Zá zì jiě gǔ 雜字解詁
Miscellaneous Graphs Explained and Glossed by 周成 (撰)
About the work
A modern reconstruction of 周成 Zhōu Chéng’s lost Zá zì jiě gǔ 雜字解詁, the larger of his two Jìn-period character glossaries (with KR1j0102 Zhōuchéng nán zì). Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書‧經籍志 records this work in four juàn. Both works were lost in the Sòng; the CHANT reconstruction (CH2f1212) collects surviving citations principally from Yú Shìnán 虞世南’s Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔, Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽, and the Shǐjì suǒyǐn 史記索隱 of Sīmǎ Zhēn 司馬貞.
Abstract
The Zá zì jiě gǔ is a miscellaneous graph glossary — the title declares it to compile graphs not fitting the standard Cāngjié-tradition lemma sequence (i.e., rare graphs and graphic curiosities) and to supply both a jiě (etymological / structural explanation) and a gǔ (paraphrastic gloss) for each.
Representative entries: xiāo 霄 = “mā-tiān chì-qì yě 摩天赤氣也, red vapor that grazes the sky” (cited from Běitáng shūchāo 150 and Tàipíng yùlǎn 8); an archaic graph (rendered &-; in the source) read yīn jì 音忌, cited from Sīmǎ Zhēn’s Shǐjì suǒyǐn on the Gāozǔ gōng-chén hòu nián-biǎo 高祖功臣侯年表.
The work occupies the middle ground between the Wèi Cāngjié supplements (Zhāng Yī’s KR1j0098 Pí cāng + KR1j0099 Gǔjīn zì gǔ; KR1j0100 Guǎng cāng) and the later Liù-Cháo paleographic compendia (KR1j0109 Zì tǒng, etc.) — a Jìn-period transitional witness to the diversification of zìshū genres after the Hàn–Wèi character primer.
The dating bracket (280–420) follows the broad Western-and-Eastern Jìn span; no internal dating evidence in the surviving fragments narrows this further. Zhōu Chéng has no documented court office and is essentially a name attached to a pair of catalog entries.
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.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì — xiǎoxué: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=613103