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114-616: The Shuowen Jiezi is a Chinese dictionary compiled by Xu Shen c.  100 CE , during the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). While prefigured by earlier reference works for Chinese characters like the Erya ( c.  3rd century BCE ), the Shuowen Jiezi contains the first comprehensive analysis of characters in terms of their structure, where Xu attempted to provide rationales for their construction. It

228-466: A dúruò ( 讀若 'read as if') notation. 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 the Zhou dynasty . The Zhou characters were taken from the no-longer extant Shizhoupian , an early copybook traditionally attributed to "Historian Zhou", from

342-466: A dictionary generally depends upon its writing system . For a language written in an alphabet or syllabary , dictionaries are usually ordered alphabetically. Samuel Johnson defined dictionary as "a book containing the words of any language in alphabetical order, with explanations of their meaning" in his dictionary . But Johnson's definition cannot be applied to the Chinese dictionaries, as Chinese

456-583: A few foreign wailaici ( 外來詞 / 外来词 " loanwords ") during the Han dynasty , especially after Zhang Qian 's exploration of the Western Regions . The lexicon absorbed many Buddhist terms and concepts when Chinese Buddhism began to flourish in the Southern and Northern dynasties . During the late 19th century, when Western powers forced open China's doors, numerous loanwords entered Chinese, many through

570-520: A few representative fields. Dictionaries of Ancient Chinese give definitions, in Modern Chinese, of characters and words found in the pre-Modern (before 1911) Chinese literature. They are typically organized by pinyin or by Zihui radicals, and give definitions in order of antiquity (most ancient to most recent) when several definitions exist. Quotes from the literature exemplifying each listed meaning are given. Quotes are usually chosen from

684-436: A foreign language . These specialized Chinese dictionaries are available either as add-ons to existing publications like Yuan's 2004 Pocket Dictionary and Wenlin or as specific ones like Victor H. Mair lists eight adverse features of traditional Chinese lexicography, some of which have continued up to the present day: (1) persistent confusion of spoken word with written graph; (2) lack of etymological science as opposed to

798-575: A lineage. Buzhu —Qi's son, or rather that of the Houji —is said to have abandoned his position as Agrarian Master ( 農師 ; Nóngshī ) in old age and either he or his son Ju abandoned their tradition, living in the manner of the Xirong and Rongdi (see Hua–Yi distinction ). Ju's son Liu , however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin , which his descendants ruled for generations. Tai later led

912-575: A new one for his palace and administration nearby at Haojing . Although Wu's early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhou's increasing power, the "Three Guards", Zhou princes stationed on the eastern plain, rose in rebellion against his regency. Even though they garnered the support of independent-minded nobles, Shang partisans, and several Dongyi tribes,

1026-418: A number of methods to order and sort characters to facilitate more convenient reference. Chinese dictionaries have been published for over two millennia, beginning in the Han dynasty . This is the longest lexicographical history of any language. In addition to works for Mandarin Chinese , beginning with the 1st-century CE Fangyan dictionaries also been created for the many varieties of Chinese . One of

1140-484: A piece of land was divided into nine squares in the well-field system , with the grain from the middle square taken by the government and that of surrounding squares kept by individual farmers. This way, the government was able to store surplus food and distribute it in times of famine or bad harvest. Some important manufacturing sectors during this period included bronze smelting, which was integral to making weapons and farming tools. Again, these industries were dominated by

1254-585: A popular dictionary and has been frequently revised. The (1937) Guoyu cidian ( 國語辭典 "Dictionary of the National Language") was a four-volume dictionary of words, designed to standardize modern pronunciation. The main entries were characters listed phonologically by Zhuyin Fuhao and Gwoyeu Romatzyh . For example, the title in these systems is ㄍㄨㄛㄩ ㄘㄉ一ㄢ and Gwoyeu tsyrdean. Wei Jiangong's (1953) Xinhua Zidian ("New China Character Dictionary")

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1368-506: 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

1482-400: A radical indexing only the rare 繠 ( ruǐ 'stamen')—instead of listing the character under the common ⼼   'HEART' . A typical Shuowen 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

1596-680: A radicals index. Some of these pinyin dictionaries also contain indices of the characters arranged by number and order of strokes, by the four corner encoding or by the cangjie encoding . Some dictionaries employ more than one of these three methods of collation. For example, the Longkan Shoujian of the Liao dynasty uses radicals, which are grouped by tone. The characters under each radical are also grouped by tone. Besides categorizing ancient Chinese dictionaries by their methods of collation, they can also be classified by their functions. In

1710-507: A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion. The Zhou emulated Shang cultural practices, possibly to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have been connected to the Xirong , a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang, which the Shang regarded as tributaries. For example,

1824-590: A repository of late Qing documentary Chinese, although there is little or no indication of the citations, mainly from the Kangxi Zidian [ Kangxi Dictionary ]." Giles modified the Chinese romanization system of Thomas Francis Wade to create the Wade-Giles system, which was standard in English speaking countries until 1979 when pinyin was adopted. The Giles dictionary was replaced by the 1931 dictionary of

