Newly Revised Materia Medica <新字训解> The Exegetic Interpretation of New Characters <性理大全> A Complete Collection of Philosophical Essays <修文殿御览> The Imperial Survey of Xiuwen Palace

217 274 381, 395 385 389

395 396

369 18, 195 167 395 192 23, 72, 215 307 96, 107, 215 179 94 171, 177, 196 227 254 264 230, 278

439

440

book titles from chinese to english

<虚字说> <徐霞客游记> <续尔雅> <续方言> <续方言补> <续方言补正>

<续方言稿> <续方言疏证> <续方言新校补>

<续方言又补>

<续高僧传> <续文献通考> <续一切经音义>

<玄宗事类> <学林> <荀子> <训纂篇> <颜氏家训> <颜氏字样> <演说文> <野议> <一切经音> <一切经音义>

The Studies in Function Words The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake The Extended Ready Guide The Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Manuscripts of the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words The RectiWcation of the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words New Supplements and RectiWcations to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words New Supplements to the Augmented Dictionary of Dialectal Words The Continuation to Biographies of Great Monks A Continual to the General Survey on Ancient Literature The Extended Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures Xuanzong’s Collection of Things and Events The Scholarly Circles Xun Zi The Exegetic Primer The Teachings of the Yan Family Yan’s Manual of Character Models The Studies in An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters Miscellaneous Commentaries Sounds of All the Buddhist Scriptures Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures (also Sounds and Meanings of the Whole Canon)

270, 302 322 217–8 270, 309, 312 94 270, 309

93 93 94, 270, 309

270, 310

219 278 219–20, 371

226 209 124 47 177 177, 194–6 112 338 207, 370 110

book titles from chinese to english <医经方> <仪礼> <仪礼古今义疏文> <艺文类聚> <异字苑> <易经>,<易> <音汉清文鉴> <音鉴> <音谱> <音韵阐微> <殷周金文集成>

<英公唐本草> <营造法式> <瀛环志略> <永乐大典> <游宦纪闻> <虞书> <虞箴> <羽猎> <禹贡> <语助> <玉海> <玉函山房辑佚书> <玉篇> <玉篇广韵校刊札记>

<御制满蒙文鉴> <御制清文鉴>

The Book of Secret Prescriptions Etiquette and Rites The Ancient and Contemporary Exegesis of Etiquette and Rites The ClassiWed Collection of Art and Literary Works The Garden of Variant Characters The Book of Changes The Manchurian and Chinese Dictionary Sound DiVerentiation The Sound Family An Explanatory Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes A Collection of Inscription Characters of the Yin and Shang Dynasties The Yinggongtang Materia Medica Methods and Models in Construction A Brief Account of the Overseas States The Yongle Compendium The Travels of a Tourist OYcial The Yu Book Yu Didactics The Feather Hunting Yu Gong The Language Assistant The Jade Sea The Collection of Lost Books in Yuhanshan House The Jade Chapters Notes on the RectiWcation of the Jade Chapters and the Dictionary of Rhymes The Imperial Manchurian and Mongolian Dictionary The Imperial Dictionary of the Manchurian Language

441

111 215 307 224, 228, 229, 279 254 25, 26, 81 397 356 254 353, 361 47

227 345 320, 321 271, 279, 327, 339–40, 344–6 209 109 81 80 61 172, 227 172, 227, 229 224 177–8, 184–5, 188–94, 202–3 254

397 398

442

book titles from chinese to english

<渊鉴类函> <元和姓纂> <元尚篇> <爰历篇> <月令广义> <越言释> <越谚> <韵府群玉> <韵府拾遗> <韵海镜源> <韵会> <韵集> <韵镜> <韵略> <韵略汇通> <韵略易解> <韵诠> <韵史> <韵学骊珠> <韵英> <增修互补礼部韵略>

