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26-573: There are three common pronunciations of the name: Epang , Efang , and Afang . Which pronunciation should be regarded as "correct" has been subject of much debate, with the Kangxi Dictionary advocating for Epang , and the Guifan Dictionary advocating for Efang . The Han dynasty historian Sima Qian does not explain what the name means, but the later commentator Yan Shigu provides three possible explanations. The first

52-515: A further staff of thirty men. However, both Zhang and Chen died within a year of their appointment to the task, and the work was taken up by scholars of the Hanlin Academy . The compilation was based partly on two Ming dynasty dictionaries: the 1615 Zihui by Mei Yingzuo, and the 1627 Zhengzitong by Zhang Zilie. The imperial edict required that the project be completed within a five-year span. As such, errors were inevitable. Although

78-532: A great weakening of Qin's power. After a complicated and bloody series of power struggles, Qin Er Shi was forced to commit suicide by his formerly trusted eunuch Zhao Gao , and thereafter the Qin dynasty collapsed. According to Sima Qian, when the anti-Qin rebel and Chu aristocrat Xiang Yu entered the already-surrendered capital Xianyang a year later in 206 BCE, the city was sacked and the palaces of Qin were burned to

104-573: A modern homophone , as well as example quotations from the Chinese corpus, and lists of any variants and differing meanings. The compendium also contains rime tables with characters ordered by syllable rime classes, tones , as well as initial syllable onsets . The missionary Walter Henry Medhurst , an early translator of the Bible into Chinese, compiled Medhurst's Chinese and English Dictionary (1842–1843) in two volumes, with Chinese sourced from

130-575: A thousand cuts , to merely death by beheading. The later Daoguang Emperor appointed Wang Yinzhi (1766–1834) and a review board to compile an officially sanctioned supplement to the Kangxi Zidian , which was published in 1831 as the Zidian kaozheng ( 字典考證 ), correcting 2,588 mistakes mostly found in quotations and citations. The supplemented dictionary contains 47,035 distinct character entries, in addition to 1,995 graphical variants , giving

156-578: A total of 49,030 different characters. They are grouped according to a list of 214 radicals , and further sorted by the number of additional strokes in the character. Although this particular set of 214 radicals was first used in the Zihui , they are now largely known as the Kangxi radicals , and remain popular as a method of categorizing Chinese characters. The character entries provide definitions and pronunciations in both traditional fanqie spelling and with

182-483: A wall was built upon the rammed earth foundations during the early period. Since 1961, the site of the palace has been listed as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level (1-151). Since Sima Qian's account of the destruction of the palace by Xiang Yu, the palace has been a symbol of the end of the Qin dynasty, with many writers emphasising the poignancy of its opulence being lost in

208-422: Is largely morphosyllabic with very few bound morphemes , meaning that most individual characters represented independent words. As such, the compilers did not make a distinction between senses of 字 ; zì as 'characters' versus as 'words'; this distinction would only begin to be clearly made during the late 19th century. The original editors included Zhang Yushu (1642–1711), Chen Tingjing (1639–1712), and

234-506: Is that the name refers to the broadness of the rooms ( fang ) of the palace. The second that e is a local name for a hill, and the name is meant to suggest the height of a room on a hill. The third is that the character fang is sometimes pronounced pang , meaning by the side, and the palace was named for being by the side of the Qin capital Xianyang . After Qin Shi Huang forcibly united

260-556: The Twelve Metal Colossi , each weighing about 70 tons of bronze, as one of the major endeavours of his reign. These bronze statues remained very famous in ancient China and were the object of numerous commentaries, until they were lost around the 4th century CE: 收天下兵, 聚之咸陽, 銷以為鍾鐻金人十二, 重各千石, 置廷宮中. 一法度衡石丈尺. 車同軌. 書同文字. He collected the weapons of All-Under-Heaven in Xianyang , and cast them into twelve bronze figures of

286-656: The Kangxi Dictionary . The dictionary is one of several used by the Ideographic Research Group for the Unicode standard. Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level A national priority protected site is the highest-level national protection for immovable cultural relics in China. The designation was first created under the 1961 Provisional Regulations on

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312-759: The Qing dynasty painter Yuan Yao and the Japanese painter Kimura Buzan , the latter of whom depicted the palace's destruction. Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary ( Chinese : 康熙字典 ; pinyin : Kāngxī zìdiǎn ) is a Chinese dictionary published in 1716 during the High Qing , considered from the time of its publishing until the early 20th century to be the most authoritative reference for written Chinese characters . Wanting an improvement upon earlier dictionaries, as well as to show his concern for Confucian culture and to foster standardization of

