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The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of
Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...
from the 18th century through the early 20th. The
Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to ...
of 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-spea ...
ordered its compilation in 1710 in order to improve on earlier dictionaries, to show his concern for Confucian culture, and to foster the standardization of the writing system. The dictionary takes its name from the Emperor's
era name A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin ''regnum'' meaning kingdom, rule. Regnal years considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year of ...
. The dictionary was the largest of the traditional dictionaries, containing 47,035 characters. Some 40% of them are graphic variants, however, while others are dead, archaic, or found only once. Fewer than a quarter of the characters it contains are now in common use. The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' is available in many forms, from Qing dynasty block print editions, to reprints in traditional Chinese bookbinding, to modern revised editions with essays in Western-style hardcover, to a digitized
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
version.


Compilation

In his preface to the 1716 printing, the Emperor wrote: ::Every time I read widely in the commentaries on the classics, the pronunciations and meanings are complex and obscure, and each person protects his own explanations according to his individual view, so that it is not likely that any will communicate everything without gaps. Thus I have ordered the scholar officials to acquire all the old documents, then to arrange them and revise them. He chose the term ''Zidian'' (字典) himself. This did not then mean "dictionary" but rather something like "compendium" of "standard" or "model" characters, to show the correct forms and authoritative pronunciations. It was generally referred to as ''Zidian'', which in the late 19th century became the standard Chinese word for "dictionary" and used in the title of practically every dictionary published since then. In literary Chinese of the sort covered, most (but not all) words are represented by a single character; the compilers did not make a distinction between 字 (''zi'') in the sense of "character" and in the sense of "word," a distinction introduced only in the late 19th century. The original editors included Zhang Yushu (, 1642–1711), Chen Tingjing (, 1639–1712), and a staff of thirty. However, both Zhang and Chen died within a year of being appointed, and the work was taken up by scholars of the Hanlin Academy. The compilation was based partly on two
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peo ...
dictionaries: the 1615 '' Zihui'' ( "Character Collection") by Mei Yingzuo (), and the 1627 ''
Zhengzitong The ''Zhengzitong'' () was a 17th-century Chinese dictionary. The Ming dynasty scholar Zhang Zilie (張自烈; Chang Tzu-lieh) originally published it in 1627 as a supplement to the 1615 ''Zihui'' dictionary of Chinese characters, and called it the ...
'' ( "Correct Character Mastery") by Zhang Zilie (). Since the imperial edict required that the project be compiled within five years, errors were inevitable. Although 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 dictionary ''Ziguan'' (字貫, String of Characters). When the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1725–1796), Kangxi's grandson, was informed of this insult in 1777, he sentenced Wang's entire family to death by the nine familial exterminations, the most extreme form of
capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
. However, as was usual in such cases with literary inquisition, the Emperor commuted the sentence by pardoning all Wang Xihou's relatives and his grandsons given only a procedural sentence of execution at the autumn assizes (qiushen 秋審) during which the case would be reviewed and usually spared the death penalty. Wang Xihou's sentence was commuted from death by 1000 cuts to only death by beheading. The
Daoguang Emperor The Daoguang Emperor (; 16 September 1782 – 26 February 1850), also known by his temple name Emperor Xuanxong of Qing, born Mianning, was the seventh Emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the sixth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning ...
appointed Wang Yinzhi (1766–1834) and a review board to compile an officially sanctioned supplement to the ''Kangxi Zidian'', and their 1831 ''Zidian kaozheng'' ( "Character Dictionary Textual Research") corrected 2,588 mistakes, mostly in quotations and citations.Teng and Biggerstaff 1971:130 The supplemented dictionary contains 47,035 character entries, plus 1,995 graphic variants, giving a total of 49,030 different characters. They are grouped under the 214 radicals and arranged by the number of additional strokes in the character. Although these 214 radicals were first used in the '' Zihui'', due to the popularity of the ''Kangxi Dictionary'' they are known as Kangxi radicals and remain in modern usage as a method to categorize traditional Chinese characters. The character entries give variants (if any), pronunciations in traditional
fanqie ''Fanqie'' ( zh, t= 反切, p=fǎnqiè) is a method in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as the desired syllable and one ...
spelling and in modern reading of a
homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
, different meanings, and quotations from Chinese books and lexicons. The dictionary also contains
rime table A rime table or rhyme table () is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the ''Qieyun'' (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a significa ...
s with characters ordered under syllable rime classes, tones, and initial syllable onsets. The missionary
Walter Henry Medhurst Walter Henry Medhurst (29 April 179624 January 1857), was an English Congregationalist missionary to China, born in London and educated at St Paul's School. He was one of the early translators of the Bible into Chinese-language editions. Earl ...
, an early translator of the Bible into Chinese, compiled '' Chinese and English Dictionary: Containing All the Words in the Chinese Imperial Dictionary, Arranged According to the Radicals'' (Parapattan; 2 vols. 1842–1843) the "Chinese imperial dictionary" being the ''Kangxi Dictionary''. The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' is one of the Chinese dictionaries used by the
Ideographic Research Group The Ideographic Research Group (IRG), formerly called the Ideographic Rapporteur Group, is a subgroup of Working Group 2 (WG2) of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 (SC 2), the subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee of ISO and IEC which is responsible for ...
for the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
standard.