<正名篇> <正续一切经音义>

<正语作词起例> <正韵> <正字通> <证俗文>

The Categoric Chinese Encyclopedic Dictionary The Yuanhe Dictionary of Family Names The Yuanshang Primer The Yuanli Primer General Monthly Climates An Explanatory Dictionary of the Yue Dialect Proverbs of the Yue Dialect The Gem Dictionary of Rhymes The Additions to A Dictionary of Rhymes and Styles The Sources of Rhyme Ocean A Collection of Rhymes The Collection of Rhymes The Mirror of Rhymes The Essential Dictionary of Rhymes A General Introductory Dictionary of Rhymes An Interpretative Dictionary of Rhymes The Interpretative Manual of Rhymes A Diachronic Dictionary of Chinese Rhyme Studies The Pearls of Rhyme Studies Rhyme Essentials Amendments to the Essential Dictionary of Rhymes for the Ministry of Rites On Name RectiWcation The Supplement to Sounds and Meanings of All the Buddhist Scriptures Standard Words for Writing Ci with Examples The Dictionary of Standard Rhymes The RectiWed Dictionary of Chinese Characters The RectiWcation of Popular Words

267, 276, 338 227 25, 101, 136 27, 28, 57 320 270, 310 303, 317, 330–1 172, 330 333 178, 226, 330 292, 295 174, 243, 244 174 171, 250, 254 272 272 220 272 357, 362, 363 220 358

31 149

252 292, 295 290–6 254

book titles from chinese to english <直语补证>

<职方外纪> <止止堂集> <指物篇> <枳园近稿> <中国辞书编纂史略> <中国辞书史话> <中国佛教史籍概论> <中国古代音乐史料辑要> <中国古代字典辞典概论> <中国学术名著提要语言文字卷> <中国字典词典史话> <中国字典史略> <中华大藏经> <中华大字典> <中文孝经> <中原音韵> <中州乐府音韵类编> <中州全韵> <中州音韵辑要> <重校方言>

Direct Amendments on A Collection of Popular Expressions Areas Outside the Concern of the Chinese Imperial Geographer The Zhizhitang Collection On Substance New Manuscripts from Citrange Garden A Brief History of Dictionary Compilation in China A Narrative History of Lexicography in China An Introduction to Buddhist Scriptures in China The Data Corpus of Ancient Chinese Musical History An Introduction to Ancient Dictionaries in China Essentials of the Well-known Chinese Academic Works: Language and Characters Talks on the History of Chinese Dictionaries A Brief History of Chinese Character Dictionaries The Compendium of China’s Buddhist Sutras The Great Character Dictionary of China The Chinese Book of Filial Virtues The Central Plains Dictionary of Sounds and Rhymes The ClassiWed Dictionary of Zhongzhou Yuefu Rhymes A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Rhymes of Zhongzhou State The Essentials of Sounds and Rhymes of Zhongzhou State The RectiWed Dictionary of Dialectal Words with New RectiWcations

332

320 359 31 304 4 3 220 235 4 218

4 4 207 292 306 167, 251–2 172 362, 363 357, 362 270, 309

443

444

book titles from chinese to english

<州箴> <周礼> <周礼汉读考> <周史> <周易文句义疏>

<周易正义> <珠玉同声> <助字辨略> <庄子> <庄子独见> <庄子文句义> <梓人遗训> <字海> <字汇> <字鉴> <字类> <字林> <字母切韵要法> <字諟> <字说> <字通> <字统> <字样> <字音汇集> <字苑> <字指> <纂文> <遵义府志>

State Didactics The Rites of the Zhou Dynasty The Explanatory RectiWcation of the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty The History of the Zhou Dynasty The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from the Book of Changes The RectiWed Interpretation of the Book of Changes The Sound Synchronization of Pearls and Jades The Interpretative Dictionary of Function Words Zhuang Zi Original Commentaries on Zhuang Zi The Exegesis of Words and Sentences from Zhuang Zi Teachings of the Deceased Natives The MagniWcent Character Dictionary The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Character Mirror The ClassiWed Characters The Character Forest The Techniques for Segmenting Rhymes The Character RectiWcation The Character Dictionary The General Dictionary of Chinese Characters The Orthographical Manual of Characters The Character Models A Collection of Characters and Sounds The Character Garden The Character Designator On Composition The Annals of Zunyifu