1938-492: A six-page fragment dating to the Tang 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 a bête noire of [ Shuowen ] studies, owing to his idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious editing of

2052-517: A standard reference database. The CEDICT is the basis for many Internet dictionaries of Chinese, and is included in the Unihan Database . Chinese publishing houses print diverse types of zhuanke cidian ( 專科詞典 / 专科词典 " specialized dictionary "). One Chinese dictionary bibliography lists over 130 subject categories, from "Abbreviations, Accounting" to "Veterinary, Zoology." The following examples are limited to specialized dictionaries from

2166-455: A straightforward way find a term whose pronunciation is known rather than searching by radical or character structure, the latter being a 2-tiered approach. This project had long been advocated by another pinyin proponent, Victor H. Mair . When the Republic of China began in 1912, educators and scholars recognized the need to update the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary . It was thoroughly revised in

2280-512: A system of 200 radicals. In recent years, the computerization of Chinese has allowed lexicographers to create dianzi cidian ( 電子詞典 / 电子词典 "electronic dictionaries") usable on computers, PDAs, etc. There are proprietary systems, such as Wenlin Software for learning Chinese , and there are also free dictionaries available online. After Paul Denisowski started the volunteer CEDICT (Chinese–English dictionary) project in 1997, it has grown into

2394-478: A system of mutual duty between superiors and inferiors. In contrast, the Legalists had no time for Confucian virtue and advocated a system of strict laws and harsh punishments. Agriculture in the Zhou dynasty was very intensive and, in many cases, directed by the government. All farming lands were owned by nobles, who then gave their land to their serfs , a situation similar to European feudalism . For example,

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2508-435: A vigorous duke would take power from his nobles and centralize the state. Centralization became more necessary as the states began to war among themselves and decentralization encouraged more war. If a duke took power from his nobles, the state would have to be administered bureaucratically by appointed officials. Despite these similarities, there are a number of important differences from medieval Europe. One obvious difference

2622-524: Is a much older and more common word than cidian , and Yang notes zidian is often "used for both 'character dictionary' and 'word dictionary'. The precursors of Chinese dictionaries are primers designed for students of Chinese characters. The earliest of them only survive in fragments or quotations within Chinese classic texts . For example, the Shizhoupian was compiled by one or more historians in

2736-421: Is a pocket-sized reference, alphabetically arranged by pinyin. It is the world's most popular reference work . The 11th edition was published in 2011. Lü Shuxiang 's (1973) Xiandai Hanyu Cidian ("Contemporary Chinese Dictionary") is a middle-sized dictionary of words. It is arranged by characters, alphabetized by pinyin, which list compounds and phrases, with a total 56,000 entries (expanded to 70,000 in

2850-402: Is also seen in early forms of 盧 ( lǔ 'vessel', 'hut') and 虜 ( lǔ 'captive'). The Qing scholar Duan Yucai 's annotated Shuowen 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 available Shuowen materials, clipped and arranged them in

2964-487: Is by semantic categories. The circa 3rd-century BCE Erya ("Approaching Correctness") is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary, and scholarship reveals that it is a pre-Qin compilation of glosses to classical texts. It contains lists of synonyms arranged into 19 semantic categories (e.g., "Explaining Plants", "Explaining Trees"). The Han dynasty dictionary Xiao Erya ("Little Erya") reduces these 19 to 13 chapters. The early 3rd century CE Guangya ("Expanded Erya"), from

3078-429: Is interchangeably written ( 辭典 / 辞典 ; cídiǎn ; tzʻŭ²-tien³ ; "word dictionary") or ( 詞典 / 词典 ; cídiǎn ; tzʻŭ²-tien³ ; "word dictionary"); using cí ( 辭 ; "word, speech; phrase, expression; diction, phraseology; statement; a kind of poetic prose; depart; decline; resign"), and its graphic variant cí ( 詞 ; "word, term; expression, phrase; speech, statement; part of speech; a kind of tonal poetry"). Zidian

3192-453: Is not the eldest and hence not heir to the lineage territory has the potential of becoming a progenitor and fostering a new trunk lineage (Ideally he would strike out to cultivate new lineage territory). [...] According to the Zou commentary, the son of heaven divided land among his feudal lords, his feudal lords divided the land among their dependent families and so forth down the pecking order to

3306-507: Is now available online. The author Liang Shih-Chiu edited two full-scale dictionaries: Chinese-English with over 8,000 characters and 100,000 entries, and English-Chinese with over 160,000 entries. The linguist and professor of Chinese John DeFrancis edited the ABC Chinese–English Dictionary (1996), giving more than 196,000 words or terms alphabetically arranged in a single-tier pinyin order. The user can therefore in

3420-481: Is that the Zhou ruled from walled cities rather than castles. Another was China's distinct class system, which lacked an organized clergy but saw Shang-descent yeomen become masters of ritual and ceremony, as well as astronomy, state affairs and ancient canons, known as ru ( 儒 ). When a dukedom was centralized, these people would find employment as government officials or officers. These hereditary classes were similar to Western knights in status and breeding, but unlike

