Zì lüè 字略
Compact Glossary of Graphs by 宋世良 (撰)
About the work
A modern reconstruction of 宋世良 Sòng Shìliáng’s lost Zì lüè 字略 — a Northern-Wèi 北魏 paraphrastic glossary of difficult graphs in the Cāngjié tradition. Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書‧經籍志 records the work in one juàn; it was lost between the late Táng and Sòng. The CHANT reconstruction (CH2f1221) draws principally from Lù Démíng 陸德明’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文 and from Shì Xuányìng 釋元應’s Yīqièjīng yīnyì 一切經音義.
Abstract
The Zì lüè is a compact glossary in the strict sense — short entries pairing a head-graph with a fǎn-qiè spelling and a short paraphrastic gloss.
Representative entries: fán-rún 煩撋 = “yóu nuó-suō yě 猶捼莎也, akin to rubbing-and-pressing” (cited from Lù Démíng’s Gé tán shìwén 葛覃釋文 = Máo Shī ‧ Gé tán 毛詩‧葛覃); guà 罫 read hú-guà fǎn 胡卦反, gloss gāng-ài yě 綱礙也 (“net-snare”).
The principal textual-bibliographic problem of the surviving fragments — flagged in CHANT — is that the abbreviated title Zì lüè in Táng-period Buddhist yīnyì literature potentially refers either to this Sòng Shìliáng work or to the parallel-abbreviated title of 阮孝緒 Ruǎn Xiàoxù’s KR1j0106 Wénzì jí lüè, and not every citation can be confidently assigned to one or the other. The CHANT editor preserves both attributions where ambiguous rather than silently choosing.
Dating bracket (386–534): broad Northern-Wèi span; no firmer internal evidence preserved.
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 Northern-Wèi Zì lüè is one of a small cluster of northern Six-Dynasties xiǎoxué works (with KR1j0109 Zì tǒng of 楊承慶, and KR1j0113 Yùn lüè of 陽休之) that survive only as Lù Démíng citations and Buddhist yīnyì fragments — evidence for the strong northern xiǎoxué tradition that paralleled the better-documented southern tradition (Gù Yěwáng, Ruǎn Xiàoxù).
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì — xiǎoxué: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=613103