The Shuōwén Jiězì was an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary

Chinese dictionary

Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for Chinese, and this article will introduce some of the most important...

 from the Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...

. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

 dictionary (the Erya

Erya

The Erya is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary or Chinese encyclopedia. Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from" the 3rd century BC....

 predates it), it was still the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them (sometimes also the etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

 of the words represented by them), as well as the first to use the principle of organization by sections with shared components, called radicals

Radical (Chinese character)

A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...

 (bùshǒu 部首, lit. "section headers").

Circumstances of compilation

Xǔ Shèn

Xu Shen

Xǔ Shèn was a Chinese philologist of the Han Dynasty. He was the author of Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary with character analysis, as well as the first to organize the characters by shared components. It contains over 9,000 character entries under 540 radicals, explaining the origins...

, a famous Han scholar of the Five Classics, compiled the Shuowen Jiezi. He finished editing it in 100

100

Year 100 was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Traianus and Frontinus...

 CE, but due to an unfavorable imperial attitude towards scholarship, he waited until 121

121

Year 121 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Verus and Augur...

 CE before having his son Xǔ Chōng present it to Emperor An of Han

Emperor An of Han

Emperor Ān of Hàn, ch. 漢安帝, py. hàn ān dì, wg. Han An-ti, was an emperor of the Chinese Hàn Dynasty and the sixth emperor of the Eastern Hàn period ruling from 106 to 125...

 along with a memorial.

In analyzing the structure of characters and defining the words represented by them, Xu Shen strove to disambiguate the meaning of the pre-Han Classics, so as to render their usage by government unquestioned and bring about order, and in the process also deeply imbued his organization and analyses with his philosophy on characters and the universe. According to Boltz (1993:430), Xu's compilation of the Shuowen "cannot be held to have arisen from a purely linguistic or lexicographical drive." His motives were more pragmatic and political. During the Han era, the prevalent theory of language was Confucianist Rectification of Names, the belief that using the correct names for things was essential for proper government. The postface

Postface

A postface is the opposite of a preface, a brief article or explanatory information placed at the end of a book. Sometimes general information about a book and the people for whom it was written is at the back of the book in a postface. In ancient Chinese works, the postface is called 序/叙言...

 (xù 敘) to the Shuowen Jiezi (tr. Thern 1966:17) explains: "Now the written language is the foundation of classical learning, the source of kingly government." Compare how the postface describes the legendary invention of writing for governmental rather than for communicative purposes:

Cang Jie, scribe for the Yellow Emperor, on looking at the tracks of the feet of birds and animals, realizing that the patterns and forms were distinguishable, started to create graphs, so that all kinds of professions could be regulated, and all people could be kept under scrutiny.(tr. Thern 1966:17)

Pre-Shuowen Chinese dictionaries like the Erya

Erya

The Erya is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary or Chinese encyclopedia. Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from" the 3rd century BC....

 and the Fangyan

Fangyan

The Fāngyán , edited by Yang Xiong, was the first Chinese dictionary of dialectal terms. The full title is Yóuxuān shǐzhĕ juédài yǔ shì biéguó fāngyán "Local speeches of other countries in times immemorial explained by the Light-Carriage Messenger," which alludes to a Zhou Dynasty tradition of...

 were limited lists of synonyms loosely organized by semantic categories, which made it difficult to look up characters. Xu Shen analytically organized characters in the comprehensive Shuowen Jiezi through their shared graphic components, which Boltz (1993:431) calls "a major conceptual innovation in the understanding of the Chinese writing system."

Textual organization

The title of the work draws a basic distinction between two types of characters, wén 文 and zì 字, the former being those composed of a single graphic element (such as shān 山 "mountain"), and the latter being those containing more than one such element (such as hǎo 好 "good" with 女 "woman" and 子 "child") which can be deconstructed into and analyzed in terms of their component elements. Note that the character 文 itself exemplifies the category wén 文, while 字 (which is composed of 宀 and 子) exemplifies zì 字. Thus, Shuōwén Jiězì means "commenting on" (shuō "speak; talk; comment; explain") the wén, which cannot be deconstructed, and "analyzing" (jiě "untie; separate; divide; analyze; explain; deconstruct") the zì.

Xu Shen categorized Chinese characters into 540 sections, under "section headers" (bùshǒu, now the standard linguistic and lexicographical term for character radicals

Radical (Chinese character)

A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...

): these may be entire characters or simplifications thereof, which also serve as components shared by all the characters in that section. The number of section headers, 540, numerologically

Numerology

Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...

 equals 6 × 9 × 10, the product of the symbolic numbers of Yīn and Yáng and the number of the Heavenly Stems

Heavenly Stems

The ten Celestial or Heavenly Stems are a Chinese system of ordinals that first appear during the Shang dynasty, ca. 1250 BC, as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-period ritual as names for dead family members, who were offered sacrifices on the corresponding day...