3534-473: Is the world's oldest known dialectal dictionary. The circa 200 CE Shiming ("Explaining Names") employs paranomastic glosses to define words. The second system of dictionary organization is by recurring graphic components or radicals . The famous 100–121 CE Shuowen Jiezi ("Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters") arranged characters through a system of 540 bushou ( 部首 ; "section header") radicals. The 543 CE Yupian ("Jade Chapters"), from

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3648-532: Is written in characters or logograph , not alphabets. To Johnson, not having an alphabet is not to the Chinese's credit, as in 1778, when James Boswell asked about the Chinese characters, he replied "Sir, they have not an alphabet. They have not been able to form what all other nations have formed". Nevertheless, the Chinese made their dictionaries, and developed three original systems for lexicographical ordering: semantic categories, graphic components, and pronunciations. The first system of dictionary organization

3762-401: The wén , and "analyzing" ( jiě 'separate', 'analyze') the zì . Although the "six principles" ( liùshū 六書 ) of traditional 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 to Imre Galambos ,

3876-736: The Chinese and English Dictionary in 1842. Both were flawed in their representation of pronunciations, such as aspirated stops. In 1874 the American philologist and diplomat Samuel Wells Williams applied the method of dialect comparison in his dictionary, A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language , which refined distinctions in articulation and gave variant regional pronunciations in addition to standard Beijing pronunciation . The British consular officer and linguist Herbert Giles criticized Williams as "the lexicographer not for

3990-416: The Erya ( c.  3rd century BCE ) and Fangyan were limited, with entries loosely organized into semantic categories, and merely listing synonymous characters. This layout was comparatively unsuited for looking up characters. In the Shuowen Jiezi , Xu instead organized characters by their apparent shared graphical components. Boltz calls this "a major conceptual innovation in the understanding of

4104-505: The ⽕   'FIRE' heading. He also included as section headers all the sexagenary 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, 34 Shuowen 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". For instance, he included 惢   'DOUBT' as

4218-605: The Fangyan was the first Chinese specialized dictionary. The usual English translation for fangyan ( 方言 ; lit. "regional/areal speech") is " dialect ", but the language situation in China is said to be uniquely complex. In the "dialect" sense of English dialects , Chinese has Mandarin dialects , yet fangyan is also used to mean "non-Mandarin languages, mutually unintelligible regional varieties of Chinese ", such as Cantonese and Hakka . Some linguists like John DeFrancis prefer

4332-544: The Hundred Schools of Thought which flourished as rival lords patronized itinerant scholars is led by the example of Qi's Jixia Academy . The Nine Schools of Thought which came to dominate the others were Confucianism as interpreted by Mencius and others, Legalism , Taoism , Mohism , the utopian communalist Agriculturalism , two strains of the School of Diplomacy , the School of Names , Sun Tzu 's School of

4446-615: The Japanese language . While some foreign borrowings became obsolete, others became indispensable terms in modern vocabulary. The 20th century saw the rapid progress of the studies of the lexicons found in the Chinese vernacular literature, which includes novels, dramas and poetry. Important works in the field include: Employing corpus linguistics and lists of Chinese characters arranged by frequency of usage (e.g., List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese ) , lexicographers have compiled dictionaries for learners of Chinese as

4560-577: The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty , became the standard dictionary for Chinese characters, and popularized the system of 214 radicals . As most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic ones ( 形聲字 ), the radical method is usually effective, thus it continues to be widely used in the present day. However, sometimes the radical of a character is not obvious. To compensate this, a "Chart of Characters that Are Difficult to Look up" ( 難檢字表 ), arranged by

4674-573: The Liang dynasty , rearranged them into 542. The 1615 CE Zihui ("Character Glossary"), edited by Mei Yingzuo  [ zh ] during the Ming dynasty , simplified the 540 Shuowen Jiezi radicals to 214. It also originated the "radical-stroke" scheme of ordering characters on the number of residual graphic strokes besides the radical. The 1627 Zhengzitong ("Correct Character Mastery") also used 214. The 1716 CE Kangxi Dictionary , compiled under

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4788-527: The Liyun ( 隸韻 ) of the Song dynasty. Although these dictionaries center upon the graphic properties of Chinese characters, they do not necessarily collate characters by radical. For instance, Liyun is a clerical script dictionary collated by tone and rime. The Yinyun type, called yùnshū ( 韻書 "rime book"), focuses on the pronunciations of characters. These dictionaries are always collated by rimes. While

4902-649: The Northern Wei dynasty, followed the Erya ' s original 19 chapters. The circa 1080 CE Piya ("Increased Erya"), from the Song dynasty , has 8 semantically based chapters of names for plants and animals. For a dictionary user wanting to look up a character, this arbitrary semantic system is inefficient unless one already knows, or can guess, the meaning. Two other Han dynasty lexicons are loosely organized by semantics. The 1st century CE Fangyan ("Regional Speech")

5016-611: The burning of books ordered by Qin Shihuang . Xu believed that these were the most ancient characters available, since Confucius 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 the Warring States period , from only slightly earlier than the Qin seal script. Even as copyists transcribed

