''A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts'' or ''Morrison's Chinese dictionary'' (1815-1823), compiled by the Anglo-Scottish
missionary
A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...
Robert Morrison was the first Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary. Part I is Chinese-English arranged by the 214
Kangxi radical
The ''Kangxi'' radicals (), also known as ''Zihui'' radicals, are a set of 214 Chinese character radicals, radicals that were collated in the 18th-century ''Kangxi Dictionary'' to aid categorization of Chinese characters. They are primarily sor ...
s, Part II is Chinese-English arranged alphabetically, and Part III is English-Chinese also arranged alphabetically. This groundbreaking
reference work
A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...
is enormous, comprising 4,595 pages in 6
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
volumes and including 47,035
head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...
characters taken from the 1716 ''
Kangxi Dictionary
The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' () 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 ...
''. However, Morrison's encyclopedic dictionary had flaws, notably failing to distinguish
aspirated consonants: the pronunciation ''taou'' is given for both aspirated ''táo'' (
桃, "peach") and unaspirated ''dào'' (
道
道 may refer to:
* Dao (political), an administrative division in China, Japan, or Korea
**Provinces of Korea, the primary administrative division of Korea since the mid Goryeo dynasty in the early 11th century
***Administrative divisions of North ...
, "way; the
Tao
The Tao or Dao is the natural way of the universe, primarily as conceived in East Asian philosophy and religion. This seeing of life cannot be grasped as a concept. Rather, it is seen through actual living experience of one's everyday being. T ...
").
History

Robert Morrison (1782-1834) is credited with several historical firsts in addition to the first bidirectional Chinese and English dictionary. He was the first
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
missionary in China, started the first Chinese-language
periodical
Periodical literature (singularly called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) consists of Publication, published works that appear in new releases on a regular schedule (''issues'' or ''numbers'', often numerically divided into annu ...
in 1815, collaborated with
William Milne to write the first
translation of the Bible into Chinese in 1823, helped to found the English-language ''
The Canton Register'' in 1827, and compiled the first Western-language dictionary of a regional
variety of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland Chi ...
.
Morrison joined the
London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed tradition, Reformed in outlook, with ...
in 1804 and was chosen to lead a mission to China. They sent him to study at
Gosport
Gosport ( ) is a town and non-metropolitan district with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Hampshire, England. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census, the town had a population of 70,131 and the district had a pop ...
and introduced him to a young
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
man studying English in London: Robert Morrison transcribes his name as "Yong Sam Tak", Eliza Morrison as "Yung-san-tih" in "Mandarin" transcription, and whose actual name was probably Rong Sande (). In 1807, the LMS instructed Morrison to sail to
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
(then known as "Canton") and continue studying until he had "accomplished
isgreat object of acquiring the language", whereupon he would "turn this attainment into a direction which may be of extensive use to the world: perhaps you may have the honour of forming a Chinese Dictionary, more comprehensive and correct than any preceding one", as well as translating the Bible into Chinese.
Upon his arrival in the
Qing Empire
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
, Morrison learned that the Chinese were prohibited from teaching their language to foreigners, forcing him to
study Chinese secretly and hide his books from sight. Morrison eventually found two tutors, the scholar "Ko Seen-sang" and Abel Yun, who had learned
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
from
Catholic missionaries
Missionary work of the Catholic Church has often been undertaken outside the geographically defined parishes and dioceses by religious orders who have people and material resources to spare, and some of which specialized in missions. Eventually, p ...
. Together, they began to translate the scriptures and compile the dictionary. In 1809, the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
employed Morrison as their translator, which legitimized his presence in Guangzhou's
Thirteen Factories
The Thirteen Factories, also known as the , was a neighbourhood along the Pearl River in southwestern Guangzhou (Canton) in the Qing Empire from to 1856 around modern day Xiguan, in Guangzhou's Liwan District. These warehouses and stores were t ...
and provided sufficient income to continue working on the dictionary project and Bible translation. He translated and printed the
Acts of the Apostles
The Acts of the Apostles (, ''Práxeis Apostólōn''; ) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of The gospel, its message to the Roman Empire.
