Rime Dictionary - History

History

I have taken the sounds and the rhymes of the various specialists and the dictionaries of the ancients and moderns, and by arranging what those before me have recorded, I have made up the five volumes of the Qieyun. The splits and analyses are exceeedingly fine and the distinctions abundant and profuse.

The earliest rime dictionary was the Shenglei (聲類 lit. "sound types") by Li Deng (李登) of the Three Kingdoms period, containing more than 11,000 characters grouped under the five notes of the ancient Chinese musical scale. The book did not survive, and is known only from descriptions in later works.

The most important rime dictionary was the Qieyun, published by Lù Fǎyán (陸法言) in 601, during the Sui Dynasty, based on five earlier rime dictionaries that are no longer extant. According to Lu Fayan's preface, the initial plan of the work was drawn up 20 years earlier in consultation with a group of scholars, 3 from southern China and 5 from the north. However the final compilation was by Lu alone, after he had retired from government service.

As a guide to the recitation of literary texts and an aid in the composition of verse, the Qieyun quickly became popular during the Tang Dynasty. Revisions were produced by Zhǎngsūn Nèyán in 677, Wáng Rénxū in 706, Sūn Miǎn in 720 and 751 (under the title Tángyùn), and Lǐ Zhōu in 763–784. In 1008, during the Song Dynasty, a group of scholars commissioned by the emperor produced an expanded revision called the Guangyun. The Jiyun (1037) was a greatly expanded revision of the Guangyun.

From early in the Tang Dynasty, candidates in the imperial examination were required to compose poetry and rhymed prose in conformance with the rhyme categories of the Qieyun. However the fine distinctions made by the Qieyun were found overly restrictive by poets, and Xu Jingzong and others suggested more relaxed rhyming rules. For many generations of Chinese versifiers, the standard work to consult was the so-called Píngshuǐyùn (平水韻) first compiled during the Jin Dynasty, a simplified version of the Guangyun reducing the 206 rhyme groups to 106, reflecting contemporary pronunciations.

Until the mid-20th century, the oldest complete rime dictionaries known were the Guangyun and Jiyun, though extant copies of the latter were marred by numerous transcription errors. Thus all studies of the Qieyun tradition were actually based on the Guangyun. Fragments of earlier revisions of the Qieyun were found early in the century among the Dunhuang manuscripts, in Turfan and in Beijing.

When the Qieyun became the national standard in the Tang dynasty, several copyists were engaged in producing manuscripts to meet the great demand for revisions of the work. Particularly prized were copies of Wáng Rénxū's edition, made in the early 9th century, by Wú Cǎiluán (呉彩鸞), a woman famed for her calligraphy. One of these copies was acquired by Emperor Huizong (1100–1026), himself a keen calligrapher. It remained in the palace library until 1926, when part of the library followed the deposed emperor Puyi to Tianjin and then to Changchun, capital of the puppet state of Manchukuo. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, it passed to a book dealer in Changchun, and in 1947 two scholars discovered it in a book market in Liulichang, Beijing. Studies of this almost complete copy have been published by the Chinese linguists Dong Tonghe (1948 and 1952) and Li Rong (1956).