5130-582: The imperial examination system. The Zhou heartland was the Wei River valley; this remained their primary base of power after conquering the Shang. Zhou rulers introduced the Mandate of Heaven , which would prove to be among East Asia's most enduring political doctrines. According to the theory, Heaven imposed a mandate to replace the Shang on the Zhou, whose moral superiority justified seizing Shang wealth and territory in order to return good governance to

5244-428: The "second sage" of Confucianism; Shang Yang and Han Fei , responsible for the development of ancient Chinese Legalism ; and Xunzi , who was arguably the center of ancient Chinese intellectual life during his time. The state theology of the Zhou dynasty used concepts from the Shang dynasty and mostly referred to the Shang god, Di , as Tian , a more distant and unknowable concept, yet one that anyone could utilize,

5358-562: The (1915) Zhonghua Da Zidian ("Comprehensive Chinese-Character Dictionary"), which corrected over 4,000 Kangxi Dictionary mistakes and added more than 1,000 new characters. Lu Erkui's (1915) Ciyuan ("Sources of Words") was a groundbreaking effort in Chinese lexicography and can be considered the first cidian "word dictionary". Shu Xincheng's (1936) Cihai ("Sea of Words") was a comprehensive dictionary of characters and expressions, and provided near-encyclopedic coverage in fields like science, philosophy, history. The Cihai remains

5472-615: The 2016 edition). Both the Xinhua zidian and the Xiandai Hanyu cidian followed a simplified scheme of 189 radicals. Two outstanding achievements in contemporary Chinese lexicography are the (1986–93) Hanyu Da Cidian ("Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Words") with over 370,000 word and phrase entries listed under 23,000 different characters; and the (1986–89) Hanyu Da Zidian ("Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters") with 54,678 head entries for characters. They both use

5586-685: The Australian missionary Robert Henry Mathews . Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary , which was popular for decades, was based on Giles and partially updated by Y.R. Chao in 1943 and reprinted in 1960. Trained in American structural linguistics , Yuen Ren Chao and Lien-sheng Yang wrote a Concise Dictionary of Spoken Chinese (1947), that emphasized the spoken rather than the written language. Main entries were listed in Gwoyeu Romatzyh , and they distinguished free morphemes from bound morphemes . A hint of non-standard pronunciation

5700-582: The Chinese classics. The Wenzi dictionaries, called zìshū ( 字書 "character book"), consist of Shuowen Jiezi , Yupian , Zihui , Zhengzitong , and the Kangxi Dictionary . This type of dictionary, which focuses on the shape and structure of the characters, subsumes both " orthography dictionaries", such as the Ganlu Zishu ( 干祿字書 ) of the Tang dynasty, and " script dictionaries", such as

5814-568: 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 the Earthly Branches . Xu's choice of sections appears in large part to have been driven by

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5928-469: The Chinese writing system". Xu wrote the Shuowen Jiezi to analyze seal 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 the Qin dynasty and promulgated empire-wide. Thus, Needham et al. (1986: 217) describe the Shuowen Jiezi as "a paleographic handbook as well as a dictionary". The dictionary includes

6042-522: The Duke of Zhou quelled the rebellion, and further expanded the Zhou Kingdom into the east. To maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system. Furthermore, he countered Zhou's crisis of legitimacy by expounding the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven while accommodating important Shang rituals at Wangcheng and Chengzhou . Over time, this decentralized system became strained as

6156-580: The Eastern Zhou period. The Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC) was characterized by an accelerating collapse of royal authority, although the king's ritual importance enabled more than five additional centuries of rule. The Spring and Autumn Annals , the Confucian chronicle of the early years of this process, gave the period its name as the Spring and Autumn period . The partition of Jin during

6270-462: The European equivalent, they were expected to be something of a scholar instead of a warrior. Being appointed, they could move from one state to another. Some would travel from state to state peddling schemes of administrative or military reform. Those who could not find employment would often end up teaching young men who aspired to official status. The most famous of these was Confucius , who taught

6384-589: The Han era, the prevalent theory of language was the Confucian Rectification of Names , a line of thinking revolving around the use the 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. Previous Chinese dictionaries like

6498-515: The Military , and the School of Naturalists . While only the first three of these would receive imperial patronage in later dynasties, doctrines from each influenced the others and Chinese society in sometimes unusual ways. The Mohists for instance found little interest in their praise of meritocracy but much acceptance for their mastery of defensive siege warfare; much later, however, their arguments against nepotism were used in favor of establishing

6612-591: The Shang kings. Nobles of the Ji family proclaimed Duke Hui of Eastern Zhou as King Nan's successor after their capital, Chengzhou, fell to Qin forces in 256 BC. Ji Zhao, a son of King Nan, led a resistance against Qin for five years. The dukedom fell in 249 BC. The remaining Ji family ruled Yan and Wei until 209 BC. During Confucius's lifetime in the Spring and Autumn period, Zhou kings had little power, and much administrative responsibility and de-facto political strength