Acts and the Gospel of Luke make u ...
in 1810 and completed his Chinese Grammar in 1811. The situation worsened in 1812 when the
Jiaqing Emperor
The Jiaqing Emperor (13 November 1760 – 2 September 1820), also known by his temple name Emperor Renzong of Qing, personal name Yongyan, was the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. He was ...
issued an edict adding Christianity to the list of banned witchcrafts and superstitions, making the printing of Chinese-language books on the subject a capital crime. The LMS sent the missionary
William Milne to assist Morrison in translating and printing the scriptures. In 1814, the East India Company sent the printing engineer
Peter Perring Thoms. Together with Morrison's Chinese assistants such as
Cai Gao
Cai Gao (1788–1818), also known as Tsae A-ko and by various other names, was the first Protestant convert in mainland China. He has also been called the first Western-style type-cutter and letterpress printer.
Name
The real name of Chin ...
and
Liang Fa
Liang Fa (1789–1855), also known by other names, was the second Chinese Protestant convert and the first Chinese Protestant minister and evangelist. He was ordained by Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in the Qing Empire. ...
, he created the Chinese character font for the dictionary. Morrison worked on producing ''A Dictionary of the Chinese Language'' for more than 15 years with "extraordinary perseverance, industry, and ingenuity".
Morrison described the bilingual Chinese dictionaries that he used as sources for his own lexicographical work: "several MS. Dictionaries of the old Missionaries, in English and French, and, latterly, the printed copy of Father Basil's Dictionary". This refers to the 9,000-entry 1698 ''Dictionarium Sino-Latinum'' manuscript of the
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...
Basilio Brollo or de Glemona (1648-1704), which the French orientalist
Joseph de Guignes (1759-1845) translated as the 1813 ' without any attribution to the original author. Brollo's innovation was to provide a Chinese character dictionary alphabetically collated by transliteration, with a user-friendly index arranged by radicals and strokes, successfully combining Chinese and European lexicographic traditions. This lexicographical macrostructure was adopted in Morrison's dictionary, and most bilingual Chinese dictionaries up to the present day.
The first volume of Morrison's Chinese dictionary was published in 1815 and the last in 1823. All 6 volumes were printed by in
Macao
Macau or Macao is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most densely populated region in the world.
Formerly a Portuguese colony, the ter ...
and published and sold by Black, Parbury, & Allen, the booksellers to the East India Company. The dictionary was printed in a run of 750 copies at a total cost of
£10,440; or £12,000 they sold for the "princely sum" of 20
guineas
The guinea (; commonly abbreviated gn., or gns. in plural) was a coin, minted in Great Britain between 1663 and 1814, that contained approximately one-quarter of an ounce of gold. The name came from the Guinea region in West Africa, from where m ...
. The LMS was unable to subsidize the entire project, but the directors of the East India Company agreed to pay because they recognized the dictionary's incalculable benefit, not only to missionaries but also to their own employees. The later volumes were published simultaneously in London by Kingsbury, Parbury, & Allen or by Black, Parbury, & Allen.
The ''Dictionary of the Chinese Language'' marked a new era in the compilation and publication of bilingual Chinese works. Before the 19th century, Catholic missionaries such as Basilio Brollo had compiled many bilingual manuscript dictionaries, but their circulation was inevitably restricted by the difficulties of copying a dictionary by hand. The initial edition of 750 copies and subsequent reprints enabled Morrison's dictionary to reach a wider readership and have a far more profound impact.
Morrison's dictionary is composed of three parts or six
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
() volumes published in different years. Part I has 3 volumes with Volume I published in 1815 containing 18 pages in the preface, 930 pages in the dictionary proper, and 2 additional pages consisting of advertisements. Volume II, published in 1822, is composed of 884 pages, and Volume III, published in 1823, is composed of 908 pages. Part II has two volumes: Volume I published in 1819 contains 20 pages in the preface and 1,090 pages in the dictionary proper, and Volume II published in 1820 contains 6 pages in the preface, 178 pages in the first section, and 305 pages in the second section of the dictionary proper. Part III was published in 1822 with only one volume containing 5 pages in the preface and 480 pages in the dictionary proper.
The publication of Morrison's dictionary attracted the attention of scholars worldwide, and Part II was reprinted from 1865 until 1913. The revised preface says the second part "has been generally commended by experienced Sinologues as the most perfect and useful of the whole". In 1865, the London Mission Press in
Shanghai
Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...
and
Trubner & Co. in London first republished Part II in 2 volumes, totaling 1630 pages. In 1913,
Zhonghua Book Company
Zhonghua Book Company (), formerly spelled Chunghwa or Chung-hua Shu-chü, and sometimes translated as Zhonghua Publishing House, are Chinese publishing houses that focuses on the humanities, especially classical Chinese works. Currently it ha ...
reprinted Part II in a pocketbook size, which made it much more affordable and easier to carry.