. The first section header was 一 (yī "one; first") and the last was 亥 (hài, the last character of the Earthly Branches

Earthly Branches

The Earthly Branches provide one Chinese system for reckoning time.This system was built from observations of the orbit of Jupiter. Chinese astronomers divided the celestial circle into 12 sections to follow the orbit of Suìxīng . Astronomers rounded the orbit of Suixing to 12 years...

). Xu's choice of sections appears in large part to have been driven by the desire to create an unbroken, systematic sequence among the headers themselves, such that each had a natural, intuitive relationship (e.g., structural, semantic or phonetic) with the ones before and after, as well as by the desire to reflect cosmology

Cosmology

Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...

. In the process, he included many section headers that are not considered ones today, such as 炎 (yán "flame") and 熊 (xióng "bear"), which modern dictionaries list under the 火 or 灬 (huǒ "fire") heading. He also included as section headers all the sexagenary cycle

Sexagenary cycle

The Chinese sexagenary cycle , also known as the Stems-and-Branches , is a cycle of sixty terms used for recording days or years. It appears, as a means of recording days, in the first Chinese written texts, the Shang dynasty oracle bones from the late second millennium BC. Its use to record years...

 characters, that is, the ten Heavenly Stems and twelve Earthly Branches. As a result, unlike modern dictionaries which attempt to maximize the number of characters under each section header, 34 Shuowen headers have no characters under them, while 159 have only one each. From a modern lexicographical perspective, Xu's system of 540 headings can seem "enigmatic" and "illogical" (Thern 1966:4). For instance, he included the singular section header 409 惢 (ruǐ "doubt"), with only one rare character (ruǐ 繠 "stamen"), instead of listing it under the common header 408 心 (xīn "heart; mind").

The Shuowen Jiezi is often mistakenly cited as the origin of the "Six-Principles Theory of Chinese character composition" (liùshū 六書 "six graphs"); however, several earlier books mention it (q.v. Chinese character classification

Chinese character classification

All Chinese characters are logograms, but there are several derivative types. These include a handful which derive from pictograms and a number which are ideographic in origin, but the vast majority originated as phono-semantic compounds . In older literature, Chinese characters in general may be...

). Xu Shen's postface describes the Six Principles and his dictionary systematizes them. He uses the first two, simple indicatives (zhǐshì 指事) and pictograms (xiàngxíng 象形) to explicitly label the dictionary's character entries, e.g., in the typical pattern of "(character) (definition) ...simple indicative" (A B 也...指事 (也)). Logographs belonging to the third principle, phono-semantic compound characters (xíngshēng 形聲), are implicitly identified through the entry pattern A… from B, phonetically resembles C (A...從 B, C 聲), meaning that element B plays a semantic role in A, while C gives the sound. The fourth type, compound indicatives (huìyì 會意), are sometimes identified by the pattern A...from X from Y (A...從 X 從 Y), meaning that the compound A is given meaning through the graphic combination and interaction of both constituent elements. The last two of the six principles, borrowed characters (aka phonetic loan, jiǎjiè 假借) and derived characters (zhuǎnzhù 轉注), are not identifiable in the character definitions, as they are not principles of structural composition.

Contents and importance

Xu Shen states in his postface that the Shuowen has 9,353 character entries, plus 1,163 graphic variants, with a total length of 133,441 characters. The transmitted texts vary slightly in content, owing to omissions and emendations by commentators (especially Xú Xuàn, see below), and modern editions have 9,431 characters and 1,279 variants. The Shuowen includes a Preface and 15 chapters. The first 14 chapters are character entries; the 15th and final chapter is divided into two parts: a postface and an index of section headers.

Xu wrote the Shuowen Jiezi to analyze seal script

Seal script

Seal script is an ancient style of Chinese calligraphy. It evolved organically out of the Zhōu dynasty script , arising in the Warring State of Qin...

 (specifically xiǎozhuàn 小篆 "small seal") characters that evolved slowly and organically throughout the mid to late Zhou dynasty in the state of Qin, and which were then standardized during the Qín dynasty

Qin Dynasty

The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...

 and promulgated empire-wide. Even as copyists transcribed the main text of the book in clerical script in the late Han, and then in modern standard script in the centuries to follow, the small seal characters continued to be copied in their own (seal) script to preserve their structure, as were two kinds of variant graphs included by Xu, which he termed ancient script (gǔwén

Guwen

Gǔwén literally means ancient Chinese script. Historically the term has been used in several different ways.The first usage, which is common, is as a reference to the most ancient forms of Chinese writing, namely the writing of the Shāng and early Zhōu dynasties, such as found on oracle bones,...