6726-400: The Shang's large scale production of ceremonial bronzes, they developed an extensive system of bronze metalworking that required a large force of tribute labor. Many of its members were Shang, who were sometimes forcibly transported to new Zhou to produce the bronze ritual objects which were then sold and distributed across the lands, symbolizing Zhou legitimacy. Western writers often describe

6840-464: The Song dynasty, it was expanded into the 1011 CE Guangyun ("Expanded Rimes") and the 1037 CE Jiyun ("Collected Rimes"). The clear problem with these old phonetically arranged dictionary is that the would-be user needs to have the knowledge of rime. Thus, dictionaries collated this way can only serve the literati. A great number of modern dictionaries published today arrange their entries by pinyin or other methods of romanisation, together with

6954-579: The Yangtze delta, where they established the state of Wu among the tribes there. Jili's son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng (present-day Xi'an ). Around 1046 BC, Wen's son Wu and his ally Jiang Ziya led an army of 45,000 men and 300 chariots across the Yellow River and defeated King Zhou of Shang at the Battle of Muye , marking the beginning of

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7068-398: The Zhou dynasty. The Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song , which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences  [ zh ] . According to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language largely similar in vocabulary and syntax to that of the Shang;

7182-648: The Zhou period as feudal because the Zhou's fengjian system invites comparison with European political systems during the Middle Ages . There were many similarities between the decentralized systems. When the dynasty was established, the conquered land was divided into hereditary fiefs ( 諸侯 , zhūhóu ) that eventually became powerful in their own right. In matters of inheritance, the Zhou dynasty recognized only patrilineal primogeniture as legal. According to Hsi-Sheng Tao, "the Tsung-fa or descent line system has

7296-550: The Zhou period clearly intoned this caution. The Zhou kings contended that heaven favored their triumph because the last Shang kings had been evil men whose policies brought pain to the people through waste and corruption. After the Zhou came to power, the mandate became a political tool. One of the duties and privileges of the king was to create a royal calendar. This official document defined times for undertaking agricultural activities and celebrating rituals. But unexpected events such as solar eclipses or natural calamities threw

7410-429: The Zhou were formally extinguished by the state of Qin in 256 BC. The Qin ultimately founded the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC after conquering all of China . The Zhou period is often considered to be the zenith for the craft of Chinese bronzeware . The latter Zhou period is also famous for the advent of three major Chinese philosophies: Confucianism , Taoism and Legalism . The Zhou dynasty also spans

7524-597: The above traditional pre-20th-century Chinese dictionaries focused upon the meanings and pronunciations of words in classical texts, they practically ignored the spoken language and vernacular literature. The Kangxi Dictionary served as the standard Chinese dictionary for generations, is still published and is now online. Contemporary lexicography is divisible between bilingual and monolingual Chinese dictionaries. The foreigners who entered China in late Ming and Qing dynasties needed dictionaries for different purposes than native speakers. Wanting to learn Chinese , they compiled

7638-479: The analysis of script; (3) absence of the concept of word; (4) ignoring the script's historical developments in the oracle bones and bronze inscriptions; (5) no precise, unambiguous, and convenient means for specifying pronunciations; (6) no standardized, user-friendly means for looking up words and graphs; (7) failure to distinguish linguistically between vernacular and literary registers, or between usages peculiar to different regions and times; and (8) open-endedness of

7752-482: The analytical exegesis model of Xu Kai. While the Shuowen 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. It is no longer seen as authoritative for definitions and graphical analysis. Xu lacked access to

7866-411: The clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley (modern Qishan County ). The duke passed over his two elder sons Taibo and Zhongyong to favor the younger Jili , a warrior in his own right. As a vassal of the Shang kings Wu Yi and Wen Ding , Jili went to conquer several Xirong tribes before being treacherously killed by Shang forces. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly already fled to

7980-412: The court of King 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 as Qiu Xigui argue for the original dating. 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

8094-461: The court of King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827 BCE – 782 BCE), and was the source of the 籀文 zhòuwén variant forms listed in the Han dynasty Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. The Cangjiepian ("Chapters of Cang Jie "), named after the legendary inventor of writing, was edited by Li Si , and helped to standardize the Small seal script during the Qin dynasty . The collation or lexicographical ordering of

8208-517: 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 pronunciation glosses for each entry. Among Qing-era Shuowen 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

8322-443: 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 . 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

8436-632: The disgraced queen's father the Marquis of Shen joined with Zeng and the Quanrong. The Quanrong put an end to the Western Zhou in 771 BC, sacking the Zhou capital at Haojing and killing the last Western Zhou king You . With King You dead, a conclave of nobles met at Shen and declared the Marquis's grandson King Ping . The capital was moved eastward to Wangcheng , marking the beginning of

8550-473: The divine footprint of Shangdi . Qi was a culture hero credited with surviving abandonment by his mother three times, and with greatly improving agriculture, to the point where he was granted lordship over Tai , the surname Ji , and the title Houji "Lord of Millet ", by the Emperor Shun . He even received sacrifice as a harvest god . The term Houji was probably a hereditary title attached to

8664-519: The earlier oracle bone inscriptions, as well as bronzeware inscriptions from the Late Shang and Western 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