81 41 300 224 215

214 359 303, 314, 328 38 311 215 345 178 269, 274, 286–91, 293–7 198, 199 254 185–8 292 101 180–2, 218 175, 197, 198 220, 248, 254 171, 173, 254 357, 363, 364 254 254 254 303

Appendix iii

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 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 前221–前206 221 bc–206 bc 西汉前206–公元25 / Western Han Dynasty 206 bc–ad 25 东汉25–220 / Eastern Han Dynasty 25–220 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 西晋 265–420 / Western Jin Dynasty 265–420 东晋 317–420 / Eastern Jin Dynasty 317–420

商 / Shang Dynasty 周 / Zhou Dynasty 秦 / Qin Dynasty 汉 / Han Dynasty 三国 / Three Kingdoms

晋 / Jin Dynasty

南北朝 / Southern and Northern Dynasties

隋 / Sui Dynasty 唐 / Tang Dynasty 五代 / Five Dynasties

宋 / Song Dynasty 辽 / Liao Dynasty 金 / Jin Dynasty 元 / Yuan Dynasty 明 / Ming Dynasty 清 / Qing Dynasty 中华民国 / The Republic of China 中华人民共和国 / The People’s Republic of China

南朝 / Southern Dynasties 北朝 / Northern Dynasites

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

581–618 618–907 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 北宋 960–1127 / Northern Song Dynasty 960–1127 南宋 1127–1279 / Southern Song Dynasty 1127–1279 907–1125 1115–1234 1206–1368 1368–1644 1616–1911 1912–1949 1949–

Bi b l i o g r a p h y

Ban, Gu. (1962). The Book of the Han Dynasty (12 volumes). Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Be´joint, Henri. (1994). Tradition and Innovation in Modern English Dictionaries. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —— (2000). Modern Lexicography, An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bergenholtz, Henning. and Tarp Sven (1995). Manual of Specialized Lexicography. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Bussman, Hadumond. (1996). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, Trans. and ed. by Gregory P. Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi. London: Routledge. Cao, Xianzhu. and Bingcai Chen (1992). The Classified Abstracts of 8000 Chinese Reference Works. Beijing: Peking University Press. Carr, Michael. (1997). ‘Internet Dictionaries and Lexicography’, International Journal of Lexicography, Vol.10, No. 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cen, Qixiang. (1964). An Outline History of Linguistics. Beijing: Science Press. Chen, Mengjia. (2004). The Manual of the Bronze Vessels in the Western Zhou Dynasty (2 volumes). Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Chen, Zhen. (1984). ‘Hu Wenying – the Author of The Dictionary of Textual Research on the Wu-Xia Dialect’, Lexicographical Studies 1:32–7. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Chien, David and Creamer, Thomas (1986). ‘A Brief History of Chinese Bilingual Lexicography’, in Hartmann (ed.), The History of Lexicography, Papers from The Dictionary Research Centre Seminar at Exeter, March 1986. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Collison, Robert L. (1982). A History of Foreign-Language Dictionaries. London: Andre´ Deutsch Limited. Cowie, A. P. (2002). English Dictionaries for Foreign Learners: A History. Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching & Research Press. Deng, Wenbing. (2002). A History of Ancient Chinese Philology. Chengdu: Bashu Press. Dinh-Hoa Nguyen. (1995). ‘On Chi-nam Ngoc-am Giai-nghia: An Early ChineseVietnamese Dictionary’, in Kachru, Braj B. et al. (eds.), Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary: Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta. Tu¨bingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag Gmb. H. & Co. KG.

