Shuowen Jiezi (Pinyin Version)

Author: Xu Shen (Eastern Han Dynasty)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Shuowen Jiezi, compiled by Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty, is an ancient dictionary that analyzes character forms and explains their meanings according to the Six Books theory. This book is a photolithographic reproduction based on the Chen Chang edition of the Tongzhi 12th year (1873). The Chen edition was carved based on Sun Xingyan's reproduction of the Song Dynasty edition of the Great Xu version, preserving the original appearance of the Song edition. Yue Lu Shu She is highly authoritative in publishing such ancient classics. To retain the original form, no changes were made to the missing, omitted, duplicated, or incorrect characters during the collation of this book. Shuowen Jiezi summarizes the achievements of literature from the pre-Qin and Western Han periods, preserving the form, sound, and meaning of Chinese characters. It serves as an indispensable bridge for studying oracle bone script, bronze inscriptions, ancient phonology, and textual research. Especially, Shuowen's explanations of character meanings generally retain the ancient connotations, which is particularly helpful for understanding the meanings of words in ancient texts. This book preserves materials for studying ancient social history, culture, and other aspects, serving as an important step in organizing China's excellent cultural heritage. Shuowen includes explanations of characters with various meanings, reflecting ancient politics, economy, culture, customs, and more. Based on two considerations: first, for the younger generation of readers who have little exposure to traditional vertical-script, complex-character bound books, it is necessary to let them read this vertical-script, complex-character book; second, to preserve the "natural state" of ancient books, the layout remains unchanged, annotations are in double-column small print, and no punctuation marks are used throughout the book, so that young readers can understand the formal characteristics of Chinese ancient books and achieve a direct effect.