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Wangliang
''Wangliang'' ( zh, t=魍魎 or ) is the name of a malevolent spirit in Chinese mythology and folklore. This word inclusively means "demons; monsters; specters; goblins; ghosts; devils" in Modern Standard Chinese, but ''wangliang'' originally meant a specific demon. Interpretations include a wilderness spirit like the '' kui'' "one-legged mountain demon", a water spirit like the ''long'' "dragon", a fever demon like the ''yu'' "poisonous 3-legged turtle that causes malaria", a graveyard ghost also called wangxiang or fangliang "earth demon that eats the livers or brains of corpses", and a man-eating "demon that resembles a 3-year-old brown child with red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair". Name In modern Chinese usage, ''wangliang'' "demon; monster" is usually written with radical-phonetic characters, combining the " ghost radical" (typically used to write words concerning ghosts, demons, etc.) with phonetic elements ''wang'' and ''liang'' (lit. "deceive" and "two", r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shuowen Jiezi
''Shuowen Jiezi'' () is an ancient Chinese dictionary from the Han dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary (the '' Erya'' predates it), it was the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them, as well as the first to use the principle of organization by sections with shared components called radicals (''bùshǒu'' 部首, lit. "section headers"). Circumstances of compilation Xu Shen, a Han Dynasty scholar of the Five Classics, compiled the ''Shuowen Jiezi''. He finished editing it in 100 CE, but due to an unfavorable imperial attitude towards scholarship, he waited until 121 CE before having his son Xǔ Chōng present it to Emperor An of Han 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke Ding Of Jin
Duke Ding of Jin (, died 475 BC) was from 511 to 475 BC the ruler of the state of Jin, a major power during the Spring and Autumn period of ancient China. His ancestral name was Ji, given name Wu, and Duke Ding was his posthumous title. He succeeded his father, Duke Qing of Jin, who died in 512 BC. War of the clans After the extermination of the Luan clan by Duke Ding's great-grandfather Duke Ping, the state of Jin had been dominated by the six powerful clans – Fan, Han, Zhao, Wei, Zhonghang, and Zhi. In 497 BC a dispute broke out between Zhao Yang (趙鞅), the leader of the Zhao clan, and the Fan and Zhonghang clans. The Fan and Zhonghang forces attacked Zhao, and the three other clans – Han, Wei, and Zhi – came to Zhao's defence and attacked Fan and Zhonghang, who were defeated and forced to retreat to the city of Zhaoge. Seven years later, in 490 BC the combined Jin forces decisively defeated the Fan and Zhonghang clans, whose leaders Fan Jishe and Zhonghang Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wei Zhao (Three Kingdoms)
Wei Zhao (204–273), courtesy name Hongsi, was an official, historian and scholar of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period of China. He shared the same personal name as Sima Zhao (,an ancestor of the Jin dynasty emperors) so, in order to avoid naming taboo, the historian Chen Shou changed Wei Zhao's personal name to "Yao()" when he wrote Wei Zhao's biography in the ''Sanguozhi'' (the authoritative source for the history of the Three Kingdoms period). Life Wei Zhao was appointed as the first Erudite Libationer (博士祭酒; i.e. President) of the precursor to the Imperial Nanking University by the third Wu emperor, Sun Xiu, in 258. He was the chief editor of the ''Book of Wu'', an official history of Wu. While he was compiling the Book of Wu'', the fourth Wu emperor Sun Hao attempted to force him to rewrite certain portions of the book, but Wei Zhao refused on the grounds that such amendments would infringe the principle of history. Wei Zhao's insistence on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lu (state)
Lu (, c. 1042–249 BC) was a vassal state during the Zhou dynasty of ancient China located around modern Shandong province. Founded in the 11th century BC, its rulers were from a cadet branch of the House of Ji (姬) that ruled the Zhou dynasty. The first duke was Boqin, a son of the Duke of Zhou, who was brother of King Wu of Zhou and regent to King Cheng of Zhou. Lu was the home state of Confucius as well as Mozi, and as such has an outsized cultural influence among the states of the Eastern Zhou and in history. The ''Annals of Spring and Autumn'', for instance, was written with the Lu rulers' years as their basis. Another great work of Chinese history, the '' Zuo Zhuan'' or ''Commentary of Zuo'', was also written in Lu by Zuo Qiuming. Geography The state's capital was in Qufu and its territory mainly covered the central and southwest regions of what is now Shandong Province. It was bordered to the north by the powerful state of Qi and to the south by the powerful ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confucius
Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Confucius's teachings and philosophy underpin East Asian culture and society, remaining influential across China and East Asia to this day. Confucius considered himself a transmitter for the values of earlier periods which he claimed had been abandoned in his time. His philosophical teachings, called Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity. His followers competed with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era, only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin dynasty. After the collapse of Qin and the victory of Han over Chu, Confucius's thoughts received official sanction in the new government. During the Tan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austro-Tai Languages