Structure

* Preface by
Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to ...
: pp. 1–6 () * Notes: pp. 7–12 () * Phonology: pp. 13–40 () * Table of contents: pp. 41–49 () * Index of characters: pp. 50–71 () * The dictionary proper: pp. 75–1631 ** Main text: pp. 75–1538 ** Addendum contents: pp. 1539–1544 () ** Addendum text: pp. 1545–1576 ** Appendix contents (No–source–characters): pp. 1577–1583 () ** Appendix text: pp. 1585–1631 * Postscript: pp. 1633–1635 () * Textual research: pp. 1637–1683 ()


See also

*'' Dai Kan-Wa jiten'' (Great Chinese–Japanese Dictionary) *
Han-Han Dae Sajeon Han-Han Dae Sajeon is the generic term for Korean hanja-to-hangul dictionaries. There are several such dictionaries from different publishers. The most comprehensive one, published by Dankook University Publishing, contains 53,667 Chinese charact ...
(Korean hanja-to-hangul dictionaries) *''
Hanyu Da Zidian The ''Hanyu dazidian'' () is a reference work on Chinese characters. Overview A group of more than 400 editors and lexicographers began compilation in 1974, and it was published in eight volumes from 1986 to 1989. A separate volume of essays do ...
'' (Great Compendium of Chinese Characters) * List of Kangxi radicals *'' Peiwen Yunfu'' (Rhyme Storehouse of Esteemed Phrases) *''
Zhonghua Da Zidian The ''Zhonghua Da Zidian'' () is an unabridged Chinese dictionary of characters, originally published in 1915 by the Zhonghua Book Company in Shanghai. The chief editors were Xu Yuan'gao (徐元誥), Lufei Kui (陆费逵), and Ouyang Pucun (歐� ...
'' (Chinese Great Dictionary)


References

* , Occasional paper with translation of Kangxi Emperor's preface 御製康熙字典序 *Creamer, Thomas B. I. (1992), "Lexicography and the history of the Chinese language", in ''History, Languages, and Lexicographers'', (''Lexicographica'', Series maior 41), ed. by
Ladislav Zgusta Ladislav Zgusta (20 March 1924 in Libochovice – 27 April 2007 in Urbana, Illinois) was a Czech-American historical linguist and lexicographer, who wrote one of the first textbooks on lexicography. He was a professor of linguistics and classics ...
, Niemeyer, 105–135. *Mair, Victor H. (1998), "''Tzu-shu'' 字書 or ''tzu-tien'' 字典 (dictionaries)," in ''The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Volume 2)'', ed. by William H. Nienhauser, Jr., et al., SMC Publishing, 165–172. *Medhurst, Walter Henry (1842),  hinese and English dictionary, containing all the words in the Chinese imperial dictionary; arranged according to the radicals 2 vols., Parapattan. Google Books
Volume IVolume II
*Teng, Ssu-yü and Biggerstaff, Knight. 1971. ''An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works'', 3rd ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. * *


Notes


External links


''Kangxi Zidian''
(Tongwen Shuju edition), wit
dictionary lookup
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 ...
*
康熙字典網上版 ''Kangxi Dictionary'' Type-set Online Version

Japanese edition Online
Bibliothèque numérique mondiale
''Kangxi zidian'' 康熙字典 (in English)
brief history of the dictionary, on Chinaknowledge.de
汉典 The Chinese Language Dictionary Homepage (in Chinese only)

訂正康熙字典 EPUB版 Revised ''Kangxi Zidian'', EPUB Version
{{Authority control Chinese dictionaries Qing dynasty literature 1716 books Kangxi Emperor