Ěryǎ 爾雅
Approaching the Refined / Conforming to Correct Language by 郭璞 (Guō Pú, 注 — annotator) with anonymous yīnshì 音釋
About the work
The Ěryǎ 爾雅 is the earliest extant Chinese lexicographical work, a thesaurus-like glossary in nineteen piān 篇 that gathers some 4,300 standard, dialectal, and obscure words and phrases — most of them encountered in the Five Classics — under nineteen broad subject headings. The first three sections (Shìgǔ 釋詁, Shìyán 釋言, Shìxùn 釋訓) define ordinary lexical and grammatical vocabulary; the remaining sixteen treat kinship, architecture, utensils, music, the heavens, the earth, mountains, waters, plants, insects, fish, birds, beasts, and domestic animals. Roughly a quarter of the entries take the form of synonym pairs (hùxùn 互訓). The Eastern Jìn polymath Guō Pú 郭璞 (276–324) produced the standard commentary, Ěryǎ zhù 爾雅注, around the early fourth century; the present three-juàn SBCK version of the canonical text is presented with Guō’s annotations and an anonymous yīnshì 音釋 (phonetic glosses).
Abstract
The Ěryǎ received its present nineteen-piān form during the Western Hàn, drawing on glossaries dating back to the fourth and third centuries BCE. Traditional attributions to Zhōugōng 周公, Confucius, or Zǐxià 卜商 are pseudepigraphic — they reflect the canonical aura the text acquired rather than its actual compositional history. The work was admitted into the Classics group during the Táng with the carving of the Kāichéng shíjīng 開成石經 in 837, after which its prestige effectively closed the door on further structural innovation in the lexicographical tradition: subsequent yǎ 雅 books (e.g. Guǎngyǎ 廣雅, Píyǎ 埤雅, Ěryǎ yì 爾雅翼) imitated rather than revised it. Guō Pú’s commentary, completed after eighteen years of study (per his own preface), supplemented earlier glosses by Fán Guāng 樊光, Sūn Yán 孫炎 and others, weighed dialectal evidence, and supplied separate yīntú 音圖 (phonetic charts and illustrations) — partially reconstructed from quotations in later sources. The SBCK 三卷 reduction reflects a Sòng / Míng layout dividing each of the original 19 piān across three juàn of roughly equal length; this reflects mise-en-page rather than structural reorganization. The anonymous interlinear yīnshì preserves Sòng-era readings (likely tied to the Lù Démíng 陸德明 Jīngdiǎn shìwén tradition).
Translations and research
- Coblin, W. South. 2015. “The Erya.” In Early Chinese Literature, a Reference Guide (ECLL). Brill.
- Carr, Michael E. 1979. A Linguistic Study of the Flora and Fauna Sections of the Erh-ya. PhD diss., University of Arizona.
- Guǎn Xīhuá 管錫華. 1996. Ěryǎ yánjiū 爾雅研究. Hefei: Anhui daxue.
- Zhū Zǔyán 朱祖延, ed. 2014 (1996–99). Ěryǎ gǔlín 爾雅詁林, 7 vols. Hubei jiaoyu — editio cum notis variorum.
- Hú Qíguāng 胡奇光 and Fāng Huánhǎi 方環海. 1999. Ěryǎ yìzhù 爾雅譯注. Shanghai: Shanghai guji.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, 6th ed., §6.2.1.2.
Other points of interest
The title Ěryǎ itself resists translation. Liú Xī 劉熙 in the Shìmíng 釋名 glosses ěr 爾 as jìn 近 (“near, contemporary”) and yǎ 雅 as zhèng 正 (“correct, refined”), yielding “approaching what is correct” — i.e. using current speech to expound the ancient diction of the Classics. This reading is endorsed by Guǎn Xīhuá (1996) over six competing theories.