 古文) and Zhòu script (Zhòuwén 籀文, not to be confused with the Zhou Dynasty

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

).

The guwen characters were conclusively shown by the leading scholar, Wang Guowei

Wang Guowei

Wang Guowei , courtesy name Jing'an or Baiyu , was a Chinese scholar, writer and poet...

, to be anything but ancient; rather, they were regional variant forms from only slightly earlier, in the eastern areas during the Warring States period, thus making them contemporaneous with (not "ancient" compared to) the pre-unification Qín seal script. Note that Xu only included these "ancient" variants when they differed from standard seal. The Zhòu characters, now usually called large seal script

Large Seal Script

Large Seal script or Great Seal script is a traditional reference to Chinese writing from before the Qin dynasty, and is now popularly understood to refer narrowly to the writing of the Western and early Eastern Zhou dynasties, and more broadly to also include the oracle bone script...

 (dàzhuàn 大篆 "large seal"), were taken from the no-longer extant Shĭ Zhòu Piān (史籀篇), an early copybook traditionally attributed to Shĭ Zhòu, or Historian Zhou, an official in the court of King Xuan of Zhou

King Xuan of Zhou

King Xuan of Zhou was the eleventh sovereign of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty. Estimated dates of his reign are 827-782 BC or 827/25-782 BC.He worked to restore royal authority after the Gong He interregnum. He fought the 'Western Barbarians' and another group on the Huai River to the southeast. In...

 (r. 827 BCE- 782 BCE).

Xu Shen did not know it at the time, but this "Zhòu script" dated from the late Western Zhōu Dynasty

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

, and the "Zhòu script" was thus much older than the Warring States and Qin forms that he was analyzing. Later handwritten Shuowen versions copied the seal and ancient graphs, but wrote the definitions in the prevailing script in use (clerical script

Clerical script

The clerical script , also formerly chancery script, is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which evolved in the Warring States period to the Qin dynasty, was dominant in the Han dynasty, and remained in use through the Wèi-Jìn periods...

, regular script

Regular script

Regular script , also called 正楷 , 真書 , 楷体 and 正書 , is the newest of the Chinese script styles Regular script , also called 正楷 , 真書 (zhēnshū), 楷体 (kǎitǐ) and 正書 (zhèngshū), is the newest of the Chinese script styles Regular script , also called 正楷 , 真書 (zhēnshū), 楷体 (kǎitǐ) and 正書 (zhèngshū), is...

, etc.).

The typical Shuowen format for a character entry consists of a seal graph; a short definition (usually a single synonym

Synonym

Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...

, occasionally in a punning way

Shengxun

In classical Chinese philology, shengxun or yinxun is the practice of explaining a character by using a homophone or near-homophone. The practice is ancient, and can be seen in Pre-Qin texts. Xu Shen, author of the monumental Shuowen Jiezi, employed shengxun...

 as in the Shiming

Shiming

The Shìmíng is a Chinese dictionary that employed phonological glosses, and "is believed to date from c. 200 [CE]" . Its 1502 definitions attempt to establish semantic connections based upon puns between the word being defined and the word defining it, which is often followed with an explanation...

), pronunciation given by citing a homophone

Homophone

A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...

, and analysis of compound graphs into semantic and/or phonetic components. Individual entries can additionally include graphic variants, secondary definitions, information on regional usages, citations from pre-Han texts, and further phonetic information, especially in dúruò (讀若 "read like") notations (Coblin 1978).

Although the Shuowen Jiezi has had incalculable value to scholars and was traditionally relied upon as the most important Chinese etymological dictionary

Etymological dictionary

An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the OED and Webster's, will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology....

, many of its analyses and definitions have been eclipsed as vague or inaccurate since the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions in the late 1800s. It therefore can no longer be relied upon as the single, authoritative source for definitions and graphic etymologies. Xu Shen lacked access to oracle bone inscriptions from the Shāng Dynasty

Shang Dynasty

The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper" in the Yellow River valley...

 and bronzeware inscriptionss from the Shang and Western Zhou Dynasty, to which scholars now have access; they are often critical for understanding the structures and origins of logographs. For instance, he put lǜ (慮 "be concerned; consider") under the section heading 思 (sī "think") and noted it had a phonetic of hǔ (虍 "tiger"). However, the early bronze graphs for lǜ (慮) have the xīn (心 "heart") semantic component and a lǚ (呂 "a musical pitch") phonetic, also seen in early forms of lǔ (盧 "vessel; hut") and lǔ (虜 "captive").

