Saturday, September 20, 2008

Guangyun

The Guangyun is a rime dictionary that was compiled from 1007 to 1011 under the auspices of Emperor Zhenzong of Song. Chen Pengnian and Qiu Yong were the chief editors. In the history of Chinese lexicography, the ''Guangyun'' stands between the Qieyun and the Jiyun.

It was originally split into four in five volumes, two belonging to the Middle Chinese level tone , one each for the other three Middle Chinese tones, rising tone , departing tone , and entering tone . Each tone was split into rimes, and under each rimes were grouped characters of the same onset, and under each entry, was given a brief explanation of its meaning. The ''Guangyun'' has a total of 26,194 character entries, which are arranged under 206 final rimes, increased from 193 in the ''Qieyun'' .

Unicode digitally reincarnated the ''Guangyun''. The Unihan database incorporates the "SBGY" dataset with 25,330 head-entries for 19,511 characters.

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