Morrison's lexicographical legacy is reflected in two facts: his dictionary's macrostructure and microstructure became the model for many later Chinese-English dictionaries, and his transliteration system was adopted as the basis for
Wade-Giles romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
.
Morrison's Chinese dictionary became the prototype for other 19th-century works. The English
Congregationalist missionary and Bible translator
Walter Henry Medhurst compiled the 1842 and 1847 ''Chinese and English Dictionary: Containing all the Words in the Chinese Imperial Dictionary, Arranged According to the Radicals''. Medhurst claimed this was an original translation based on the ''
Kangxi Zidian'', but it was in fact just an edited abridgment of Morrison's dictionary, a "plagiarism rather than an original compilation". The American sinologist and missionary
Samuel Wells Williams
Samuel Wells Williams (September 22, 1812 – February 16, 1884) was a linguist, official, missionary and sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century.
Early life
Williams was born in Utica, New York, son of William Williams (1 ...
compiled the 1874 ''
Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language'', whose Chinese title () echoed that of Part II of Morrison's work (). The preface says that although many similar Chinese-English dictionaries by Medhurst,
Elijah Coleman Bridgman
Elijah Coleman Bridgman (April22, 1801November2, 1861) was the first American Protestant Christian missionary appointed to China. He served with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. One of the first few Protestant missionar ...
, and others were published in small numbers, they became "very scarce, while the number of students has increased tenfold", and learners of Chinese relied on reprints of Morrison. Williams explicitly identified "Dr. Medhurst's translation of the K'anghi Tsz'tien" as a more important source for his own work than Morrison's dictionary. The British diplomat and sinologist
Herbert Giles edited ''
A Chinese-English Dictionary'', published in 1892 and 1912. Giles praised Morrison as "the great pioneer" of Chinese-English lexicography, but criticized his failure to mark aspiration. He said Medhurst "attempted aspirates" but omitted some and wrongly inserted others. While Williams correctly marked aspiration and tones, Giles says "he provided too few phrases, and mistranslated a large number of those". Ironically, Yang's textual analysis finds that Giles's dictionary is more closely linked to Williams's than to Morrison's.
Morrison's Chinese dictionary introduced a systematic transliteration system that was used for over four decades until it was replaced by
Thomas Francis Wade's
romanization scheme in 1867; that became the basis for the
Wade-Giles system of 1892-1912, which was widely used and still survives alongside
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
romanization. Morrison's system was almost forgotten after being replaced by Wade romanization, but
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 Lond ...
adopted it virtually unchanged into the
Legge romanization used in his ''Chinese Classics'' (1861–1872).
Morrison's romanization system influenced the Wade, Legge, and Wade-Giles schemes.
Robert Morrison's dictionary is still in use two hundred years after its publication. For example, the American sinologist
W. South Coblin analyzed Morrison's romanization of Mandarin for clues about the pronunciation of early 19th-century standard Chinese. Morrison's pronunciation glosses followed the lower Yangtze
koiné as the standard
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
of the time, "what the Chinese call the
Nanking Dialect, than the
Peking
Beijing, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's most populous national capital city as well as China's second largest city by urban area after Shanghai. It is l ...
".
Content
The title pages of the dictionary's parts give two versions of the full title. Part I's title page (shown above) reads "Part the First; Containing Chinese and English, Arranged According to the Radicals; Part the Second; Chinese and English, Arranged Alphabetically; and Part the Third, English and Chinese". The title pages of Part II and Part iii read "Part the First, Containing Chinese and English Arranged According to the Keys; Part the Second, Chinese and English Arranged Alphabetically, and Part the Third, Consisting of English and Chinese". Each part of the dictionary is a complete and independent unit in itself.
Part I: A Dictionary of the Chinese Language
Part I, ''A Dictionary of the Chinese Language'', is supertitled in Chinese—but not English—as a "
character dictionary" (). It was a Chinese-to-English dictionary, organized by the 214 radical system employed by the 1716 ''
Kangxi Dictionary
The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' () 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 ...
''. These
radicals are the initial or major graphic components of
Chinese characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
, ranging from 1 to 17
strokes. In Morrison's dictionary, Volume I starts with
Radical 1
Radical 1 or radical one () meaning " one" is one of the 6 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 1 stroke. It is the simplest Chinese character in the language due to consisting of only one line.
In the '' Kangxi Dictionary'', ther ...