448

bibliography

Duan, Yucai. (1981). The Annotated Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Book Press. Dunn, Robert. (1977). Chinese-English and English-Chinese Dictionaries in the Library of Congress: An Annotated Bibliography. Washington: Library of Congress. Fan, Congjun. (1996). ‘Mao Heng’s Exegesis of the Book of Songs and Dictionary Compilation’, Lexicographical Studies 5:11–18. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Fan, Ye. (1965). The Book of the Late Han Dynasty (12 volumes). Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Fang, Houshu. (1979). ‘A Narrative History of Lexicography in China’, Lexicographical Studies 1:22–28. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Feng, Fengfeng. (1992). ‘A General Survey of the Theories of Character Dictionary Compilation in the Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang Dynasties’, Lexicographical Studies 3:96–108. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Fu, Dingmiao. (1987). ‘Studies in the Completion Date of The Dictionary of the Shu Dialect’, Lexicographical Studies 5:91–2. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Geeraerts, D. (1989). ‘Principles of Monolingual Lexicography’, in Hausmann et al. (eds.), Dictionaries: An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Green, Jonathan. (1996). Chasing the Sun. London: Jonathan Cape. Hartmann, R. R. K. (ed.). (1986). The History of Lexicography, Papers from The Dictionary Research Centre Seminar at Exeter, March 1986. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Hartmann, R. R. K. and Gregory, James. (2000). Dictionary of Lexicography. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Hausmann, Franz Josef et al. (eds.). (1989). Dictionaries: An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hu, Daojing. (1956). The Rectification of Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues. Shanghai: Shanghai Publishing Company. —— (1981). ‘The Mengxi Collection of Written Dialogues and its Author – Shen Kuo’, Lexicographical Studies 2:56–9. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Hu, Pu’an. (1937). A History of Chinese Exegetic Studies. Beijing: The Commercial Press. —— (1983). A History of Exegetic Studies in China (Reprinted Edition). Beijing: Beijing Book Company. Hu, Qiguan. and Fang, Huanhai. (2001). ‘Further Studies in the Completion Date of The Ready Guide’, Lexicographical Studies 6:93–7. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Huang, Kan. (1980). The Miscellany of Huang Kan’s Studies. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Book Press. Kachru, Bra. B. et al. (eds.). (1995). Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary: Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta. Tu¨bingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag Gmb. H. & Co. KG.

bibliography

449

Kang, Zhijie. (1988). ‘The Jesuits and the Compilation of Dictionaries’, Lexicographical Studies 1:56–61. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Kromann, Hans-Peder et al. (1989). ‘Principles of Bilingual Lexicography’, in Hausmann et al. (eds.), Dictionaries: An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Landau, Sidney I. (2001). Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (2nd Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, Fang. et al. (1960). The Imperial Digest of the Taiping Reign. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Li, Jianguo. (2002). A History of Chinese Exegetic Studies (Revised Edition). Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Li, Rong. (1993). ‘A Brief Discussion about Dialect Dictionaries’, Lexicographical Studies 4:130–4. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Li, Shuhao. (2003). A History of Philology in Ancient China. Chengdu: Bashu Press. Li, Xueqin. (2002). The Compendium of Chinese Reference Works (100 volumes). Hefei: Anhui Education Press. Li, Zhenhong. (2003). The Bamboo Slips Unearthed in Juyan and the Society of the Han Dynasty. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Lin, Yushan. (1992). A Brief History of Dictionary Compilation in China. Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou Ancient Book Press. Lin, Yutang. (1933). Linguistics Studies Series. Shanghai: Shanghai Kaiming Press. Liu, Bin. (1988). ‘Dai Tong and The Exegesis of Six-category Characters’, Lexicographical Studies 2:116–24. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Liu, Changyun. (1985). ‘The Book of Changes Viewed from the Lexicographical Perspective’, Lexicographical Studies 5:45–51. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Liu, Yeqiu. (1983). A Brief History of Chinese Character Dictionaries. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Ma, Wenxi. and Zhang, Guibi. (2004). A Dictionary of Ancient Chinese Philology. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. McArthur, Tom. (1986). Worlds of References–Lexicography, Learning and Language: From Clay Tablets to Computer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Qian, Jianfu. (1986). An Introduction to Ancient Dictionaries in China. Beijing: The Commercial Press. —— (1989). ‘A Preliminary Discourse on the Ancient Chinese Lexicography’, Lexicographical Studies 1:72–83 and 2:101–9. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Qian, Mu. (2001). Commentaries on Scripture Studies in the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Starnes, DeWitt T. (1954). Renaissance Dictionaries English-Latin and Latin-English. Austin: University of Texas Press. Starnes, DeWitt T. and Noyes, Gertrude E. (1991). The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Su, Yu. (1992). The Rectification of the Spring and Autumn Miscellaneous Collection. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company.