8778-463: The end of the Western Zhou period. These tribes are recorded as harassing Zhou territory, but at the time the Zhou were expanding northwards, encroaching on their traditional lands—especially the Wei River valley. Archaeologically, the Zhou expanded to the north and the northwest at the expense of the Siwa culture . When King You demoted and exiled his Jiang queen in favor of the commoner Bao Si ,

8892-510: The familial relationships between the Zhou kings and the regional dynasties thinned over the generations. Peripheral territories developed local power and prestige on par with that of the Zhou. The conflicts with nomadic tribes from the north and the northwest, variously known as the Xianyun , Guifang , or various "Rong" tribes, such as the Xirong , Shanrong or Quanrong , intensified towards

9006-540: The first grammar books and bilingual dictionaries. Westerners adapted the Latin alphabet to represent Chinese pronunciation, and arranged their dictionaries accordingly. Two Bible translators edited early Chinese dictionaries. The Scottish missionary Robert Morrison wrote A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1815–1823). The British missionary Walter Henry Medhurst wrote a Hokkien ( Min Nan ) dialect dictionary in 1832 and

9120-476: The following characteristics: patrilineal descent, patrilineal succession, patriarchate, sib-exogamy, and primogeniture" The system, also called "extensive stratified patrilineage", was defined by the anthropologist Kwang-chih Chang as "characterized by the fact that the eldest son of each generation formed the main of line descent and political authority, whereas the younger brothers were moved out to establish new lineages of lesser authority. The farther removed,

9234-558: The function of the Shuowen 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. Although the original Han dynasty Shuowen Jiezi text has been lost, it was transmitted through handwritten copies for centuries. The oldest extant manuscript currently resides in Japan, and consists of

9348-452: The future but of the past", and took nearly twenty years to compile his A Chinese-English Dictionary (1892, 1912), one that Norman calls "the first truly adequate Chinese–English dictionary". It contained 13,848 characters and numerous compound expressions, with pronunciation based upon Beijing Mandarin, which it compared with nine southern dialects such as Cantonese , Hakka , and Fuzhou dialect . It has been called "still interesting as

9462-576: The importance of the Di troops. King Xiang of Zhou also married a Di princess after receiving Di military support. During the Zhou dynasty, the origins of native Chinese philosophy developed, its initial stages of development beginning in the 6th century BC. The greatest Chinese philosophers, those who made the greatest impact on later generations of Chinese, were Confucius , founder of Confucianism , and Laozi , founder of Taoism . Other philosophers of this era were Mozi , founder of Mohism ; Mencius ,

9576-501: The lesser the political authority". Ebrey defines the descent-line system as follows: "A great line (ta-tsung) is the line of eldest sons continuing indefinitely from a founding ancestor. A lesser line is the line of younger sons going back no more than five generations. Great lines and lesser lines continually spin off new lesser lines, founded by younger sons". K.E. Brashier writes in his book "Ancestral Memory in Early China" about

9690-440: 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 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')

9804-436: The mandate. Under this system, it was the prerogative of spiritual authority to withdraw support from any wayward ruler and to find another, more worthy one. In this way, the Zhou sky god legitimized regime change. In using this creed, the Zhou rulers had to acknowledge that any group of rulers, even they themselves, could be ousted if they lost the mandate of heaven because of improper practices. The book of odes written during

9918-562: The mid-5th century BC is a commonly cited as initiating the subsequent Warring States period . In 403 BC, the Zhou court recognized Han , Zhao , and Wei as fully independent states. In 344, Duke Hui of Wei was the first to claim the title of "king" for himself. Others followed, marking a turning point, as rulers did not even entertain the pretense of vassalage of the Zhou court, instead proclaiming themselves fully independent kingdoms. A series of states rose to prominence before each falling in turn, and in most of these conflicts Zhou

10032-1028: The most influential Chinese dictionaries ever published was the Kangxi Dictionary , finished in 1716 during the Qing dynasty , with the list of 214 Kangxi radicals it popularized are still widely used. The general term cishu (Chinese: 辭書 ; pinyin: císhū ; lit. 'lexicographic books') semantically encompasses "dictionary; lexicon; encyclopedia; glossary". The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: zidian (character dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters , and cidian (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms. For character dictionaries , zidian ( Chinese : 字典 ; pinyin : zìdiǎn ; Wade–Giles : tzŭ⁴-tien³ ; lit. 'character dictionary') combines zi ( 字 ; "character, graph; letter, script, writing; word") and dian ( 典 "dictionary, encyclopedia; standard, rule; statute, canon; classical allusion"). For word dictionaries, cidian

10146-588: The nobility who directed the production of such materials. China's first projects of hydraulic engineering were initiated during the Zhou dynasty, ultimately as a means to aid agricultural irrigation. Sunshu Ao , the Chancellor of Wei who served King Zhuang of Chu , dammed a river to create an enormous irrigation reservoir in modern-day northern Anhui province. For this, Sunshu is credited as China's first hydraulic engineer. The later Wei statesman Ximen Bao , who served Marquis Wen of Wei (445–396 BC),

