Ji yun kao zheng 集韻考證 [Examination and Verification of the "Collected Rhymes"]

Ten vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: no date but [1879].




A comprehensive critical edition of this canonical rhyme book. In late imperial China, there were two kinds of dictionaries: those arranged according to the shape of characters and those arranged according to their pronunciation. Pronunciation-based dictionaries were known as "rhyme books," since the characters were arranged by rhyme rather than initial sound. In the Qing period, the earliest rhyme books to which scholars had access dated from the Song, some five centuries earlier. Regulation of the written language and its testing in exams were two prerogatives of the imperial state, and so the Song government sponsored the compilation of rhyme books that defined the linguistic standard. Unhappy with the rhyme books then in existence, the court in 1037 CE ordered their revision. The result, finished in 1039, received the name Collected Rhymes.


By the Qing period, printed editions of the Collected Rhymes were very rare. The prominent 17th-century phonologist Gu Yanwu suspected that it might have been lost. He was almost right: only three copies printed in the Song are now known to exist (at the National Library of China, at the imperial palace library in Japan, and at Shanghai Library). In the early 18th century, the scholar and bibliophile Zhu Yizun 朱彝尊 (1629-1709) obtained a manuscript copy traced on the basis of a Song edition from the great collection (called Jigu ge 汲古閣, or "Pavilion Drawing from the Well of Antiquity") of Mao Jin 毛晉 (1599-1659).


Zhu entrusted the manuscript to Cao Yin 曹寅 (1658-1712), the rich bondservant who repeatedly hosted the Kangxi emperor in Yangzhou, for publishing. Cao published a number of books: "The printing was done from beautifully carved blocks, and the books printed from them now constitute the best examples of xylography (Ching-k'o pên 精刻本) in the early Ch'ing period" (Tu Liên-che, "Ts'ao Yin," 741). The publication of the Cao edition of Collected Rhymes brought it wide scholarly attention. Duan Yucai 段玉裁 (1735-1815), Yan Jie 嚴傑, Wang Yuansun 汪遠蓀, and others all worked on it. The philologist and editor Fang Chenggui (1785-1853), the author of our book, relied on their findings to produce this corrected version of the Cao edition of Collected Rhymes.


Our book has Prefaces by Vice Minister of the Board of Rites Wu Zhongjun 吳鍾駿 (1798-1853), dated 1846; Huang Shisan 黃式三 (1789-1862), dated 1847; and one by the author, dated the same year. There is a colophon by the classicist and paleographer Sun Yirang 孫詒讓 (1848-1908), dated 1879.


Fine and fresh set, preserved in a box. See WorldCat 1350443976.


❧ Cai Yingjie 蔡英杰, ed. Zhongguo gudai yuyan xue wenxian 中国古代语言学文献. Beijing: Zhongguo shuji chubanshe, 2020. Tu Lien-chê. "Ts'ao Yin." In Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period. Vol. 2. Edited by Arthur W. Hummel. G.P.O, 1944. Xu Jialu 许嘉璐, ed. Chuantong yuyanxue cidian 传统语言学辞典. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1990.