The (c. 230) ''Guangya'' (; "Expanded '' ra''") was an early 3rd-century CE

Chinese dictionary Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Han dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language, and this article discusses some of ...

, edited by Zhang Yi (張揖) during the

Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Han dynasty#Eastern Han, Eastern Han dynasty and wa ...

period. It was later called the ''Boya'' (博雅; ''Bóyǎ''; ''Po-ya''; "Broadened ra") owing to

naming taboo A naming taboo is a cultural taboo against speaking or writing the given names of exalted persons, notably in China and within the Chinese cultural sphere. It was enforced by several laws throughout Imperial China, but its cultural and possibly r ...

on Yang Guang (楊廣), which was the birth name of

Emperor Yang of Sui Emperor Yang of Sui (隋煬帝, 569 – 11 April 618), personal name Yang Guang (), alternative name Ying (), Xianbei name Amo (), also known as Emperor Ming of Sui () during the brief reign of his grandson Yang Tong, was the second emperor of ...

. Zhang Yi wrote the ''Guangya'' as a supplement to the centuries older ''

Erya The ''Erya'' or ''Erh-ya'' is the first surviving Chinese dictionary. Bernhard Karlgren (1931:49) concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from the 3rd century BC." Title Chinese scholars interpret the first title chara ...

'' dictionary. He used the same 19 chapter divisions into lexical categories, and numerous ''Guangya'' entries are abstract words under the first three chapters ''Shigu'' (釋詁 "Explaining Old Words"), ''Shiyan'' (釋言 "Explaining Words"), and ''Shixun'' (釋訓 "Explaining Instructions"). Based upon entries in the ''Guangya'' biological chapters,

Joseph Needham Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, in ...

et al. say most are original and different, showing little overlap with ''Erya'' entries, so that Zhang Yi almost doubled the 334 plants and trees in the classic dictionary. The

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

philologist

Wang Niansun Wang Niansun (; 1744–1832), courtesy name: Huaizu () was a Chinese scholar of the Qing Dynasty. Biography A native of Gaoyou, Jiangsu, he worked as a government official specializing in channelization before retiring to devote himself to his st ...

spent a decade studying this dictionary, and his ''Guangya shuzheng'' (廣雅疏證 "''Guangya'' Annotations and Proofs") is still considered the authoritative edition, in which he demonstrated the important philological principle of "looking for the ancient meaning by considering the ancient sound ... not constrained by the structure of the character" (就古音以求古義......不限形體). His preface notes the ''Guangya'' has 2343 entries and a total of 18,150 characters (the received text has 17,326), including corrections and emendations, which is about 5000 more than the received ''Erya''. The linguist Zhou Fagao edited an index to the ''Guangya''.

References

External links

''Guangya'' 廣雅
Ulrich Theobald
Various editions of the ''Guangya'' and its commentaries
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Chinese Text Project The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...

{{Dictionaries of Chinese Chinese classic texts Chinese dictionaries

See also

References

External links