Zá zì 雜字
Miscellaneous Graphs by 張揖 (attributed)
About the work
A modern reconstruction of a Zá zì 雜字 compilation that the surviving Táng-Sòng citations attribute to 張揖 Zhāng Yī — making it a fourth title in his Wèi-period xiǎoxué corpus alongside Pí cāng KR1j0098, Gǔjīn zì gǔ KR1j0099, and Guǎngyǎ KR1j0008. The Zá zì title was a generic Six-Dynasties form for short paraphrastic glossaries; whether Zhāng Yī actually compiled an independent work with this title, or whether the cited Zá zì fragments belong to one of his other compilations (most plausibly Pí cāng), is a textual-bibliographic problem not fully resolved by the CHANT editor. The reconstruction (CH2f1210) collates surviving Lù Démíng 陸德明 Jīngdiǎn shìwén citations and Guǎngyùn 廣韻 lemma annotations under the attribution.
Abstract
The surviving fragments — almost all preserved with the explicit Lù Démíng citation yǐn Zhāng Yī 引張揖 (“citing Zhāng Yī”) — are short paraphrastic glosses on plant- and natural-history vocabulary, in the same style as Zhāng Yī’s better-attested compilations.
Representative entries: nǐ-nǐ 苨苨 = “cǎo shèng yě 草盛也, [the grass] flourishing” (Lù Démíng’s Máo Shī shìwén); hàn-dàn 菡萏 = “huā wèi fā yě 華未發也, the [lotus] flower not yet opened; once opened, called fú-róng 芙蓉, also called fú-qú 芙渠” (the Ěryǎ shìwén citing Shuōwén and Zhāng Yī in agreement); wū-qiū 烏蓲ʼ = “wèi xiù 未秀, [the lotus] not yet flowered” (same source, citing Zhāng Yī); chuǎn 荈 = “míng zhī biémíng yě 茗之別名也, an alternative name for míng [tea].”
The strong concentration of plant-vocabulary entries — especially of the lotus complex (hàn-dàn / fú-róng / fú-qú / wū-qiū) — suggests that the Zá zì preserved Zhāng Yī’s botanical and natural-history glossary, complementing the more general lexicographic work of Pí cāng and the comprehensive Guǎngyǎ.
Dating bracket (220–240): Zhāng Yī’s documented fl. under Wèi Míngdì 魏明帝 in the Tàihé era (227–232).
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 Zá zì attribution problem — whether an independent work or part of one of Zhāng Yī’s other compilations — is methodologically interesting: the same Lù Démíng citation pattern (yǐn Zhāng Yī) preserves fragments that might belong either to a distinct Zá zì or to Pí cāng / Gǔjīn zì gǔ. The CHANT editor’s decision to maintain a separate Zá zì entry preserves the Lù Démíng / Guǎngyùn attributional tradition without forcing a premature reassignment.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì — xiǎoxué: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=613103