Zhōuchéng nán zì 周成難字
Zhōu Chéng’s Difficult Graphs by 周成 (撰)
About the work
A modern reconstruction of 周成 Zhōu Chéng’s lost Nán zì 難字 (“Difficult Graphs”), the shorter companion to his Zá zì jiě gǔ (KR1j0101). The title is conventionally given as 《周成難字》 (with the author’s name embedded) to distinguish it from generic Nán zì titles in other Liù-Cháo catalogs. Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書‧經籍志 records the work in one juàn; lost by the Sòng. The CHANT reconstruction (CH2f1213) draws principally from Buddhist yīnyì literature — chiefly Shì Xuányìng 釋元應’s Yīqièjīng yīnyì 一切經音義 citations to a wide range of Buddhist sources (the Zhèngfǎ-niàn jīng 正法念經, the Fēnbié gōngdé lùn 分別功德論, the Sì-fēn lǜ 四分律, the Miào-fǎ lián-huá jīng 妙法蓮華經, the Sì āhán mù chāo 四阿含暮鈔, the Apídámó jùshè lùn 阿毗達摩俱舍論, etc.).
Abstract
The Nán zì is a rare-graph glossary in the strict sense: short head-graph + paraphrastic gloss, with no attempt at structural analysis. Representative entries: dǒu-sǒu 斗擻 = “hú-shā yě 豰𣫎也” (cited with attestations in Zhèngfǎ-niàn jīng 3, Fēnbié gōngdé lùn 2, Sì-fēn lǜ 33); jié 䆘 = “zá yě 拶也, to press” (with attestations in Miào-fǎ lián-huá jīng 8, Zhèngfǎ-niàn jīng 15, Sì āhán mù chāo xià, Apídámó jùshè lùn 20).
The cluster of Buddhist-text attestations confirms how heavily the Buddhist translation apparatus of the early Six Dynasties drew on small Jìn-period rare-graph glossaries like Zhōu Chéng’s; the work survives essentially because Buddhist commentators continued to cite it for technical-translation vocabulary.
Dating bracket (280–420): same broad Jìn span as the Zá zì jiě gǔ. The Buddhist yīnyì attestation chain (almost entirely Táng-period) cannot fix Zhōu Chéng’s own fl. more narrowly.
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 dependence of the surviving Nán zì corpus on Buddhist yīnyì literature is structurally important: it shows that small Jìn-period rare-graph glossaries acquired a second life as reference works for Buddhist technical translation, even when they had lost currency for secular philology. The Nán zì / yīnyì tradition would itself become the major source for later character lexicons such as KR1j0036 Lóngkān shǒujiàn.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì — xiǎoxué: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=613103