10260-596: The northern Loess Plateau , modern Ningxia and the Yellow River floodplain. The military prowess of Zhou peaked during the 19th year of King Zhao 's reign, when the six armies were wiped out along with King Zhao on a campaign around the Han River . Early Zhou kings were true commanders-in-chief King Zhao was famous for repeated campaigns in the Yangtze region, and died on campaign. Later kings' campaigns were less effective. King Li led 14 armies against barbarians in

10374-493: The number of strokes of the characters, is usually provided. The third system of lexicographical ordering is by character pronunciation. This type of dictionary collates its entries by syllable rime and tones , and produces a so-called " rime dictionary ". The first surviving rime dictionary is the 601 CE Qieyun ("Cutting [Spelling] Rimes") from the Sui dynasty ; it became the standard of pronunciation for Middle Chinese . During

10488-597: The officers who had their dependent kin and the commoners who "each had his apportioned relations and all had their graded precedence"" This type of unilineal descent-group later became the model of the Korean family through the influence of Neo-Confucianism , as Zhu Xi and others advocated its re-establishment in China. There were five peerage ranks below the royal ranks, in descending order with common English translations: gōng 公 "duke", hóu 侯 "marquis", bó 伯 "count", zǐ 子 "viscount", and nán 男 "baron". At times,

10602-458: The opposite view of the Shang's spirituality. The Zhou wanted to increase the number of enlightenment seekers, mystics, and those who would be interested in learning about such things as a way to further distance their people from the Shang-era paradigm and local traditions. Having emerged during the Western Zhou, the li ritual system encoded an understanding of manners as an expression of

10716-622: The original dictionary order, and photo-lithographically printed a colossal edition. Notable advances in Shuowen research have been made by Chinese and Western scholars like Ma Zonghuo ( 馬宗霍 ) and Ma Xulun ( 馬敘倫 ). Chinese dictionary There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in the Chinese language : 'character dictionaries' ( 字典 ; zìdiǎn ) list individual Chinese characters , and 'word dictionaries' ( 辞典 ; 辭典 ; cídiǎn ) list words and phrases. Because tens of thousands of characters have been used in written Chinese , Chinese lexicographers have developed

10830-510: The people. The Mandate of Heaven was presented as a religious compact between the Zhou people and their supreme god in heaven. The Zhou agreed that since worldly affairs were supposed to align with those of the heavens, the heavens conferred legitimate power on only one person, the Zhou ruler. In return, the ruler was duty-bound to uphold heaven's principles of harmony and honor. Any ruler who failed in this duty, who let instability creep into earthly affairs, or who let his people suffer, would lose

10944-486: The period when the predominant form of written Chinese became seal script , which evolved from the earlier oracle bone and bronze scripts . By the dynasty's end, an immature form of clerical script had also emerged. According to Chinese mythology , the Zhou lineage began when Jiang Yuan , a consort of the legendary Emperor Ku , miraculously conceived a child, Qi "the Abandoned One", after stepping into

11058-541: The philosopher Mencius (372–289 BC) acknowledged that King Wen of Zhou had ancestry from among the Xirong, as King Wen's descendants, the Zhou kings, claimed descent from Hou Ji , a legendary culture hero possibly related to the Xirong through his mother Jiang Yuan . Additionally, the late 4th-century BC Zuo Zhuan comments that the baron of Li Rong ( 驪戎男 ), after being defeated by Jin , married his daughter Li Ji off. According to historian Li Feng ,

11172-741: The pre-Han Classical literature when possible, unless the definition emerged during the post-Classical period. Dictionaries intended for historians, linguists, and other classical scholars will sometimes also provide Middle Chinese fanqie readings and/or Old Chinese rime groups, as well as bronze script or oracle bone script forms. While dictionaries published in mainland China intended for study or reference by high school/college students are generally printed in Simplified Chinese , dictionaries intended for scholarly research are set in Traditional Chinese . Twenty centuries ago,

11286-413: The ruling house's mandate into question. Since rulers claimed that their authority came from heaven, the Zhou made great efforts to gain accurate knowledge of the stars and to perfect the astronomical system on which they based their calendar. Zhou legitimacy also arose indirectly from Shang material culture through the use of bronze ritual vessels, statues , ornaments, and weapons. As the Zhou emulated

11400-456: The social hierarchy, ethics, and regulation concerning material life; the corresponding social practices became idealized within Confucian ideology. The system was canonized in the Book of Rites , Rites of Zhou , and Etiquette and Ceremonial compiled during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), thus becoming the heart of the Chinese imperial ideology. While the system

11514-485: The south, but failed to achieve any victory. King Xuan fought the Quanrong nomads in vain. King You was killed by the Quanrong when Haojing was sacked. Although chariots had been introduced to China during the Shang dynasty from Central Asia, the Zhou period saw the first major use of chariots in battle. Recent archaeological finds demonstrate similarities between horse burials of the Shang and Zhou dynasties with

