Ěryǎ Sūn-shì yīn 爾雅孫氏音
Master Sūn’s Phonological Commentary on the Ěryǎ by 孫炎 (撰)
About the work
A modern reconstruction of 孫炎 Sūn Yán’s lost Ěryǎ yīn 爾雅音 — the earliest sustained fǎn-qiè 反切 phonological commentary on the Ěryǎ 爾雅 (KR1j0002), composed by the Wèi 魏 scholar conventionally credited with the systematization of fǎn-qiè spelling itself. The original was three juàn per the Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書‧經籍志 (xiǎoxué); it was lost by the late Táng but is one of the most frequently cited lost sources in Lù Démíng’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文, which preserves the bulk of the surviving fragments. The CHANT reconstruction (CH2f1199) collates these together with the Wǔjīng zhèngyì 五經正義 incidental quotations and a small number of Chūxué jì 初學記 references.
Abstract
Sūn Yán’s Ěryǎ yīn matters in the history of Chinese phonology as the first systematic phonological reading of the Ěryǎ in fǎn-qiè form — a precondition for the later Qièyùn tradition and the foundation on which Guō Pú 郭璞’s Jìn-period Ěryǎ zhù 爾雅注 builds. The surviving fragments are organized by Ěryǎ chapter (preserved here as 〈釋詁第一〉, 〈釋言〉, 〈釋訓〉, etc., following the canonical Hàn ordering), and each entry pairs a Ěryǎ head-graph with a fǎn-qiè spelling.
Representative entries: yuán-tāi 元、胎 → dà-cái fǎn 大才反 (cited by Lù Démíng); zhào 箌 → dū-hào fǎn 都耗反; bǎn 昄 → fāng-mǎn fǎn 方滿反 (cited by Ěryǎ shìwén and Máo Shī shìwén jointly attributing the reading to “Sūn and Guō”). The frequent joint-citation Sūn-Guō 孫郭 — Sūn Yán and Guō Pú — confirms that Sūn Yán’s apparatus was already a paired reference for Guō Pú himself.
The dating bracket (220–280) follows Sūn Yán’s broad Wèi-period fl. — he is documented as a senior pupil of 鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán’s Late Hàn academy and as a working scholar through the early Jìn — but no precise lifedates are preserved in the standard histories. The Sìkù tíyào notice on Wáng Niànsūn 王念孫’s KR1a0133 Guǎngyǎ shū-zhèng uses the dating of fǎn-qiè to Sūn Yán’s generation as the touchstone for rejecting Lǐ Guāngdì’s 李光地 claim that pre-imperial canonical text could be marked in fǎn-qiè.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located. The standard treatments are:
- Rén Dàchūn 任大椿 (1738–1789), Xiǎoxué gōuchén 小學鉤沈.
- Mǎ Guóhàn 馬國翰, Yùhánshānfáng jíyìshū 玉函山房輯佚書.
- Huáng Kǎn 黃侃 (1886–1935), Ěryǎ yīnxùn — modern handling of Sūn Yán’s surviving readings.
Other points of interest
The conventional attribution of fǎn-qiè invention to Sūn Yán (already in Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓 by 顏之推) makes this reconstruction methodologically central: it is the earliest preserved corpus of Chinese phonological notation in its systematic form, even if only as Táng-Sòng excerpts of a lost work. Without Sūn Yán’s apparatus the Wèi-Jìn–Sòng fǎn-qiè tradition that issues in KR1j0055 Chóngxiū Guǎngyùn would have no documented Hàn–Wèi precedent.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì — xiǎoxué: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=613103
- Jīngdiǎn shìwén — Ěryǎ yīnyì: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=608648