450

bibliography

Wang, Guowei. (1983). The Posthumous Writings of Wang Guowei (10 volumes). Shanghai: Shanghai Bookshop Press. Wang, Wenjin. (2001). The Interpretation of The Book of Rites (2 volumes). Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Watters, T. (1889). Essays on the Chinese Language. Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press. Xu, Shen. (1963). An Explanatory Dictionary of Chinese Characters. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Xu, Zhaohua. (1987). The Contemporary Annotated Ready Guide. Tianjin: Nankai University Press. Xu, Zhongshu. (1989). A Dictionary of Jiaguwen Characters. Chengdu: Sichuan Lexicographical Press. Yan, Zhitui. (1980). A Collection of the Teachings of the Yan Family. Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Book Press. Yong, Heming. (2001). ‘The Dictionary as Communication’, Foreign Languages 4:38–43. Shanghai: Shanghai University of Foreign Studies. —— (2002). ‘Robert Morrison – A Brief Biography and His Dictionary’, Lexicographical Studies 4:121–5. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. —— (2003). Lexicography from a Communicative Perspective. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. —— (2004). ‘Thoughts on the Studies of Chinese Dictionary History’, Lexicographical Studies 2:14–21. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Yong, Heming et al. (2006). A History of Chinese Dictionaries. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Yong, Heming and Peng, Jing. (2007). Bilingual Lexicography from a Communicative Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Zeng, Dongjing. (2003). Conference Proceedings in Bilingual Lexicography. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. Zgusta, L. (1971). Manual of Lexicography. The Hague: Mouton. Zhang, Lxiang. (1988). ‘A Dictionary of Synonyms and Dictionary Compilation’, Lexicographical Studies 6:122–9. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Zhang, Minghua. (1998). A Brief History of Chinese Dictionaries. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Zhang, Yachu. (2001). A Commentary Collection of Jin Inscriptions in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Zhao, Cheng. (1980). The Rhyme Dictionaries in Ancient China. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Company. Zhao, Zhengduo. (1986). Talks on the History of Ancient Word Books and Dictionaries. Chengdu: Sichuan People’s Press. —— (2000). A History of Linguistics in China. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Education Press. Zhao, Yintang. (1957). The Origin and Evolution of the Rhyme Table. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

bibliography

451

Zhou, Demei. (1999). ‘The Book of Changes – the Earliest Extant Dictionary’, Lexicographical Studies 4:123–32. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Zhu, Jiansong. (1988). ‘A Brief Discussion on the Annotational Features of The Dictionary of Rhymes’, Lexicographical Studies Series 9. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. Zou, Feng. (1983). ‘Innovations in the Compilation of The Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters’, Lexicographical Studies 5:34–9. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. —— (1991). ‘The Initial Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicography’, Lexicographical Studies 4:59–67. Shanghai: Shanghai Lexicographical Press. —— (2001). Explorations in Lexicography. Wuhan: Hubei People’s Press.

We b s ite s

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/cbeta/result/app/T54/2133b001.htm http://www.buddhist-canon.com/REF/misc/T54N2133B.htm http://www.kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/wittern/can/can2/ind/canwww.htm 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

454

index of chinese names

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 Kong Yingda 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

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

455

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

456

index of chinese names

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

index of chinese names 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

457

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 Lu¨xiang 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

458

index of chinese names

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

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