Gǔjīn zì gǔ 古今字詁
Glosses on Ancient and Modern Graphs by 張揖 (撰)
About the work
A modern reconstruction of 張揖 Zhāng Yī’s lost Gǔjīn zì gǔ 古今字詁, second of his Wèi-period lexicographic suite (with Pí cāng KR1j0098 and Guǎngyǎ KR1j0008). The title — “Glosses on ancient-and-modern graphs” — declares the work a systematic paleographic lexicon, aligning early seal-, bronze-, and gǔwén-script forms with their then-current (Hàn–Wèi kǎishū) equivalents. Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書‧經籍志 records the work in three juàn; lost between the late Táng and Sòng. The CHANT reconstruction (CH2f1209) collects surviving citations from Guō Zhōngshù 郭忠恕’s Hànjiǎn 汗簡 (KR1j0026 — which routinely cites it as Zhāng Yī 集古文 Jí gǔwén), Shì Xuányìng 釋元應’s Yīqièjīng yīnyì 一切經音義, and the Guǎngyùn 廣韻.
Abstract
The surviving fragments of the Gǔjīn zì gǔ are predominantly paleographic — the work pairs an archaic graph (often a gǔwén 古文 form preserved in the Hàn-era stone-canon tradition) with its current-script (jīn-wén 今文) equivalent and a fǎn-qiè spelling. Representative entry: an archaic graph (rendered &-; in the digital text) read fù-mù qiè 父目切 = modern something, “cited by Guō Zhōngshù’s Hànjiǎn from Zhāng Yī’s Jí gǔwén.” Another: an archaic graph that “古文 [graph form 1], [graph form 2], 暘 — two forms are identical, tú-dàng fǎn 徒當反,” cited via Shì Xuányìng’s Dà-zhì-dù-lùn yīnyì 大智度論音義.
The work is one of the most important Six-Dynasties pre-Suí witnesses to the standardization of gǔwén paleography — Guō Zhōngshù’s KR1j0026 Hànjiǎn, the principal Northern-Sòng gǔwén compendium, draws extensively on Zhāng Yī as a primary source. The CHANT collation makes the dependence explicit by giving the source-by-source citation chain for each preserved entry.
A bibliographic note: the Gǔjīn zì gǔ is sometimes confused with KR1j0014 Zìgǔ 字詁 of the Qīng scholar Huáng Shēng 黃生 — the titles overlap but the two works are independent. Zhāng Yī’s title 字詁 (zì gǔ) means “gloss on graphs,” not “glossary”; the Gǔjīn prefix marks the paleographic aim.
Dating bracket (220–240): the same Wèi fl. as the Pí cāng.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located.
- Rén Dàchūn 任大椿, Xiǎoxué gōuchén 小學鉤沈.
- Mǎ Guóhàn 馬國翰, Yùhánshānfáng jíyìshū 玉函山房輯佚書.
Other points of interest
The frequent citation chain Guō Zhōngshù 《汗簡》 引 張揖 《集古文》 (“Guō Zhōngshù’s Hànjiǎn cites Zhāng Yī’s Jí gǔwén”) in the surviving fragments confirms that the Gǔjīn zì gǔ was the principal Wèi-period source for the Northern-Sòng gǔwén compendium tradition; the CHANT collation thus provides indirect access to the otherwise inaccessible Wèi gǔwén corpus.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì — xiǎoxué: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=613103
- Hànjiǎn (Guō Zhōngshù): see KR1j0026