Discussions For The Quotations From The Book Shuo Wen Jie Zi By Taiping Imperial Encyclopaedia

A lot of editions has been made during the long period when the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi(说文解字)passes from generation to generation by copying or printing. We can see in the usual edition of the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi(说文解字)a few traces of modifying by Li Yangbing(李阳冰)in the Tang Dynasty and a lot of traces of modifying by the brothers Xu Xuan and Xu Kai (徐铉徐锴兄弟)in the Southern Tang Dynasty when they tried for definitive editions of the book., all of which were far different from the first edition by Xu Shen(许慎)Scholars in the period of Qianlong and Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty tried for the definitive edition of the book by sorting out the quotations from the book by the documents written before the Xu brothers,even Li Yangbing. There had been many pieces of reasonable suggestions for the definitive edition of the book by those scholars, but none edition of the book had been made according to the suggestions by now, which is a part reason why the attempt for the definitive edition of the book has not disappeared by now and published works on the attempt has been written every now and then. As the longest one of the encyclopedias in the medieval period of Ancient China, Taiping Imperial Encyclopaedia(太平御览)has been always considered by scholars as a treasure in which the lost documents can be compiled and the mistakes in the documents handed down for generations including the book of Shuo Wen Jie Zi(说文解字)can be collated. But no good edition has been made in the circulation of this encyclopedia by the publication of the rare edition made in the Song Dynasty collected in the series of Si Bu Cong Kan III in 1937 in Shanghai by the Commercial Press under Zhang Yuanji(张元济), and all parts of the rare edition were seen by scholars for the first time. This paper sorts out the quotations from the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi(说文解字)by Taiping Imperial Encyclopaedia(太平御览),and looks for the differences between every text in the quotations and the corresponding character in the usual edition of the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi(说文解字),by which more variant texts among the editions of the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi(说文解字)will be collected, and the differences will be discussed, until the right texts and the wrong texts are identified. The newly found right texts is helpful for the attempt for the definitive edition of the book, while the cause of the wrong texts will be clarified. The related collation by scholars before will also be discussed, and the precision of their edition of Taiping Imperial Encyclopaedia(太平御览)and their collation according to the edition will be estimated. The reason for the quotations will be estimated, the way for the quoting will be analyzed, and the precision of the quotations will be valued.