(, "one") and ends at
Radical 41 ( ("thumb;
Chinese inch") ); Volume II starts with
Radical 42 (, "small") and stops at
Radical 119 (, "rice"); and Volume III begins with
Radical 120
Radical 120 or radical silk () meaning "silk" is one of the 29 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 6 strokes.
In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 823 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.
is also the ...
(, "silk") and ends the dictionary with
Radical 214 (, "flute"). Vols. II & III were published simultaneously in London by Kingsbury, Parbury, & Allen.
Morrison acknowledged his debt to the ''Kangxi Dictionary'' in his introduction to Volume I, saying it "forms the ground work" of Part I, including its arrangement, number of characters (47,035), and many of its definitions and examples. However, it also differed in significant ways. Chinese scholars have found that the majority of the Kangxi dictionary's usage examples were taken from books before the 10th century and ignored vulgar forms and expressions. Morrison also noticed this and chose examples better suited to his intended readership, adding vulgar, humorous, colloquial, and modern examples. For instance, Morrison included descriptions for (''wángba'', "tortoise" but also "cuckold; son of a bitch; pimp") and (''wūguī'', "tortoise" but also "cuckold") as "terms of abuse, denoting one who lives on his wife's prostitution; one lost to virtue". Similarly (''wángbadàn'', "turtle egg" but also "son of a bitch") as "a bastard, in opprobrious language". Morrison's dictionary also gives Chinese usage examples and quotations from a wide range of sources, including classical literature, law, medicine, novels, and numerous unidentified contemporary sources.
His
orthographic standard for the dictionary's "Radicals, and of the large Characters throughout the work," was said to have been "taken from an excellent Dictionary". This was either
Sha Mu's 1787 ''Yiwen Beilan'' (, "Literary Writings for Consultation", or ''E-wǎn-pe-lan'' in Sha's romanization) or its 1807 reprint. Morrison's copy is now located at the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
's
SOAS Library. A comparative study of its annotations confirms its influence, although this remained less marked than that of the ''Kangxi Dictionary''.
Philosophically, Morrison's dictionary departed from that ordered by the
Kangxi Emperor
The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 165420 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, personal name Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His reign of 61 ...
by including not only the
Confucian
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China, and is variously described as a tradition, philosophy, religion, theory of government, or way of life. Founded by Confucius ...
Four Books and Five Classics
The Four Books and Five Classics are authoritative and important books associated with Confucianism, written before 300 BC. They are traditionally believed to have been either written, edited or commented by Confucius or one of his disciples. S ...
but many more items drawn from
Taoist
Taoism or Daoism (, ) is a diverse philosophical and religious tradition indigenous to China, emphasizing harmony with the Tao ( zh, p=dào, w=tao4). With a range of meaning in Chinese philosophy, translations of Tao include 'way', 'road', ...
and
Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
texts.
Yang uses the example of the dictionary's first entry, (''yi'', "one"), which notes
The Secl ectTaou affirms, that "Taou produced one, one produced two, two produced three, and three produced all things." If it be asked, what then is Taou? They reply, 靜極乃道也… "Extreme quiescence, or a state of perfect stillness is Taou." The Three, when speaking of their external appearance, they call "The heaven's adorning principle, earth's life giving principle, and the pure principle of the exciting harmonizing wind"; or as they define it, "That aerial principle, or influence, by which the heavens and earth act on each other." The internal Three, they call "The clear unmixed influence, the intelligence of spirit; the purity of essence; in the midst of quiescence separated the Yin and Yang. Essence, influence and spirit, together operated in a state of vacuum." (Taou tĭh king). Their notions of the great One Cause of all things, are very fanciful and obscure.
The first quote is from ''
Tao Te Ching
The ''Tao Te Ching'' () or ''Laozi'' is a Chinese classic text and foundational work of Taoism traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, though the text's authorship and date of composition and compilation are debated. The oldest excavated por ...
'' (Ch. 42) and the others from commentaries.
The first volume of Part I and its two companion volumes were written in notably different styles. Volume I is "notoriously abundant" in encyclopedic examples and quotations, while the other two volumes of Part I just provide brief definitions and a few examples. When Morrison published the first volume of Part I in 1815 after 8 years of hard work, he realized that if he tried to compile the rest of the dictionary on such a comprehensive scale, he might not finish the dictionary in his lifetime. He then changed course and rapidly published Part II in 1819 and 1820. His dictionary's alphabetically arranged Part II, with concise definitions and brief usage examples, proved to be more useful for learners of Chinese but lacked the rich quotations that made the first volume of Part I a model of an "encyclopedic and culturally rich bilingual dictionary". To illustrate Volume I's "grand scope" and "many surprises", Wu Xian & al. cited the 40-page entry for (''xue'', "study; receive instruction; practice; imitate; learn; a place of studying") whose usage examples and illustrations range across the traditional
Chinese educational system from "private school" (, ''xueguan'') to "government-run
prefectural school" (, ''fuxue''), explain the
imperial examination
The imperial examination was a civil service examination system in History of China#Imperial China, Imperial China administered for the purpose of selecting candidates for the Civil service#China, state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureau ...
