Kangxi Dictionary (1710-1716): The Great Qing Dictionary

The Kangxi Dictionary (Kangxi zidian) is the great imperial dictionary of Chinese characters commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty in 1710 and completed in 1716. Listing some 47,000 characters under 214 radicals, it was the largest Chinese dictionary of its time and remained the standard authority on written Chinese for two centuries.

Background: an emperor of learning

The Kangxi Emperor, who reigned from 1661 to 1722, was a Manchu ruler who worked hard to win over the Chinese scholar class. He studied the Confucian classics, held special examinations for eminent scholars and sponsored large editorial projects, including encyclopedias, poetry anthologies and rhyme books.

Chinese dictionaries had a long history, from the Shuowen jiezi of about AD 100 to the late Ming Zihui (1615), by Mei Yingzuo, and the Zhengzitong of Zhang Zilie, compiled in the late Ming and published in the early Qing. Kangxi considered these incomplete or unreliable and ordered a new dictionary that would combine their strengths.

Compilation

The edict was issued in 1710, the 49th year of Kangxi’s reign. The chief editors were the Grand Secretaries Zhang Yushu and Chen Tingjing, who led a team of about 30 scholars from the Hanlin Academy and other institutions. Both chief editors died before the work was complete, Zhang in 1711 and Chen in 1712.

The dictionary was finished in 1716 and printed by the palace, with a preface written in the emperor’s name. Work of this size in only six years was possible because the editors drew heavily on the Zihui and Zhengzitong, adding material from older dictionaries and literature.

The title itself was new. Earlier works were usually called shu (“book”) or given literary names, but the editors called theirs a zidian, literally a “character canon”. The prestige of the Kangxi work made zidian the ordinary Chinese word for a dictionary of characters, a usage that survives today.

How the dictionary works

Characters are arranged under 214 radicals, components such as “water”, “tree” or “hand” that often hint at meaning. Within each radical, characters are ordered by the number of additional brush strokes. The whole work is divided into twelve sections named after the Earthly Branches, a traditional set of cyclical signs.

Each entry gives the pronunciation, using the fanqie method of spelling a sound with two other characters, along with citations from earlier rhyme books. Definitions follow, supported by quotations from the classics, histories and other literature. Variant and obsolete forms are listed, and an appendix gathers characters of doubtful status.

Strengths and flaws

The dictionary’s great strength was its range. With about 47,035 characters, it far surpassed earlier dictionaries in coverage, and its imperial authority gave it unmatched prestige. However, the haste of its compilation led to many errors in quotations, sources and definitions. Between 1827 and 1831, under the Daoguang Emperor, the scholar Wang Yinzhi produced a critical study that corrected some 2,588 mistakes.

Many of the 47,035 characters are rare variants, ghost forms copied from earlier lists or characters attested only once in old texts. Critics have pointed out that the dictionary sometimes repeats the same character under different forms, and that its pronunciations rely on rhyme books that no longer matched the spoken language of the Qing. Its size was nevertheless a point of pride, and it was not surpassed in coverage until the Zhonghua Da Zidian of 1915.

Influence and legacy

The Kangxi Dictionary became the reference work for scholars, printers and officials throughout the Qing period and in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. European students of Chinese also relied on it; Robert Morrison based much of his pioneering Chinese-English dictionary (1815–1823) on its arrangement.

In Japan the dictionary was reprinted and widely studied, and the character shapes it uses became the reference for traditional forms. Japanese still speak of “Kangxi dictionary forms” when describing the older, unsimplified versions of kanji, and major Japanese dictionaries of Chinese characters adopted its radical arrangement. Cheaper lithographic editions in the nineteenth century spread the work far beyond the palace and the academies.

Its 214 radicals are still known as the Kangxi radicals. They underlie many modern dictionaries, Chinese character input methods and the Kangxi Radicals block of the Unicode standard. The dictionary is often compared with other great Qing and Ming compilations such as the Yongle Encyclopedia and the Siku Quanshu, and with Europe’s dictionary by Samuel Johnson, as a landmark in the ordering of knowledge.

Timeline

• 1615: Mei Yingzuo’s Zihui introduces the 214-radical arrangement.
• 1710: The Kangxi Emperor orders a new dictionary.
• 1711–1712: Chief editors Zhang Yushu and Chen Tingjing die.
• 1716: The dictionary is completed and printed.
• 1815–1823: Robert Morrison’s Chinese-English dictionary draws on its system.
• 1827–1831: Wang Yinzhi’s corrections are compiled and published.

Why it matters

The Kangxi Dictionary set the standard form and arrangement of Chinese characters for the late imperial era and beyond. Through its radicals, it still shapes how Chinese characters are sorted, looked up and encoded more than three centuries later.