The Austro-Tai languages, sometimes also Austro-Thai languages, are a proposed language family that comprises the Austronesian languages and the Kra–Dai languages. Related proposals include Austric ( Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906) and Sino-Austronesian (Laurent Sagart in 1990, 2005). Origins The Kra–Dai languages contain numerous similar forms with Austronesian which were noticed as far back as Schlegel in 1901. These are considered to be too many to explain as chance resemblance. The question then is whether they are due to language contact (i.e., borrowing) or to common descent (i.e., a genealogical relationship). Evidence The first proposal of a genealogical relationship was that of Paul Benedict in 1942, which he expanded upon through 1990. This took the form of an expansion of Wilhelm Schmidt's Austric phylum, and posited that Kra–Dai and Austronesian had a sister relationship within Austric, which Benedict then accepted. Benedict later abandoned Austric but maintaine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spectrum
A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors in visible light after passing through a prism. As scientific understanding of light advanced, it came to apply to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It thereby became a mapping of a range of magnitudes (wavelengths) to a range of qualities, which are the perceived "colors of the rainbow" and other properties which correspond to wavelengths that lie outside of the visible light spectrum. Spectrum has since been applied by analogy to topics outside optics. Thus, one might talk about the " spectrum of political opinion", or the "spectrum of activity" of a drug, or the "autism spectrum". In these uses, values within a spectrum may not be associated with precisely quantifiable numbers or definitions. Such uses imply a broad range of condition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernhard Karlgren
Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren (; 15 October 1889 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods. In the early 20th century, Karlgren conducted large surveys of the varieties of Chinese and studied historical information on rhyming in ancient Chinese poetry, then used them to create the first ever complete reconstructions of what are now called Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. Early life and education Bernhard Karlgren was born on 15 October 1889 in Jönköping, Sweden. His father, Johannes Karlgren, taught Latin, Greek, and Swedish at the local high school. Karlgren showed ability in linguistics from a young age, and was interested in Sweden's dialects and traditional folk stories. He mastered classical languages and was an accomplished translator of Greek poetry into his native language. He displayed an early interest in China, and wrote a drama, ''The White Hind,'' set in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reconstructions Of Old Chinese
Although Old Chinese is known from written records beginning around 1200 BC, the logographic script provides much more indirect and partial information about the pronunciation of the language than alphabetic systems used elsewhere. Several authors have produced reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, beginning with the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in the 1940s and continuing to the present day. The method introduced by Karlgren is unique, comparing categories implied by ancient rhyming practice and the structure of Chinese characters with descriptions in medieval rhyme dictionaries, though more recent approaches have also incorporated other kinds of evidence. Although the various notations appear to be very different, they correspond with each other on most points. By the 1970s, it was generally agreed that Old Chinese had fewer points of articulation than Middle Chinese, a set of voiceless sonorants, and labiovelar and labio-laryngeal initials. Since the 1990s, most autho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the late Shang dynasty. Chinese bronze inscriptions, Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including Four Books and Five Classics, classical works such as the ''Analects'', the ''Mencius (book), Mencius'', and the ''Zuo zhuan''. These works served as models for Literary Chinese (or Classical Chinese), which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary and grammar of late Old Chinese. Old Chinese was written with several early forms of Chinese characters, including Oracle bone script, Oracle Bone, Chinese bronze inscriptions, Bronze, and Seal scripts. Throughout ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Legge
James Legge (; 20 December 181529 November 1897) was a Scottish linguist, missionary, sinologist, and translator who was best known as an early translator of Classical Chinese texts into English. Legge served as a representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong (1840–1873) and was the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University (1876–1897). In association with Max Müller he prepared the monumental ''Sacred Books of the East'' series, published in 50 volumes between 1879 and 1891. Early life James Legge was born at Huntly, Aberdeenshire. He enrolled in Aberdeen Grammar School at age 13 and then King's College, Aberdeen at age 15. He then continued his studies at Highbury Theological College, London. Mission to China and family Legge went, in 1839, as a missionary to China, but first stayed at Malacca three years, in charge of the Anglo-Chinese College there. The College was subsequently moved to Hong Kong, where Legge lived for nearly thirt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
