Kangxi Dictionary

	Kangxi Dictionary
	The Kangxi Dictionary: 2005 reprint
Chinese name
Chinese	康熙字典
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Kāngxī Zìdiǎn
Wade–Giles	K'ang-hsi Tzu-tien
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutping	Hong1 hei1 zi6 din2
Yale Romanization	Hōnghēi Jihdín
Southern Min
Hokkien POJ	Khong-hi Jī-tián
Korean name
Hangul	강희자전
Hanja	康熙字典
Transcriptions
Revised Romanization	Ganghui Jajeon
McCune–Reischauer	Kanghŭi Chajŏn
Japanese name
Kanji	康熙字典
Hiragana	こうきじてん
Transcriptions
Revised Hepburn	Kōki Jiten

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This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: 康熙字典; pinyin: Kāngxī Zìdiǎn) was the standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Kangxi Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty ordered its compilation in 1710. The creator innovated greatly by reusing and confirming the new Zihui system of 214 radicals, since then known as 214 Kangxi radicals, and was eventually published in 1716. The dictionary is named after the Emperor's era name.

The dictionary contains more than 47,000 characters, though some 40% of them are graphic variants. In addition, there are rare or archaic characters, some which had been attested only once. Less than a quarter of these characters are now in common use.^[1]

Compilation

The Kangxi Dictionary editors, including Zhang Yushu (張玉書) and Chen Tingjing (陳廷敬), based it partly on two Ming Dynasty dictionaries: the 1615 Zihui (字彙 "Character Collection") by Mei Yingzuo (梅膺祚), and the 1627 Zhengzitong (正字通 "Correct Character Mastery") by Zhang Zilie (張自烈). Since the imperial edict required that the Kangxi Dictionary be compiled within five years, a number of errors were inevitable. The Daoguang Emperor established a review board and their 1831 Zidian kaozheng (字典考證 "Character Dictionary Textual Research") corrected 2,588 mistakes, mostly in quotations and citations. (Teng and Biggerstaff 1971:130)

The supplemented dictionary contains 47,035 character entries, plus 1,995 graphic variants, giving a total of 49,030 different characters. They are grouped under the 214 radicals and arranged by the number of additional strokes in the character. Although these 214 radicals were first used in the Zihui, due to the popularity of the Kangxi Dictionary they are known as Kangxi radicals and remain in modern usage as a method to categorize traditional Chinese characters.

The character entries give variants (if any), pronunciations in traditional fanqie spelling and in modern reading of a homophone, different meanings, and quotations from Chinese books and lexicons. The dictionary also contains rime tables with characters ordered under syllable rime classes, tones, and initial syllable onsets.

The Kangxi Dictionary is available in many forms, from old Qing Dynasty editions in block printing, to reprints in traditional Chinese bookbinding, to modern revised editions with essays in Western-style hardcover, to the digitized Internet version.

The Kangxi Dictionary is one of the Chinese dictionaries used by the Ideographic Rapporteur Group for the Unicode standard.

Structure of the Kangxi dictionary

Kangxi Dictionary, 1827 reprint

Preface by Kangxi Emperor : pp. 1–6 (御製序)
Notes on the use of the dictionary : pp. 7–12 (凡例)
Indication of pronunciation of characters : pp. 13–40 (等韻)
Comprehensive table of contents by radicals : pp. 41–49 (總目)
Facilitated consulting contents : pp. 50–71 (檢字)

The dictionary proper : pp. 75–1631
- Main text : pp. 75–1538
- Addendum contents : pp. 1539–1544 (補遺)
- Addendum text : pp. 1545–1576
- Appendix contents (No–source–characters) : pp. 1577–1583 (備考)
- Appendix text : pp. 1585–1631
Postscript : pp. 1633–1635　(後記)
Textual research : pp. 1637–1683 (考證)

References

Teng, Ssu-yü and Biggerstaff, Knight. 1971. An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works, 3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-03851-7
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Notes

↑ Endymion Wilkinson. Chinese History: A New Manual. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2012. ISBN 9780674067158), pp. 80-81.

External links

Kangxi Zidian (Tongwen Shuju edition), with dictionary lookup – Chinese Text Project
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康熙字典網上版 Kangxi Dictionary Net Version
Kangxi zidian 康熙字典, English translation of one definition, on Chinaknowledge.de
汉典 The Chinese Language Dictionary Homepage (in Chinese only)
Making Friends with the Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 at the Wayback Machine (archived February 7, 2012), Occasional paper with translation of Kangxi Emperor's preface 御製康熙字典序

[1] Endymion Wilkinson. Chinese History: A New Manual. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2012. ISBN 9780674067158), pp. 80-81.

[1]

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Kangxi Dictionary

Contents

Compilation

Structure of the Kangxi dictionary

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References

Notes

External links

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