The (c. 230) ''Guangya'' (; "Expanded ''
ra''") was an early 3rd-century CE
Chinese dictionary
There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in the Chinese language: list individual Chinese characters, and list words and phrases. Because tens of thousands of characters have been used in written Chinese, Chinese lexicographers have d ...
, edited by
Zhang Yi (張揖) during the
Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu dominated China from AD 220 to 280 following the end of the Han dynasty. This period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and followed by the Jin dynasty (266–420), Western Jin dyna ...
period. It was later called the ''Boya'' (博雅; ''Bóyǎ''; ''Po-ya''; "Broadened
ra") owing to
naming taboo
A naming taboo is a cultural taboo against speaking or writing the given names of exalted persons, notably in China and within the Chinese cultural sphere. It was enforced by several laws throughout Imperial China, but its cultural and possibly ...
on Yang Guang (楊廣), which was the birth name of
Emperor Yang of Sui
Emperor Yang of Sui (隋煬帝, 569 – 11 April 618), personal name Yang Guang (), alternative name Ying (), Xianbei name Amo (), was the second emperor of the Sui dynasty of China.
Emperor Yang's original name was Yang Ying, but he was rena ...
.
Zhang Yi wrote the ''Guangya'' as a supplement to the centuries older ''
Erya'' dictionary. He used the same 19 chapter divisions into lexical categories, and numerous ''Guangya'' entries are abstract words under the first three chapters ''Shigu'' (釋詁 "Explaining Old Words"), ''Shiyan'' (釋言 "Explaining Words"), and ''Shixun'' (釋訓 "Explaining Instructions"). Based upon entries in the ''Guangya'' biological chapters,
Joseph Needham
Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, initia ...
et al. say most are original and different, showing little overlap with ''Erya'' entries, so that Zhang Yi almost doubled the 334 plants and trees in the classic dictionary.
The
Qing Dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
philologist
Wang Niansun spent a decade studying this dictionary, and his ''Guangya shuzheng'' (廣雅疏證 "''Guangya'' Annotations and Proofs") is still considered the authoritative edition, in which he demonstrated the important philological principle of "looking for the ancient meaning by considering the ancient sound ... not constrained by the structure of the character" (就古音以求古義......不限形體). His preface notes the ''Guangya'' has 2343 entries and a total of 18,150 characters (the received text has 17,326), including corrections and emendations, which is about 5000 more than the received ''Erya''. The linguist Zhou Fagao edited an index to the ''Guangya''.
See also
*''
Erya''
*''
Xiao Erya''
*''
Shiming
The ''Shiming'', also known as the ''Yiya'', is a Chinese dictionary that employed phonological glosses, and is believed have been composed . Because it records the pronunciation of an Eastern Han Chinese dialect, sinologists have used the ''S ...
''
*''
Piya''
References
External links
''Guangya'' 廣雅 Ulrich Theobald
Various editions of the ''Guangya'' and its commentaries-
Chinese Text Project
The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...
{{Dictionaries of Chinese
Chinese classic texts
Chinese dictionaries