a version of Shuowen Jiezi

Shuōwén Jiězì (說文解字, "Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters") was the first Chinese character dictionary, compiled by Xǔ Shèn between 100 CE and 121 CE in Han Dynasty China. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... 漢字 hànzì, kanji… in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ... XÇ” Shèn XÇ” Shèn (許慎) was the author of Shuōwén JiÄ›zì, which was the first Chinese character dictionary. ... -1... For other uses, see number 121. ... Han commanderies and kingdoms AD 2. ...

Xǔ Shèn wrote it to state his philosophy on characters and the universe, not to make an easy-to-use dictionary. He gathered 9353 characters and 1163 variants, and categorized them into 540 radicals. This number means 6 × 9 × 10, the product of the symbol numbers of Yin and Yang and the number of the Heavenly Stems. The first radical was 一 (one) and the last was 亥 (the last character of the Earthly Branches). To get to 540, he included many radicals that are not considered radicals today, such as 炎 (flame), 熊 (bear), and many of the characters for the Heavenly Stems and the Earthly Branches. The left part of mā, a chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ... Taoists Taijitu The concept of Yin Yang originates in ancient Chinese philosophy, most likely from the observations of day turning into night and night into day. ... The ten heavenly stems (Chinese: 天干; pinyin: ) or ten stems (Chinese: 十干; pinyin: ) are an ancient Chinese cyclic numeral system. ... The Earthly Branches (Chinese: 地支; pinyin: Dìzhī) is an ancient Chinese numeral system now uncommon, except when used in conjunction with the Heavenly Stems in the traditional calendar and Taoism. ...

Historically, the Shuōwén Jiězì has often been used as an etymological reference. However, many of his explanations on character origins are obsolete today because Xǔ Shèn knew only seal script (Knowledge of oracle script was lost long before he was born.) For instance, he put 慮 (be concerned) in the radical 思 (think). As evident from an even older source of bronzeware script (jīnwén) where 慮 (lǜ) appeared as a combination of the phonetic radical 呂 (lǚ) and the semantic radical 心, it is clear now that 慮 is not a combination of 虍 and 思 but rather of the phonetic radical also found in 盧 and 虜 and the semantic radical 心 (heart). In historical linguistics, etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... Oracle bone script (甲骨文 pinyin: Jia3gu3wen2) are incised characters found on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons (oracle bones) thought to be the earliest Chinese characters. ... Bronzeware script (金文 pinyin jin wen or 鐘鼎文 pinyin zhong1 ding3 wen2) is a family of scripts found on Chinese bronzes such as zhong (bells) and ding (tripods), since bronze artifacts with Chinese characters span many centuries and they have been found in many areas of China. ...

The original version has been lost, and copies made in the Song Dynasty era are most common. There are also a number of studies on it made in the Qing Dynasty era like Annotations to the Shuōwén Jiězì (說文解字注) compiled by Duàn Yùcái. The Song Dynasty (Chinese: 宋朝) was a ruling dynasty in China from 960-1279. ... The Qing Dynasty (Manchu: daicing gurun; Chinese: 清朝; pinyin: qÄ«ng cháo; Wade-Giles: ching chao), sometimes known as the Manchu Dynasty, was founded by the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro, in what is today northeast China expanded into China proper and the surrounding territories of Inner Asia, establishing... Duan Yucai (段玉裁 1735 - 1815 ) was a Qing Dynasty scholar in China. ...

External links

• Shuōwén Jiězì radical chart (Japanese)