Dunhuang Monastic Ledger and Rhyme Dictionary Prefaces

Though I lack talent, I have persevered in my dullness. It has taken five years of focused refinement to complete this single work. From beginning to end, it totals forty-two thousand, three hundred and eighty-three characters. Furthermore, I have compiled and recorded from the Stone Classics The "Xiping" or later Tang stone inscriptions which provided the imperial standard for character forms to establish and preserve the correct forms of the characters. I hope that its length and complexity will not be criticized. The time of writing was the Xinmao year, the tenth year of the Tianbao Era 751 AD, during the height of the Tang Dynasty under Emperor Xuanzong.

The commentary states: The Qieyun The foundational rhyme dictionary of Middle Chinese is fundamentally based on the Four Tones Level, Rising, Departing, and Entering tones, weaving them together...

...through alliteration original: "shuangsheng," where two characters share an initial consonant and rhyming original: "dieyun," where two characters share the same vowel and ending. The intent was to make literary composition beautiful and orderly, ensuring that rhymes and tones were clearer and more distinct than those of the ancients. Yet some people do not grasp the nature of literature and mistakenly believe that the Five Sounds The five notes of the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale: Gong, Shang, Jue, Zhi, and Yu should be the absolute standard for linguistic classification. Indeed, the Five Sounds are the sacred notes of the Five Elements, and the harmony of the Eight Sounds The eight categories of musical instruments: silk, bamboo, metal, stone, wood, earth, hide, and gourd; missing these tones alternate among them. If one insists on using the Five Sounds as the standard, then the linguistic tones would become mixed—partly Gong, partly Jiang?, half Zhi, and half Shang. When drawing out words to tune the voice, each sound possesses its own voicing original: "qingzhuo" (clear and muddy), referring to whether a consonant is voiceless or voiced. If one were to subdivide these categories too minutely, it would cause the Rhyme Groups to become fragmented and overly complex, serving only to shackle and constrain literary expression.