civil service system from "county candidates" (, ''xiucai'') to "members of the imperial
Hanlin Academy
The Hanlin Academy was an academic and administrative institution of higher learning founded in the 8th century Tang China by Emperor Xuanzong in Chang'an. It has also been translated as "College of Literature" and "Academy of the Forest of Pen ...
" (, ''hanlin''), and include a variety of related terms and passages such as 100 rules for schools, details on examination systems, and a list of books for classical study. They conclude that the dictionary's "richness of information was unprecedented".
An example of a later entry is (''dào'', "way") in Volume III. It is given with his
atonal
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on ...
romanization "TAOU" under
Radical 162 (, "walk"), with the
roman numeral
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...
IX noting that it has nine
strokes beyond those of the base radical. The
regular script
The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period , and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the t ...
character and pronunciation are given alongside its
small seal and
cursive
Cursive (also known as joined-up writing) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and m ...
forms, followed by English translations, derived terms, and usage examples. In this case, the word is glossed as "A way; a path; being at the head; the way that leads to; a thoroughfare on all sides. A principle. The principle from which heaven, earth, man, and all nature emanates." Of the 22 words and usages given, the first six are medical terms (e.g., "Seaou pëen taou the urinary passage; the vagina") and the last thirteen are
administrative circuits of imperial China (e.g., "
Ho-nan taou") The other three are notice of the
Daoguang Emperor
The Daoguang Emperor (16 September 1782 – 26 February 1850), also known by his temple name Emperor Xuanzong of Qing, personal name Mianning, was the seventh List of emperors of the Qing dynasty, emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the sixth Qing e ...
's
era name
A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin 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 rule, a t ...
("Taou-kwang yuen nëen the first of Taoukwang, 'reason's glory,' title of the reigning emperor of China (A.D. 1821)"); the common word ''
dàoxǐ'' ("Taou he to congratulate, an expression used amongst equals"); and a citation from
Confucius
Confucius (; pinyin: ; ; ), born Kong Qiu (), was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the phil ...
's ''
Analects
The ''Analects'', also known as the ''Sayings of Confucius'', is an ancient Chinese philosophical text composed of sayings and ideas attributed to Confucius and his contemporaries, traditionally believed to have been compiled by his followers. ...
'' ("Taou tsëen shing che kwǒ To rule or govern a nation that can send forth a thousand
war chariots").
Part II: A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Arranged Alphabetically
Part II, ''A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Arranged Alphabetically'', is supertitled in Chinese—but not English—as a ''Wuche Yunfu'' (, "Erudition Phonetic Dictionary"). The name literally means a "five-cart
oads of books, a classical idiom for "erudite"storehouse of euphony", and copies the title of an earlier
rime dictionary
A rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book () is a genre of dictionary that records pronunciations for Chinese characters by tone and rhyme, instead of by graphical means like their radicals. The most important rime dictionary tradition ...
compiled by
Chen Jinmo () and
Han Yihu (), who gave its unpublished manuscript to the editors of the ''Kangxi Dictionary''. They made extensive use of it, with definitions often identical in both works. Morrison claimed to have worked from Chen and Han's dictionary, rearranging its roughly 40,000 characters according to
syllables
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
instead of pronunciations and tones with the help of the ''Fenyun'' (, "Divisions of Rimes") and Basilio Brollo's dictionary, as well as contemporary words from elsewhere. This work took about seven years. Yang's comparative study of Parts I and II found, however, that the definitions of both are clearly based on the ''Kangxi Dictionary'' and reflect little content from original ''Wuche Yunfu''.
Part II is in two volumes. In Volume I, the preface explains the dictionary's composition, purpose and orthography and the main section is a "Syllabic Dictionary" in which
romanized
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...
Chinese words are collated in
alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is ...
. In Volume II, the first section contains a table of the 214 ''Kangxi'' radicals, a
radical-and-stroke index of the characters in Volume I, and an English-to-Chinese index of words that gives the character numbers in Volume I. The second independent section "A Synopsis of Various Forms of the Chinese Character" giving the
regular script
The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period , and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the t ...
