Shuōwén jiězì zhuànyùnpǔ 說文解字篆韻譜
A Phonologically-Ordered Table of the Seal Characters of the Shuōwén jiězì by 徐鍇 (Xú Kǎi, 撰)
About the work
Xú Kǎi’s 徐鍇 companion to his Shuōwén xìzhuàn KR1j0019: a five-juàn re-presentation of the Shuōwén lemmata reorganized by qièyùn 切韻 four-tone rhyme classes rather than by Xǔ Shèn’s 許愼 540 bùshǒu. Each lemma is given in its small-seal form together with a brief gloss; chóngwén 重文 (graphic variants) labelled “shǐ” are zhòu-script forms, those labelled “gǔ” are gǔwén forms. The seal-script of the present text is in the calligraphic hand of his elder brother Xú Xuàn 徐鉉.
Tiyao
Your servants etc. respectfully report: Shuōwén jiězì zhuànyùnpǔ in five juàn; composed by Xú Kǎi of the Southern Táng. The book takes Xǔ Shèn’s Shuōwén jiězì and reorders the entries by four-tone rhyme classes. All small-seal head graphs have yīnxùn phonetic-and-meaning glosses; those without phonetic gloss are the chóngwén attached graphs of Xǔ’s text. Glosses marked shǐ indicate zhòuwén; glosses marked gǔ indicate gǔwén. The annotations are quite brief: since the liùshū exposition is already provided in the Shuōwén xìzhuàn, this work serves merely as a check-list of forms — hence the lack of redundant gloss. Front and back of the book are two prefaces by his elder brother [Xú] Xuàn. The latter preface says: “After the Yùnpǔ was complete, I sought out further copies and worked over the collation, with not a few corrections. Now, having received the imperial command to collate the Shuōwén, I have, with the assistance of various rú, taken further care; and we have got Lǐ Zhōu’s 李舟 Qièyùn, which has been of substantial supplementation. Where the Shuōwén did not include a graph but it appeared in the xùlì or zhùyì, we know it was lost in transmission and have included it, settling doubt by Lǐshì’s Qièyùn.” So this book has been further redacted by Xú Xuàn — not solely from Kǎi’s hand. The reading-in of xùlì zhùyì graphs is also Xuàn’s work. The earlier preface says: “[the throne] commanded Kǎi to take Shūzhòng’s records and arrange them by the Qièyùn; voiced and unvoiced classes are distinguished and visible at first opening.” From the later preface “we have got Lǐ Zhōu’s Qièyùn,” the “Qièyùn” intended in “arrange them by Qièyùn” must be Lù Fǎyán’s 陸法言 Qièyùn — the very work the Tángyùn and Guǎngyùn are based on. Yet Kǎi’s classifications differ slightly from those of the Guǎngyùn: in the upper píng he merges hén into the hún class; in the lower píng he separates xiān, xiān, then xuān (xuān a separate class); under hún he notes “hén class graphs appended”; xuān he does not mark as separate — as if the Qièyùn originally had this class. This is hard to make out — possibly here too Xú Xuàn re-classified using Lǐ Zhōu’s Qièyùn, hence the inconsistencies. The book is rare in transmission. The present is the print made by Míng Inspector Lǐ Xiǎn 李顯. Hán-class jiǎn lán lián làn lán 籣瀾漣灡闌 should follow qián lán làn jiǎn 乾蘭讕譋 — they are mis-set one row earlier; in the Háo class gāo gāo háo gāo gāo 高皋&KR450C;羔膏 should follow háo háo háo &KR2362B; &KR28699; 獆諕號&KR2362B;&KR28699; — likewise mis-set; in the Má class wā huá zhā zhà 媧譁譇觰&KR35EC; should precede chá kuā kuā kuā jiā jiā jiā jiā jiā 秅&KR3889;誇侉夸家加茄葭 — mis-set two rows later. The carver was negligent in collation. The closing preface is also lost from this print; we have recovered it from Xú Xuàn’s Qíshěng jí 騎省集 to complete the book. Respectfully edited and presented in the ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781).
Abstract
The Shuōwén zhuànyùnpǔ is the first attempt to organize the Shuōwén corpus by qièyùn phonological classes — a critical move that turned the Shuōwén into a phonologically tractable database, and which would be carried much further in the Sòng by Lǐ Tāo 李燾’s Shuōwén jiězì wǔyīnpǔ. Xú Kǎi’s working method is reflected in the prefaces (preserved here): he organized the xiǎozhuàn graphs of the Shuōwén into four-tone rhyme classes following Lù Fǎyán’s Qièyùn, with structural-pedagogical aims subordinated to a clean phonological lookup. Xú Xuàn’s later involvement — supplementing graphs from the Shuōwén’s xùlì and zhùyì and re-classifying using Lǐ Zhōu’s later Qièyùn — is documented in the second preface and explains a series of class-mergers in the present text. The seal-script of the WYG / MíngLǐ Xiǎn print is in Xú Xuàn’s calligraphic hand. The Sìkù compilers identified specific carving errors (mis-set rows in the hán, háo, and má classes) and supplied the missing closing preface from Xú Xuàn’s collected works. The dating bracket notBefore 962 to notAfter 974 covers Xú Kǎi’s mature philological career.
Translations and research
- Bottéro, Françoise. 1996. Sémantisme et classification dans l’écriture chinoise. Paris: Collège de France, IHEC.
- Liú Yèqiū 劉葉秋. 1983. Zhōngguó zì-diǎn shǐ-lüè 中國字典史略. Beijing: Zhonghua.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, §6.2.1.3.