Textual history and scholarship

Although the original Han Dynasty Shuōwén Jiězì text has been lost, it was transmitted through handwritten copies for centuries. The oldest extant trace of it is a six-page manuscript fragment from the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

, amounting to about 2% of the entire text. The fragment, now in Japan, concerns the mù (木) section header. The earliest post-Han scholar known to have researched and emended this dictionary, albeit badly, was Lǐ Yángbīng (李陽冰, fl. 765-80), who "is usually regarded as something of a bête noire of [Shuowen] studies," writes Boltz (1993:435), "owing to his idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious editing of the text."

Shuowen scholarship improved greatly during the Southern Tang

Southern Tang

Southern Tang was one of the Ten Kingdoms in south-central China created following the Tang Dynasty from 937-975. Southern Tang replaced the Wu Kingdom when Li Bian deposed the emperor Yang Pu....

-Song

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

 Dynasties and later during the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

. The most important Northern Song scholars were the Xú brothers, Xú Xuàn (徐鉉, 916-991) and Xú Kǎi (徐鍇, 920-74). In 986

986

Year 986 was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar.- Europe :* March 2 – Louis V becomes King of the Franks....

, Emperor Taizong of Song

Emperor Taizong of Song

Emperor Taizong , born Zhao Kuangyi, was the second emperor of the Song Dynasty of China from 976 to 997. He was the younger brother of Emperor Taizu. His temple name Taizong means "Grand Ancestor".-Overview:...

 ordered Xú Xuàn and other editors to publish an authoritative edition of the dictionary. Xu Xuan's textual criticism has been especially vital for all subsequent scholarship, since his restoration of the damage done by Li Yangbing resulted in the closest version we have to the original, and the basis for all later editions. Xu Kai, in turn, focused on exegetical study, analyzing the meaning of Xu Shen's text, appending supplemental characters, and adding fanqie

Fanqiè

In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:...

 pronunciation glosses for each entry. Among Qing Shuowen scholars, some like Zhū Jùnshēng (朱駿聲, 1788–1858), followed the textual criticism model of Xu Xuan, while others like Guì Fù (桂馥, 1736–1805) and Wáng Yún (王筠, 1784–1834) followed the analytical exegesis model of Xu Kai. One Qing scholar, Duàn Yùcái

Duan Yucai

Duan Yucai , courtesy name Ruoying was a Chinese philologist of the Qing Dynasty. He made great contributions to the study of Historical Chinese phonology, and is known for his annotated edition of Shuowen Jiezi.-Biography:...

  (段玉裁), stands above all the others due to the quality of his research in both areas. His annotated Shuowen edition is the one most commonly used by students today.

Scholarship in the 20th century offered new understandings and accessibility. Ding Fubao (丁福保, 1874–1952) collected all available Shuowen materials, clipped and arranged them in the original dictionary order, and photolithographically printed a colossal edition. Notable advances in Shuowen research have been made by Chinese and Western scholars like Ma Zonghuo (馬宗霍), Ma Xulun (馬敘倫), William G. Boltz, Weldon South Coblin

Weldon South Coblin

Weldon South Coblin is a linguist and sinologist. He was a student of Li Fang-Kuei. Early in his career he made many important contributions to Tibetan and Tibeto-Burman linguistics, but since the mid 1990s has worked primarily on alphabetic representations of Chinese...

 , Thomas B. I. Creamer, Paul L. M. Serruys, Roy A. Miller, and K. L. Thern.

See also

• Xu Shen
  Xu Shen
  Xǔ Shèn was a Chinese philologist of the Han Dynasty. He was the author of Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary with character analysis, as well as the first to organize the characters by shared components. It contains over 9,000 character entries under 540 radicals, explaining the origins...
  
   (~58CE;~147CE)- the former author
• List of Shuowen Jiezi radicals – the 540 "radicals" used
• List of Kangxi radicals – a later way to classify Chinese characters
• Shuowen Jiezi (television program)
  Shuowen Jiezi (television program)
  Shuowen Jiezi is the title of an educational television series broadcast daily on China's Sun TV channel and presented by Zhuang Jing . The title is taken from the ancient Chinese etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, and each episode briefly explains a Chinese character.For scheduling purposes...
  
  

External links

Explicatives :

• • pages 28–29 : List of the 540 radicals in Xiaozhuan.
• Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 – Chinaknowledge 「説文解字」の540部首系統図 – がらんどう文字講座, Shuōwén Jiězì radical chart

Copies 《說文解字》, electronic edition – Chinese Text Project 《说文解字注》 全文检索 – 许慎撰 段玉裁注, facsimile edition

Various 《說文解字》全文檢索測試版 《說文解字》在线查询

• Chinese Etymology, online dictionary with Shuowens definitions – Richard Sears – 漢字データベースプロジェクト/Kanji Database Project
• Shuowen online text version with Duàn Yùcái "說文解字注", "釋名 Shiming", "爾雅 Erya", "方言 Fangyan", "廣韻 Guangyun" définitions and glosses