,
semi-cursive script
Semi-cursive script, also known as running script, is a style of Chinese calligraphy that emerged during the Han dynasty (202 BC220 AD). The style is used to write Chinese characters and is abbreviated slightly where a character's stro ...
,
cursive script,
clerical script
The clerical script (), sometimes also chancery script, is a style of Chinese writing that evolved from the late Warring States period to the Qin dynasty. It matured and became dominant in the Han dynasty, and remained in active use through t ...
,
small seal script
The small seal script is an archaic script style of written Chinese. It developed within the state of Qin during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771–256 BC), and was then promulgated across China in order to replace script varieties used i ...
, and
bronze script
Chinese bronze inscriptions, also referred to as bronze script or bronzeware script, comprise Chinese writing made in several styles on ritual bronzes mainly during the Late Shang dynasty () and Western Zhou dynasty (771 BC). Types of bron ...
forms of various characters. Part II of the dictionary contains 12,674 character entries, far fewer than the 47,035 entries in Part I. On the other hand, it continued to provide an estimated 20,000 examples and Chinese quotations in Chinese characters, accompanied with romanization and English translations, a vast improvement over earlier dictionaries without examples or Basilio Brollo's Chinese–Latin dictionaries, which presented its examples only in romanization. Vol. I was only published in Macao, but Vol. II was published simultaneously at London by Black, Parbury, & Allen.
The preface notes Morrison's intent: "The Author's object has been, and the intention of the Dictionary ought to be, to communicate the Language to ''Europeans''". Its content is wide-ranging. "There are beautiful pieces of poetry, interesting and instructive portions of History and Biography; and important Moral Maxims, in Chinese that is a language amongst the ''most ancient'' and the ''most extensively'' known on earth,… it is the ''living language'' of five nations, which together, constitute one third of the mankind." 1815 say, "Far more than a mere dictionary of the Chinese language, Morrison's dictionary is a history book, a biography, a collection of idiomatic expressions and common sayings of the Chinese people, and, last but not least, full of the Christian evangelical message expressed in many ways". In both Part I and II, discussion of paper () occasions discussion of its invention by
Cai Lun
Cai Lun ( zh, s=蔡伦; courtesy name: Jingzhong ( zh, labels=no, t=敬仲, s=敬仲); – 121 CE), formerly romanization of Chinese, romanized as Ts'ai Lun, was a Eunuchs in China, Chinese eunuch court official of the Eastern Han dynasty. H ...
, although his name appears as both "Tsae Lun" or "Tsae-lun" and one entry mistakenly places him in the 10th century instead of the 1st. Another example is the entry on (''cāi'', "guess; suspect"), which occasions a digression on a Chinese drinking game: " to guess the number of fingers thrown out, or stretched straight from a previously folded hand, which is a drunken amusement of the Chinese. When the opponent guesses the right number of fingers thrown out, at the instant he speaks, he wins, and the person throwing out his fingers has to drink as a forfeit.".
Part II—unlike Part I—includes notation regarding Chinese tones. Unfortunately, Morrison transcribed the
four tone distinctions of
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
rhyme dictionaries rather than
those of
modern Chinese. The romanizations of Part II are left unmarked for a "level" tone (, ''píng''), given a
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...
(e.g., à) for a "rising" tone (, ''shǎng''), given an
acute accent
The acute accent (), ,
is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
(e.g., á) for a "departing" tone (, ''qù''), and a
breve
A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in ...
(e.g., ǎ) for an "entering" tone. By the time Morrison was composing his dictionary, the old level tone had begun dividing into modern Mandarin's
high and
rising tones; the old rising tone had begun dividing into the modern
third
Third or 3rd may refer to:
Numbers
* 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3
* , a fraction of one third
* 1⁄60 of a ''second'', i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system
Places
* 3rd Street (di ...
and
falling tones; and the entering tone had ceased to exist. Only the old departing tone continued to exist, as the modern falling tone. (In other dialects of Chinese, such as
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
, these tones developed separately but Morrison employed the
Nanjing dialect
The Nanjing dialect ( zh, s=南京话, t=南京話, p=Nánjīnghuà), also known as Nankinese, Nankingese, Nanjingese, Nanjingnese and Nanjing Mandarin, is the prestige dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Nanjing, China. It is part ...
of his era's
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
).
