| Shuowen Jiezi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 說文解字 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 说文解字 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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TheShuowen Jiezi is aChinese dictionary compiled byXu Shenc. 100 CE, during theEastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). While prefigured by earlier reference works forChinese characters like theErya (c. 3rd century BCE), theShuowen Jiezi contains the first comprehensive analysis of characters in terms of their structure, where Xu attempted to provide rationales for their construction. It was also the first to organize its entries into sections according to shared components calledradicals.
Xu Shen was a scholar of theFive Classics during theHan dynasty. He finished compiling theShuowen Jiezi in 100 CE. However, due to an unfavorable imperial attitude towards scholarship, he waited until 121 before his son Xu Chong presented it toEmperor An of Han, along with a memorial.
In analyzing the structure of characters and defining the words represented by them, Xu strove to clarify the meaning of the pre-Han classics, so as to ensure order and render their use in governance unquestioned. Xu's motives also included a pragmatic and political dimension: according to Boltz, the compilation of theShuowen "cannot be held to have arisen from a purely linguistic or lexicographical drive".[1] During the Han era, the prevalent theory of language was the ConfucianRectification of Names, a line of thinking revolving around the use of correct names to ensure proper governance. The postface explains:
Now, as for writing systems and their offspring characters, these are the root of the classics, the origin of kingly government, what former men used to hand down to posterity, and what later men use to remember antiquity.[2]
Previous Chinese dictionaries like theErya (c. 3rd century BCE) andFangyan were limited, with entries loosely organized into semantic categories, and merely listing synonymous characters. This layout was comparatively unsuited for looking up characters. In theShuowen Jiezi, Xu instead organized characters by their apparent shared graphical components. Boltz calls this "a major conceptual innovation in the understanding of the Chinese writing system".[3]
Xu wrote theShuowen Jiezi to analyzeseal script characters that evolved slowly and organically throughout the mid-to-late Zhou dynasty in the state of Qin, and which were then standardized during theQin dynasty and promulgated empire-wide. Thus, Needham et al. (1986: 217) describe theShuowen Jiezi as "a paleographic handbook as well as a dictionary".
The dictionary 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 Shen states in his postface that the dictionary 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 the omissions and emendations of later commentators. Modern editions have 9,831 characters and 1,279 variants.
Xu Shen sorted the Chinese lexicon into 540 sections, under section headers generally referred to as "radicals" in English: these may be entire characters or simplifications thereof, which also serve as components shared by all the characters in that section. The first section header was一 (yī 'first') and the last was亥 (hài), the last character of theEarthly Branches.
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 orphonetic) with the ones before and after, as well as by the desire to reflectcosmology. 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 'FIRE' heading. He also included as section headers all thesexagenary cycle 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 radical, 34Shuowen radicals have no characters under them, while 159 have only one. From a modern lexicographical perspective, Xu's 540 radicals can seem "enigmatic" or "illogical".[4] For instance, he included惢 'DOUBT' as a radical indexing only the rare繠 (ruǐ 'stamen')—instead of listing the character under the common⼼ 'HEART'.
A typicalShuowen Jiezi character entry consists of:
Individual entries can also include graphical variants, secondary definitions, information regarding their regional use, citations from pre-Han texts, and further phonetic information, typically provided in adúruò (讀若 'read as if') notation.[6]
In addition to the seal script form, two other variant styles were included if they differed in form—called 'ancient script' (gǔwén古文) and 'Zhou script' (Zhòuwén籀文), not to be confused with theZhou dynasty. TheZhou characters were taken from the no-longer extantShizhoupian, an early copybook traditionally attributed to "Historian Zhou", from the court ofKing Xuan of Zhou (r. 827–782 BCE).Wang Guowei and Tang Lan argued that the structure and style of these characters suggested a later date, but some modern scholars such asQiu Xigui argue for the original dating.[7] The ancient characters were based on the characters used in pre-Qin copies of the classics recovered from the walls of houses where they had been hidden to escape theburning of books ordered byQin Shihuang. Xu believed that these were the most ancient characters available, sinceConfucius would have used the oldest characters to best convey the meaning of the texts. However, Wang Guowei and other scholars have shown that they were regional variant forms in the eastern areas during theWarring States period, from only slightly earlier than the Qin seal script.[8]
Even as copyists transcribed the main text of the book inclerical 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 the ancient and Zhou-script characters.
The title of the work draws a basic distinction between two types of characters:
Thus, the work's title means "commenting on" (shuō 'comment', 'explain') basic characters, and "analyzing" (jiě 'separate', 'analyze') compound characters.[3]
Although the "six principles" (liùshū六書) oftraditional character classification had been mentioned by earlier authors, Xu Shen's postface was the first work to provide definitions and examples. However, only the first four of these principles occur in the body of the dictionary.
According toImre Galambos, the function of theShuowen was educational. Since Han studies of writing are attested to have begun by pupils of 8 years old, Xu Shen's categorization of characters was proposed to be understood as a mnemonic methodology for juvenile students.[13]
Although the original Han dynastyShuowen Jiezi text has been lost, it was transmitted through handwritten copies for centuries. The oldest extant manuscript currently resides in Japan, and consists of a six-page fragment dating to theTang dynasty, amounting to about 2% of the entire text. The fragment concerns the木;mù section header. The earliest post-Han scholar known to have researched and emended this dictionary was Li Yangbing (李陽冰;fl. 765–780), who according to Boltz is "usually regarded as something of abête noire of [Shuowen] studies, owing to his idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious editing of the text".[14]
Shuowen scholarship improved greatly during theSouthern Tang andSong dynasties, as well as during the laterQing dynasty. The most important Northern Song scholars were the brothers Xu Xuan (徐鉉; 916–991) and Xu Kai (徐鍇; 920–974). In 986,Emperor Taizong of Song ordered Xu Xuan and other editors to publish an authoritative edition of the dictionary, which became theShuowen Jiezi Xichuan (説文解字繫傳).
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 addingfanqie pronunciation glosses for each entry. Among Qing-eraShuowen scholars, some like Zhu Junsheng (朱駿聲; 1788–1858), followed the textual criticism model of Xu Xuan, while others like Gui Fu (桂馥; 1736–1805) and Wang Yun (王筠; 1784–1834) followed the analytical exegesis model of Xu Kai.
While theShuowen Jiezi has historically been very valuable to scholars and was the most important early source regarding the structure of Chinese characters, much of its analysis and many of its definitions have been superseded by later scholarship, in particular that resulting from the late 19th-century discovery of oracle bone script.[citation needed] It is no longer seen as authoritative for definitions and graphical analysis. Xu lacked access to the earlier oracle bone inscriptions, as well as bronzeware inscriptions from theLate Shang andWestern Zhou periods, which often provide valuable insight. For example, Xu categorized慮 (lǜ 'be concerned', 'consider') under the思 'think' radical, noting its phonetic as虍 (hǔ 'tiger'). However, early forms of the character attested on bronzes have a⼼ 'HEART' signific and呂 (lǚ 'a musical pitch') phonetic—which is also seen in early forms of盧 (lǔ 'vessel', 'hut') and虜 (lǔ 'captive').
The Qing scholarDuan Yucai's annotatedShuowen Jiezi Zhu (說文解字注) is particularly notable, and the most common edition still in use by students.
20th-century scholarship offered new understandings and accessibility.Ding Fubao collected all availableShuowen materials, clipped and arranged them in the original dictionary order, and photo-lithographically printed a colossal edition. Notable advances inShuowen research have been made by Chinese and Western scholars like Ma Zonghuo (馬宗霍) and Ma Xulun (馬敘倫).
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