338-467: The Warring States in 221 BCE, he took a number of measures to establish his authority, including giving himself a title – commonly translated into English as "Emperor" — that was previously used only for semi-divine figures. Among these efforts included a number of grand construction projects, such as building roads and defensive walls. One such project was to be the building of a grand palace on

364-536: The Chinese writing system, its compilation was ordered by the Kangxi Emperor in 1710, from whom the compendium gets its name. The dictionary was the largest of its kind, containing 47,043 character entries. Around 40% of them were graphical variants, while others were dead, archaic, or found only once in the Classical Chinese corpus. In today's vernacular written Chinese, fewer than a quarter of

390-848: The Protection and Management of Cultural Relics, which evolved into the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics. According to the 2002 Cultural Relics Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, the National Cultural Heritage Administration of the State Council selects those with significant historical, artistic, and scientific value as national key cultural relics protection units. National key cultural relics protection units shall not be demolished; if they need to be relocated, they must be reported to

416-488: The State Council for approval by applications from the people's government of the provincial administrative region. In 1999 it was reported that there were some 350,000 immovable cultural properties in China, of which 70,000 were protected at one of the three main levels, in addition to some 10,000,000 movable cultural properties held by state institutions alone. Of these, as of October 2019, 5,058 Sites Protected at

442-399: The blaze. The Tang poet Du Mu wrote a notable rhapsody on the palace, the end of which reads: The people of Qin had not a moment to lament their fate Those who came after lamented it When those who come after lament But do not learn Then they too will merely provide Fresh cause for lamentation From those who come after them. The palace was also the subject of paintings by

468-413: The dictionary's characters are commonly used. The text is available in many forms, from Qing dynasty block print editions, to reprints using traditional Chinese bookbinding , to Western-style hardcovers including revisions and ancillary essays, to a digitized version accessible via the internet. In his preface to the 1716 printing, the emperor wrote: The emperor chose the term zidian himself—at

494-477: The emperor's preface said "each and every definition is given in detail and every single pronunciation is provided". The scholar-official Wang Xihou (1713–1777) criticized the Kangxi Zidian in the preface of his own Ziguan dictionary. When the Qianlong Emperor —Kangxi's grandson—was informed of this insult in 1777, he sentenced Wang's entire family to death by the nine familial exterminations ,

520-489: The ground. While Sima Qian does not mention it explicitly, it was long assumed throughout history that Epang Palace burnt with them. In his Records of the Grand Historian , Sima Qian described the dimensions of the palace as being 693m long × 116.5m wide, but modern studies of the ruins have shown that its rammed earth foundation platform measured 1,320m east to west, 420m north to south, and 8m in height, making

546-538: The mausoleum the largest burial complex of a single ruler ever to have been constructed anywhere in the world. Archaeologists have suggested the dimensions in Sima Qian's account are meant to be understood as referring to plans for the eventual size of the palace, had its construction not been halted, hence the discrepancy. Also according to Sima Qian, the Emperor founded twelve monumental bronze statues for his palace,

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572-421: The most extreme form of capital punishment. However, as was fairly typical in such cases with literary inquisition, the emperor commuted the sentence by pardoning all of Wang's relatives, and his grandsons given only a procedural sentence of execution at the autumn assizes ( qiushen ), during which the case would be reviewed and usually spared actual execution. Wang's own sentence would be commuted from death by

598-524: The south bank of the Wei River , outside the capital at Xianyang. The layout of the palace was meant to reflect cosmological principles. Construction of the palace began in 212 BCE, and continued after Qin Shi Huang died two years later, although work had to be delayed for a year to focus on the construction of the late emperor's tomb at Mount Li . Qin Shi Huang's son and successor Qin Er Shi has been judged by history to be an ineffectual ruler, leading to

624-431: The time not having a meaning of 'dictionary', but rather something like a 'compendium' or 'standard' or 'model' characters, as to show their correct forms and authoritative pronunciations. The compendium was generally referred to simply as zidian , which later became a standard Chinese word for 'dictionary' in the 19th century, and used to title practically every Chinese dictionary published since then. Classical Chinese

650-409: The type of bell stands, each 1000 dan [about 70 tons] in weight, and displayed them in the palace. He unified the law, weights and measurements, standardized the axle width of carriages, and standardized the writing system. The exact location of Epang Palace was not recorded in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian , although a number of suggestions were made in other texts. The archaeological site

676-426: Was first discovered in 1923, based on local reports. After the interruption of World War Two and the subsequent civil war in China, Su Bingqi and He Shixing were able to confirm the location, and after many decades of excavations, it was confirmed that possibly only the front hall was constructed during the Qin dynasty, contradicting literary accounts of an opulent palace. Archaeologists believe that possibly only

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