Erya
The Erya or Erh-ya is the first surviving Chinese dictionary. Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from" the 3rd century BC.
Title
Chinese scholars interpret the first title character ěr as a phonetic loan character for the homophonous ěr, and believe the second yǎ refers to words or language. According to W. South Coblin: "The interpretation of the title as something like 'approaching what is correct, proper, refined' is now widely accepted". It has been translated as "The Literary Expositor" or "The Ready Rectifier", "Progress Towards Correctness", "Near Correct", "The Semantic Approximator", and "Approaching Elegance".History
The book's author is unknown. Although it is traditionally attributed to the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, or his disciples, scholarship suggests that someone compiled and edited diverse glosses from commentaries to pre-Qin texts, especially the Shijing. Joseph Needham et al. place the Erya's compilation between the late 4th and early 2nd centuries BCE, with the possible existence of some core text material dating back to the 6th century BCE, and the continued additions to the text as late as the 1st century BCE.The first attempts to date the different parts of the Erya separately began when the Tang scholar Lu Deming suggested that the Duke of Zhou only compiled the Shigu chapter, while the rest of the text dated from later. The Japanese historian and sinologist Naitō Torajirō analyzed the Erya text and concluded it originated in the early Warring States period, with the Jixia Academy having a considerable hand in it from c. 325 BCE onwards, and the text was enlarged and stabilized during the Qin and Western Han dynasty. Naitō connects the Shigu chapter with the first generations of the Confucian School, places the family relationships, astronomy, and meteorology chapters in the time of Xun Ching 荀卿 with additions as late as 90 BCE, allocates the geographical chapters to the late Warring States, Qin, and beginning of Han, puts the natural history chapters between 300 and 160 BCE, and ascribes the last chapter on domestic animals to the time of Emperor Wen or Emperor Jing of Han.
The Erya was considered the authoritative lexicographic guide to Chinese classic texts during the Han Dynasty, and Song dynasty Confucians officially categorized it as one of the Thirteen Classics, "making it one of the more revered works in the history of Chinese literature, not to mention lexicography". Although the only ancient Erya commentary that has come down to us is the Erya zhu by Guo Pu, there were a number of others, including the Erya Fanshi zhu by Liu Xin, and the Erya Yinyi by Sun Yan, which popularized the fanqie system of pronunciation glosses.
Most of these texts about the Erya were still extant in the Tang dynasty but had disappeared by the Song dynasty, when there was a revival of interest in the Erya. The Northern Song dynasty scholar Xing Bing wrote the Erya shu, which quoted many descriptions from both ordinary literature and medicinal bencao texts. A century later, Lu Dian wrote the Piya and the Erya Xinyi commentary. The Southern Song dynasty scholar Luo Yuan subsequently wrote the Eryayi interpretation. During the Qing Dynasty, Shao Jinhan published the Erya Zhengyi and the naturalist Hao Yixing (郝懿行lang\|zh|爾雅義疏lang\|zh|雅書lang\|zh|郎奎金lang\|zh|五雅lang\|zh|通雅lang\|zh|方以智lang\|zh|駢雅lang\|zh|朱謀㙔lang\|zh|別雅lang\|zh|吴玉搢lang\|zh|疊雅lang\|zh|史夢蘭
Content
The Erya has been described as a dictionary, glossary, synonymicon, thesaurus, and encyclopaedia. Karlgren explains that the book "is not a dictionary in abstracto, it is a collection of direct glosses to concrete passages in ancient texts." The received text contains 2094 entries, covering about 4300 words, and a total of 13,113 characters. It is divided into nineteen sections, the first of which is subdivided into two parts. The title of each chapter combines shi with a term describing the words under definition. Seven chapters are organized into taxonomies. For instance, chapter 4 defines terms for: paternal clan, maternal relatives, wife's relatives, and marriage. The text is divided between the first three heterogeneous chapters defining abstract words and the last sixteen semantically-arranged chapters defining concrete words. The last seven - concerning grasses, trees, insects and reptiles, fish, birds, wild animals, and domestic animals - describe more than 590 kinds of flora and fauna. It is a notable document of natural history and historical biogeography.| Chapter | Chinese | Pinyin | Translation | Subject |
| 1 | 釋詁 | Shigu | Explaining the Old | verbs, adjectives, adverbs, grammatical particles |
| 2 | 釋言 | Shiyan | Explaining Words | verbs, adjectives, adverbs |
| 3 | 釋訓 | Shixun | Explaining Instructions | adjectives, adverbs, mostly with reduplication |
| 4 | 釋親 | Shiqin | Explaining Relatives | kinship, marriage |
| 5 | 釋宮 | Shigong | Explaining Dwellings | architecture, engineering |
| 6 | 釋器 | Shiqi | Explaining Utensils | tools, weapons, clothing, and their uses |
| 7 | 釋樂 | Shiyue | Explaining Music | music, musical instruments, dancing |
| 8 | 釋天 | Shitian | Explaining Heaven | astronomy, astrology, meteorology, calendar |
| 9 | 釋地 | Shidi | Explaining Earth | geography, geology, some regional lore |
| 10 | 釋丘 | Shiqiu | Explaining Hills | topography, Fengshui terms |
| 11 | 釋山 | Shishan | Explaining Mountains | mountains, famous mountains |
| 12 | 釋水 | Shishui | Explaining Rivers | rivers, navigation, irrigation, boating |
| 13 | 釋草 | Shicao | Explaining Plants | grasses, herbs, grains, vegetables |
| 14 | 釋木 | Shimu | Explaining Trees | trees, shrubs, some botanical terms |
| 15 | 釋蟲 | Shichong | Explaining Insects | insects, spiders, reptiles, etc. |
| 16 | 釋魚 | Shiyu | Explaining Fishes | fish, amphibians, crustaceans, reptiles, etc. |
| 17 | 釋鳥 | Shiniao | Explaining Birds | wildfowl, ornithology |
| 18 | 釋獸 | Shishou | Explaining Beasts | wild animals, legendary animals |
| 19 | 釋畜 | Shichu | Explaining Domestic Animals | livestock, pets, poultry, some zoological terms |
The format of Erya definitions varies between the first section treating common terms and the second treating specialized terms. Entries for common terms are defined by grouping synonyms or near-synonyms and explaining them in terms of a more commonly used word, and additional explanations if one of the words had multiple meanings. For instance, "Qiáo, sōng, and chóng all mean 'high'. Chóng also means 'to fill'.". Entries for specialized terms are defined by grouping related words and giving them a description, explanation, classification, or comparison. For example: "A woman calls her husband's father jiù, and her husband's mother gū. While alive they are called jūnjiù and jūngū. After their death they are called xiānjiù and xiāngū..
Owing to its laconic lexicographical style, the Erya is one of a few Chinese classics that have not been fully translated into English. However, there are several unpublished PhD dissertations translating particular chapters.