Kangxi Dictionary

The Kangxi Dictionary was the standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Kangxi Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty ordered its compilation in 1710 and it was published in 1716. The dictionary is named after the Emperor's era name.

Compilation

The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' editors, including Zhang Yushu and Chen Tingjing , partly based it on two Ming Dynasty dictionaries: the 1615 ''Zihui'' by Mei Yingzuo , and the 1627 ''Zhengzitong'' by Zhang Zilie . 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'' corrected 2,588 mistakes, mostly in quotations and citations.

The supplemented dictionary contains 47,035 character entries, plus 1,995 , giving a total of 49,030 different characters. They are grouped under the 214 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 and remain in modern usage as a method to categorize traditional Chinese characters.

The character entries give variants , 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, s, 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

* Preface by Kangxi Emperor : pp. 1-6
* Notes on the use of the dictionary : pp. 7-12
* Indication of pronuciation of characters : pp. 13-40
* Comprehensive table of contents by radicals : pp. 41-49
* Facilitated consulting contents : pp. 50-71

* The dictionary proper : pp. 75-1631
** Main text : pp. 75-1538
** Addendum contents : pp. 1539-1544
** Addendum text : pp. 1545-1576
** Appendix contents : pp. 1577-1583
** Appendix text : pp. 1585-1631
* Postscript : pp. 1633-1635　
* Textual research : pp. 1637-1683