Pèiguī 佩觽
The Belted Awl by 郭忠恕 (Guō Zhōngshù, 撰)
About the work
A three-juàn dictionary of look-alike-but-distinct graphs and the principles underlying their differentiation. The title alludes to Shī Wèifēng 21 — guī 觿 (“a horn awl carried at the belt for untying knots”). Compiled by Guō Zhōngshù 郭忠恕 (d. 977), the same author as the Hànjiǎn KR1j0026. Juàn 1 expounds the rationale of xíngshēng corruption in three sub-categories (zàozì 造字 — graph-creation; sìshēng 四聲 — four tones; chuánzì 傳字 — transmission of graphs); juàn 2 and juàn 3 take pairs of confusable graphs and arrange them in ten sections by tone-rotation pairing.
Tiyao
Pèiguī in 3 juàn; composed by Guō Zhōngshù of the Sòng. The upper juàn expounds xíngshēng-based corruption in three sub-fields: (1) graph-creation; (2) four-tone reading; (3) graph-transmission. The middle and lower juàn take graphs whose strokes are confusable, divided in ten sections by four-tone pairings: píng against píng; píng against shǎng; píng against qù; píng against rù; shǎng against shǎng; shǎng against qù; shǎng against rù; qù against qù; qù against rù; rù against rù. At the end are appended 15 graphs whose readings or meanings differ from the piānyùn tradition; and a further 119 graphs of biànzhèng chuǎnwù (refutations of corrupt forms) — by an unidentified later hand and retained because of its critical value. Huì Dòng’s 惠棟 Jiǔjīng gǔyì refutes Guō Zhōngshù’s reading of shì 示 as shì 視, and Guō’s making shì 視 the sú form. Examining cases like Guō’s “chē 車 has the reading chǐzhē fǎn — there is no original jū reading” — this rests on Wéi Zhāo’s Biàn Shìmíng and is a critical lapse. Likewise: the script-name bāfēn 八分 has had a long-standing gloss; Cài Wénjī described her father’s words [on it] and surely cannot be in error; yet Guō makes it a script-style separate from the eight scripts — over-stretching. “Tiān 天 carrying kǒu 口 = Wú 吳” — already in the Yuèjué shū; he cites only Sānguózhì. Yǐng 景 = the old yǐng 影 — already in Gāo Yòu’s Huáinánzǐ notes; he says Gě Hóng’s Zìyuàn added the shān 彡 (this follows the Yánshì jiāxùn’s error). Táo Kǎn’s true zì was Shìxíng 士行; he wrote it 衡. Dōng Fāngshuò took láilái 來來 to be 棗 — these are approximation-based etymologies and the new graphs created on that basis are slightly suspect. — But Guō understands the liùshū deeply, and his arguments are mostly well-organized. For example, on the Páng 逄 surname being read píjiāng fǎn (not at face-value as Féng 逢 — “to meet”): the Hànlì zìyuán under féng 逢 cites the Féng Shèng stele as written páng 逄, hence the surname Féng is also written páng and read píjiāng fǎn — this corrects Yán Shīgǔ 顏師古. Likewise on Lùlǐ 甪里 originally being Juélǐ 角里 — same as juéháng 角亢 — he does not adopt Yán Shīgǔ’s “fearing-people-misread thus added the upper diagonal stroke” theory. The Hàn Sìlǎo shénwèi shénzuò jǐ stone-engraving in fact has Lùlǐ as Juélǐ, agreeing with this book — i.e., Guō is more accurate than other authorities. Respectfully edited and presented in the ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781).
Abstract
The Pèiguī is one of the most theoretically interesting medieval Chinese works on the differentiation of graphically confusable characters. Its three juàn are organized respectively as (1) a theoretical exposition of how character-confusion arises (graph-creation, four-tone reading, transmission); (2)–(3) a tabular listing of confusable graph-pairs sorted by ten tonal-pairings. The final supplement of 119 biànzhèng chuǎnwù entries is by an unknown later hand. Guō Zhōngshù’s argumentation, like that in his Hànjiǎn KR1j0026, is grounded in the Shuōwén tradition, but he often goes further by adducing epigraphic and stele evidence (the Hànlì zìyuán, the Féng Shèng stele, the Sìlǎo stele) — testimony to his unusual access to Northern-Sòng paleographic materials. The Sìkù tíyào documents both his lapses (notably on chē 車 and bāfēn) and his successes (on the Páng surname, on Lùlǐ). Dating bracket notBefore 960 to notAfter 977 covers Guō’s career under the Sòng. Together with the Hànjiǎn, this is one of the two principal monuments of his philological corpus.
Translations and research
- Liú Yèqiū 劉葉秋. 1983. Zhōngguó zì-diǎn shǐ-lüè. Beijing: Zhonghua.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, §2.2.