11628-566: The steppe populations in the west, such as the Saka and Wusun . Other possible cultural influences resulting from contact with these Iranic people of Central Asia in this period may include fighting styles, head-and-hooves burials, art motifs and myths. The Zhou army also included "barbarian" troops such as the Di people . King Hui of Zhou married a princess of the Red Di as a sign of appreciation for

11742-408: 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 the Shuowen "cannot be held to have arisen from a purely linguistic or lexicographical drive". During

11856-525: The term "Rong" during the Western Zhou period was likely used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural and ethnic "others". Cultural artifacts of the Western Rong coexisted with Western Zhou bronzes, indicating close bonds between the Rong and the Western Zhou. During the Western Zhou (1045–771 BC), King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed

11970-679: The text". Shuowen scholarship improved greatly during the Southern Tang and Song dynasties, as well as during the later Qing 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 the Shuowen 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

12084-831: The traditional bibliographic divisions of the imperial collection Complete Library of the Four Treasuries , dictionaries were classified as belonging to xiǎoxué ( 小學 , lit. "minor learning", the premodern equivalent of " linguistics "), which was contrasted with dàxué ( 大學 , "major learning", i.e., learning that had moral implications). Xiaoxue was divided into texts dealing with xùngǔ ( 訓詁 , "exegesis" similar to " philology "), wénzì ( 文字 , "script", analogous to " grammatology "), and yīnyùn ( 音韻 , "sounds and rhymes," comparable to " phonology "). The Xungu type, sometimes called yǎshū ( 雅書 , "word book"), comprises Erya and its descendants. These exegetical dictionaries focus on explaining meanings of words as found in

12198-795: The translation "topolect", which are very similar to independent languages. (See also- Protection of the Varieties of Chinese .) The Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan is an online dictionary of Taiwanese Hokkien . Here are some general fangyan cidian ( 方言词典 ; "topolect dictionary") examples. Chinese has five words translatable as " idiom ": chengyu ( 成語 / 成语 "set phrase; idiom"), yanyu ( 諺語 / 谚语 ; "proverb; popular saying, maxim; idiom"), xiehouyu ( 歇後語 / 歇后语 ; "truncated witticism, aposiopesis ; enigmatic folk simile"), xiyu ( 習語 / 习语 ; "idiom"), and guanyongyu ( 慣用語 / 惯用语 ; "fixed expression; idiom; locution"). Some modern dictionaries for idioms are: The Chinese language adopted

12312-404: The tsung-fa system of patrilineal primogeniture: "The greater lineage, if it has survived, is the direct succession from father to eldest son and is not defined via the collateral shifts of the lesser lineages. In discussions that demarcate between trunk and collateral lines, the former is called a zong and the latter a zu, whereas the whole lineage is dubbed the shi. [...] On one hand, every son who

12426-584: The writing system, with current unabridged character dictionaries containing 60,000 to 85,000 graphs. Footnotes Zhou dynasty The latter Eastern Zhou period is itself roughly subdivided into two parts. During the Spring and Autumn period ( c.  771  – c.  481 BC ), power became increasingly decentralized as the authority of the royal house diminished. The Warring States period ( c.  481  – 221 BC) that followed saw large-scale warfare and consolidation among what had formerly been Zhou client states, until

12540-486: Was a minor player. The last Zhou king is traditionally taken to be Nan , who was killed when Qin captured Wangcheng in 256 BC. Duke Wen of Eastern Zhou declared himself to be "King Hui", but his splinter state was fully disassembled by 249. Qin's wars of unification concluded in 221 BC with Qin Shi Huang 's annexation of Qi . The Eastern Zhou is also remembered as the golden age of Chinese philosophy:

12654-522: Was also given, by marking final stops and initial voicing and non-palatalization in non-Mandarin dialects. The Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren wrote the seminal (1957) Grammata Serica Recensa with his reconstructed pronunciations for Middle Chinese and Old Chinese . Chinese lexicography advanced during the 1970s. The translator Lin Yutang wrote the semantically sophisticated Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage (1972) that

12768-485: Was also the first to organize its entries into sections according to shared components called radicals . Xu Shen was a scholar of the Five Classics during the Han dynasty . He finished compiling the Shuowen Jiezi in 100 CE. However, due to an unfavorable imperial attitude towards scholarship, he waited until 121 before his son Xu Chong presented it to Emperor An of Han , along with a memorial. In analyzing

12882-499: Was initially a respected body of concrete regulations, the fragmentation of the Western Zhou period led the ritual to drift towards moralization and formalization in regard to: The rulers of the Zhou dynasty were titled wang ( 王 ), which was also the term used by the Shang rulers, normally translated into English as 'king'. In addition to these rulers, King Wu's immediate ancestors— Danfu , Jili , and Wen —are also referred to as "Kings of Zhou", despite having been nominal vassals of

12996-539: Was the first hydraulic engineer of China to have created a large irrigation canal system. As the main focus of his grandiose project, his canal work eventually diverted the waters of the entire Zhang River to a spot further up the Yellow River . The early Western Zhou supported a strong army, split into two major units: "the Six Armies of the west" and "the Eight Armies of Chengzhou". The armies campaigned in

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