- Yupian
The "Yupian" (zh-cpw|c=玉篇|p=Yùpiān|w=Yü-p'ien; "Jade Chapters") is a circa 543 CE
Chinese dictionary edited byGu Yewang (顧野王; Ku Yeh-wang; 519-581) during theLiang Dynasty . It arranges 12,158 character entries under 542 radicals, which differ somewhat from the original 540 in the "Shuowen Jiezi ". Each character entry gives afanqie pronunciation gloss and a definition, with occasional annotation.Baxter describes the textual history:
The original "Yùpiān" was a large and unwieldy work of thirty "juàn" ["volumes; fascicles"] , and during Táng and Sòng various abridgements and revisions of it were made, which often altered the original "fănqiè" spellings; of the original version only fragments remain (some two thousand entries out of a reported original total of 16,917), and the currently-available version of the "Yùpiān" is not a reliable guide to Early Middle Chinese phonology. (1992: 40-41)
In 760, during theTang Dynasty , Sun Jiang (孫強; Sun Chiang) compiled a "Yupian" edition, which he noted had a total of 51,129 words, less than a third of the original 158,641. In 1013,Song Dynasty scholar Chen Pengnian (陳彭年; Ch'en P'eng-nien) published a revised "Daguang yihui Yupian" (大廣益會玉篇; "Expanded and enlarged Jade Chapters"). The Japanese monkKūkai brought an original version "Yupian" back from China in 806, and modified it into his circa 830 "Tenrei Banshō Meigi ", which is the oldest extantJapanese dictionary .References
*Baxter, William H. 1992. "A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology". Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-012324-X
External links
* [http://www.mojikyo.org/html/abroad/bulletin02/020406.htm A Prospect for the Restoration of the Original Text of "Yu p'ien"] , Mojikyo Institute's collaborative project
* [http://homepage3.nifty.com/shikeda/kkg178.html A Database for Tenrei-Bansho-Meigi 篆隷万象名義データベース] , Ikeda Shoju (in Japanese)
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