page_title: Shuowen Jiezi
section_title: Character entries
hierarchical_section_title: Shuowen Jiezi / Structure / Character entries
caption_attribution_description: English: Entry for the character 子 zǐ "child", from chapter 15 of the Shuowen Jiezi, an ancient Chinese character dictionary. This entry shows three pre-Han forms of the character: the small seal form (top right), "ancient script" form (top left) and Zhòuwén form (middle left). Qiu Xigui 裘锡圭 (2000). Chinese Writing. English translation of 文字學概論 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 978-1-55729-071-7. page 73.
context_page_description: Shuowen Jiezi was an early 2nd century Chinese dictionary from the Han dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary, it was the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them, as well as the first to use the principle of organization by sections with shared components called radicals.
context_section_description: The typical Shuowen format for a character entry consists of a seal graph, a short definition (usually a single synonym, occasionally in a punning way as in the Shiming), a pronunciation given by citing a homophone, and analysis of compound graphs into semantic and/or phonetic components. Individual entries can additionally include graphic variants, secondary definitions, information on regional usages, citations from pre-Han texts, and further phonetic information, typically in dúruò (讀若 "read like") notation.
  In addition to the seal graph, Xu included two kinds of variant graphs when they differed from the standard seal, called ancient script (gǔwén 古文) and Zhòu script (Zhòuwén 籀文, not to be confused with the Zhou dynasty).
  The Zhòu characters were taken from the no-longer extant Shizhoupian, an early copybook traditionally attributed to a Shĭ Zhòu, or Historian Zhou, in the court of King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827–782 BCE). Wang Guowei and Tang Lan argued that the structure and style of these characters suggested a later date, but some modern scholars such as Qiu Xigui argue for the original dating.
  The guwen characters were based on the characters used in pre-Qin copies of the classics recovered from the walls of houses where they had been hidden to escape the burning of books ordered by Qin Shihuang.  Xu believed that these were the most ancient characters available, since Confucius would have used the oldest characters to best convey the meaning of the texts.  However, Wang Guowei and other scholars have shown that they were regional variant forms in the eastern areas during the Warring States period, from only slightly earlier than the Qin seal script.
  Even as copyists transcribed the main text of the book in clerical script in the late Han, and then in modern standard script in the centuries to follow, the small seal characters continued to be copied in their own (seal) script to preserve their structure, as were the guwen and Zhouwen characters.
caption: Entry for 子 zǐ "child", showing the small seal form (top right), with the "ancient script" and Zhòuwén forms on the left[2]
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