Part II also includes etymological glosses of the formation of the Chinese characters. Although these were often (inaccurate) guesses or
folk etymologies, they helped students of Chinese as a second language to comprehend and memorize characters. Wu Xian & al. draw attention to his treatment of the character (''yǎng'', "look up; admire"), which now consists of
Radical 9
Radical 9 or radical man () meaning "person" is a Kangxi radical. Of the 214 radicals, Radical 9 is one of 23 which are composed of 2 strokes.
When appearing at the left side of a Chinese character, it usually transforms into .
In the '' Kang ...
(, "person") and (''áng'', "high"). Morrison wrote, "YANG , from ''man'' and ''to look upwards''. To raise the head and look upwards with expectation or desire...". Two subsequent centuries of study and archeological discoveries have greatly increased understanding of how Chinese characters originated. It is now established that "Originally depicted a person standing next to (''jié'') a person kneeling. Another ( ''rén'') person was added later, forming ".
The entry for in the second part of Morrison's dictionary gives a graphic variant , the entry number 9945, the acute accent
"departing" tone, the character origin "From ''to walk'' and ''head''", translation equivalents, and 12 usage examples. The English translation runs:
A way; a path; being at the head; the way that leads to; a thoroughfare on all sides. A principle. The priuciple from which heaven, earth, man, and all nature emanates. Le is a latent principle; Tanu is a principle in action. Correct, virtuous principles and course of action. Order and good principles in a government and country. A word; to speak; to say; the way or cause from or by which; to direct; to lead in the way. To accord with or go in a course pointed out. The name of a country. Used by the Buddhists for a particular state of existence, whether amongst human beings or amongst brutes.
The usage examples include words from
Taoism
Taoism or Daoism (, ) is a diverse philosophical and religious tradition indigenous to China, emphasizing harmony with the Tao ( zh, p=dào, w=tao4). With a range of meaning in Chinese philosophy, translations of Tao include 'way', 'road', ' ...
and
Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
: "Taou in the
books
A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mo ...
of
Laou-tsze is very like the ''Eternal Reason'' of which some Europeans speak; ' of the
Latins
The term Latins has been used throughout history to refer to various peoples, ethnicities and religious groups using Latin or the Latin-derived Romance languages, as part of the legacy of the Roman Empire. In the Ancient World, it referred to th ...
, and the ''
Logos
''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
'' of the
Greeks
Greeks or Hellenes (; , ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Greek Cypriots, Cyprus, Greeks in Albania, southern Albania, Greeks in Turkey#History, Anatolia, parts of Greeks in Italy, Italy and Egyptian Greeks, Egypt, and to a l ...
."; and using ''zhì'' (, "cloth case for a book"), "Taou těë a certificate by which the priests of Buddha are entitled to three days provision at every temple they go to."
Part III: An English and Chinese Dictionary
Part III, ''An English and Chinese Dictionary'', was given without a Chinese supertitle. It comprises Morrison's English-to-Chinese dictionary and is arranged
alphabetically from "A" ("A, Ying wǎn, yin moo suy tsze che te yǐh, The first letter of the English Alphabet.") to "Zone" ("ZONE, a
girdle
A belt without a buckle, especially if a cord or rope, is called a girdle in various contexts, especially historical ones, where girdles were a very common part of everyday clothing from antiquity until perhaps the 15th century, especially for w ...
, tae tsze; wei tai."). It was printed simultaneously in London by Black, Parbury, & Allen.
Its entries are terser than those of the Chinese volumes, particularly Part I, Volume 1. The entry for "way" is "WAY, road, or path, loo; taou; too. A method or means, fa". The fraught issue of
Chinese names for God occasioned a somewhat fuller treatment:
GOD or the Deus of the Chinese was originally, and is still most generally Shin; in the plural, Dii, Shin kwei, and Shin ke. A sort of Supreme God, is in the ancient books expressed by Shang-te. Genii of particular places are also expressed by Shin, as ho shin, God of the river; shan shin, god of the hill, &c. All these gods are in Chinese notions inferior to Ten, Heaven.
Reception
Robert Morrison's Chinese-English dictionary has received both blame and praise. Considering that he was a self-taught lexicographer who compiled a dictionary of such a colossal size and scope, working with assistants who did not speak English, it would inevitably fall short of perfection, such the typographical errors and misprints noted above. Within his lifetime, the publication of Morrison's Chinese dictionary did not bring him universal acclaim, but instead triggered a controversy as to the authorship. In 1818 and again in 1830, the German orientalist
Julius Klaproth accused Morrison of merely translating Chinese dictionaries rather than compiling a new or original one. In response to Klaproth's challenges, Morrison wrote an 1831 letter to the ''Asiatic Journal'' that describes the dictionary's compilation in detail.
