Rime Dictionary - Structure

Structure

The Qieyun and its successors all had the same structure. The characters were first divided between the four tones. Because there were more characters of the "level tone" (平聲 píngshēng), they occupied two juan (卷 "fascicle", "scroll" or "volume"), while the other three tones filled one volume each. The last category or "entering tone" (入聲 rùshēng) consisted of words ending in stops -p, -t or -k, corresponding to words ending in nasals -m, -n and -ng in the other three tones. These final stops are generally preserved in modern southern dialects, but have disappeared in northern dialects, including the standard language.

Each tone was divided into rhyme groups (韻 yùn), traditionally named after the first character of the group, called the 韻目 yùnmù ("rhyme eye"). The following shows the beginning of the first rhyme group of the Guangyun, with first character 東 ("east"):

Each rhyme group was subdivided into homophone groups preceded by a small circle called a 紐 niǔ ("button"). The entry for each character gave a brief explanation of its meaning. At the end of the entry for the first character of a homophone group was a description of its pronunciation, given by a fǎnqiè formula, a pair of characters indicating the initial (聲母 shēngmǔ) and final (韻母 yùnmǔ) respectively. The formula was followed by the character 反 fǎn (in the Qieyun) or the character 切 qiè (in the Guangyun), followed by the number of homophonous characters. For example, the pronunciation of 東 was described using the characters 德 tok and 紅 huwng, indicating tuwng. In the above sample, this formula is followed by the number 十七, indicating that there are 17 entries, including 東, with the same pronunciation.

The order of the rhyme groups within each volume does not seem to follow any rule, except that similar groups were placed together, and corresponding groups in different tones were usually placed in the same order. Where two rhyme groups were similar, there was a tendency to choose exemplary words with the same initial. The table of contents of the Guangyun marks adjacent rhyme groups as tóngyòng (同用), meaning they could rhyme in regulated verse. In the above sample, under the entry for the rhyme group 刪 in the last part the table of contents (on the right page) is the notation "同用山", indicating that this group could rhyme with the following group 山.

The following are the rhyme groups of the Guangyun, with their modern names and the finals they include (see next section). A few entries are re-ordered to place corresponding rhyme groups of different tones in the same row, and darker lines separate the tongyong groups: