Dunhuang Monastic Ledger and Rhyme Dictionary Prefaces

The Qieyun The "Rhyme Dictionary," the foundational work of Chinese phonology is widely popular in the world, yet even "pearls from the Sui" may resemble snake's eyes, and jade may still have flaws. There are errors in the annotations and mistakes in the text; if these are not corrected and rectified, how can the work be used for scholarly discussion?

The State has set aside military force to cultivate the civil arts, promoting Confucianism on a grand scale. The Academy of Scholarly Worthies The Jixian Academy, an imperial research institute has been established, gathering a stream of talented and learned scholars. Since the dawn of creation, there has never been a peak of scholarship as glorious as today. By a single imperial decree, this undertaking was sanctioned. I have set about organizing the raw materials original: "檮杌" (Taowu), referring to stubborn or difficult historical records and have dared to fill in the gaps.

Regarding the word guan pronounced here as 'guan', there was no study of various books, and the explanations provided for provincial and county names were often incomplete. Whether a character's form should use the "hand" radical or the "step" radical also written as 彳, whether it should use the "person" radical also written as 亻, or use the "strike" radical also written as 攴 or 支, or be placed with the "grain" radical—all such matters have been thoroughly investigated to ensure there are no confusing entanglements.

Included within are rare reports and extraordinary legends concerning the origins of surnames, geography, local products, mountains, rivers, plants, birds, beasts, insects, and fish. All of these are recorded with supporting evidence. Arranged according to their rhymes and incorporating the work of several other scholars, I have compiled them into a single book, titled the Tangyun called.

It draws from the Classic of Changes, the Rites of Zhou, and collates the Three Cangs, the Erya, the System of Characters, the Forest of Characters, Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters The "Shuowen Jiezi," the first dictionary to use radicals, the Jade Chapters, the Stone Classics, Vocal Rhymes, Vocal Registers, the Nine Classics, the various Philosophers, the Records of the Grand Historian, the Book of Han, the Records of the Three Kingdoms, and the histories of the Jin, Song, Southern Qi, Liang, Northern Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, and Chen dynasties. It also references the Materia Medica, the Garden of Surnames, Popular Customs, Notes on Ancient and Modern Matters, Jia Zhi’s Surnames, Biographies of the Eminent and Worthy, Wang Sengru’s Genealogies of a Hundred Families, the Collected Works of Zhou Hejie, the Selections of Refined Literature, various literary collections, Biographies of Filial Sons, the Gazetteer of Regions, and imperial decrees and far-reaching reports issued since the Wude era 618–626 CE.

In the ninth year of the Tianbao era 750 CE, these were all listed within the annotations. Facing this task, I was overcome with such exertion that my breath and sweat mingled; I present this work with humility.

There is a man from Tianshui named Sun Mian, styled Jicheng. He is the great-grandson of Sun Rong, the Marquis of Ruyang. Jicheng also loved antiquity and was broadly learned in both internal and external studies Likely referring to Buddhist/Daoist "internal" texts and Confucian "external" texts. His path led through rocky peaks and ridges, where he breathed in the essence of nature. He set his will upon the "lock and key" of knowledge, and rested his spirit among the Sanskrit scripts. He lived a life of quiet simplicity, detached from worldly affairs, vanishing like wind and clouds into spiritual excellence and graceful virtue.

Exhausting his talent in the historical records and widely reading a multitude of books, he desired to make the distinction between "clear" and "muddy" sounds Technical phonological terms for voiceless and voiced consonants brilliantly clear. To this end, there were days when he forgot to eat and successive nights when he did not sleep. He consulted the Records of Searching for the Supernatural, Illustrations of Spirits and Monsters, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Treatise on Curiosities, the Account of the Western Barbarians, the Classic of the Great Wilderness, the Account of Southern Yue, the Records of the Western Regions, the Account of the Western Fortress, the Discussion on Creek-Flute Medicines, Dialects for the Commoner, the Imperial Overview, the Treasury of Characters, and the essential words, meanings, and explanations overlooked in the Nine Classics, the Three Histories, and the various Philosophers—few were not included.

He allowed himself to be meticulous in his speech and exhaustive in his research, investigating the very "nests and burrows" of words. Through deep and subtle reflection and repeated, careful consideration, the "heavy" and "light" sounds were finally distinguished. He did not wish for these precious treasures to remain hidden away like silk or gold in a chest. Confronted with strange words and difficult obstacles, he dared to discuss them all thoroughly.

My humble mind has achieved its goal. Although I have arranged the entries in sequence, I have not divided them into separate volumes. For characters with multiple meanings, I have judged which is superior and made it the primary entry, with others as secondary. Where a character is borrowed for its sound, its original meaning is not lost. By translating and interpreting through the Four Tones, those who truly look will find their doubts removed, and those with long-standing confusion will feel as though a weight has been lifted.

Furthermore, I have detailed the smaller nuances, arranging the "left" and "right" components of the characters in order. For those that could be further refined refined and those that could not, as well as those with left-and-right structures, I have followed established conventions and categorized them clearly, so that there would be no obstruction to understanding their evidence.

The work took five years from start to finish to refine into one volume. In total, it adds up to 42,283 words. I have also included the Seal, Clerical, and Stone Classic scripts to preserve the correct standard forms. I hope the reader does not complain of its length. At this time, in the year...