I know of no better way of writing a Dictionary of any language, than that which I pursued; namely, to make use of all the native Dictionaries I could collect, with the original books referred to in them; to employ native scholars to assist me in consulting those several works, and in ascertaining their exact meaning... In the whole of the work, there was no mere copying from one book into another; no mere translation from one language into another; but an exercise of judgment and choice, throughout: and if any man may be called the author of a Dictionary, Morrison may justly be called the author of the Dictionary attributed to him.
In retrospect, a "major flaw" in Morrison's dictionary is the failure to distinguish the
phonemic contrast between
aspirated and unaspirated consonants.
Herbert Giles's ''Chinese-English Dictionary'' says Morrison's 1819 volume gave no aspirates, "a defect many times worse" than would be omitting the
rough breathing
In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( or ; ) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even af ...
in a Greek lexicon. The contrast between aspirated and unaspirated consonants through the use of an apostrophe was added in 1865's reprint of the dictionary. Medhurst's 1843 edition attempted to insert aspirates, but omitted many and wrongly inserted others.
Samuel Wells Williams
Samuel Wells Williams (September 22, 1812 – February 16, 1884) was a linguist, official, missionary and sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century.
Early life
Williams was born in Utica, New York, son of William Williams (1 ...
's 1874 ''
Syllabic Dictionary'' was apparently the first dictionary to get this distinction sorted out.
Another flaw is Morrison's treatment of some characters that have more than one pronunciation and meaning: means "foul; stinking; disgusting; disgraceful" when pronounced ''chòu'' but simply "odor; smell; scent" when read ''xiù''. Morrison listed both senses with the first pronunciation and treated it as similar to the neutral and disagreeable senses of the English "smell":
Chow Smell or flavor generally; scent; offensive smell; disagreeable odours; fume or effluvia. Stink; to smell; that which is morally offensive. The character is formed from Keuen A dog, in allusion to that animal finding its way by the scent. Heang chow, a fragrant smell; Gŏ chow, a bad smell; E chow wan nëen, to leave an eternal reproach on one's name; Ko chow joo lan, it smells fragrant as the Lan-flower.
In these derived terms, the negative senses would be read ''chòu'', but the pleasant "fragrant as an orchid" would use the pronunciation ''xiù''. Another example is when he takes the in to mean "bride" when the intended sense is a "bridegroom" being invited to live with his in-laws.
On the other hand, Morrison's Chinese dictionary has won critical acclaims from scholars all over the world since the publication of the first volume in 1815. Alexander Leith Ross wrote to Morrison that his dictionary had an extensive circulation in Europe, and would be "an invaluable treasure to every student of Chinese". The French sinologist
Stanislas Julien described Part II as "without dispute, the best Chinese Dictionary composed in a European language". The American missionary William A. Macy said all the missionaries and scholars of Chinese had used Morrison's dictionary as the "common fountain" from which they could "obtain the knowledge they desired". One modern scholar calls Morrison's dictionary "the greatest achievement of any researcher of Chinese". Another describes the comprehensive bilingual dictionary compilation and publication project as "unprecedented and unsurpassed in 19th-century China". Wu and Zheng say Morrison's was the first widely used Chinese-English dictionary and has served as a "milestone in the early promotion of communications between China and the West". A recent book on Chinese lexicography says that although Morrison's dictionary "contained numerous errors" when examined from a modern perspective, "the dictionary delineated the basic configuration of a bilingual dictionary and shed a good deal of light upon the design and compilation of English-Chinese, Chinese-English, and other bilingual dictionary types". Morrison's obituary notice summarizes his dedication and contribution to the world, "In efforts to make this
hineselanguage known to foreigners and chiefly to the English, he has done more than any other man living or dead."
Editions
*
*
*
*
*
*
* a reprint of Part II.
* a reprint of Part II.
References
*
*
*
Vol. IVol. II*
*
*
*
*
Footnotes
Further reading
* Lai, John T. P. ''Negotiating Religious Gaps: The Enterprise of Translating Christian Tracts by Protestant Missionaries in Nineteenth-Century China'' (Institut Monumenta Sérica, 2012). .
External links
*Su, Ching 蘇精 (1996),
The Printing Presses of the London Missionary Society among the Chinese, Ph.D. dissertation,
University College London
University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...
{{Dictionaries of Chinese
Chinese dictionaries