A Study Of The Explanatory Dictionary Of Ancient Chinese Characters

The compile and publish of the Explanatory Dictionary of Ancient Chinese Characters (古文字诂林) has an epoch significance in the areas of characters theory and dictionary theory. It made a perfect end of the study of ancient Chinese characters till the end of 20 century. It is the largest scale dictionary of comprehensive style of characters explanatory up to now.This article made a preliminary study to this large reference book which has been published in the time between two centuries. The aim of this article is to analyze the characteristics about its content, select of materials, style of compile, function, system of leading-characters, applying of the shape store of the ancient characters, and its system of computer edition, and appraised the huge achievements among these aspects. And so to its large meaning to the ancient Chinese characters theory. This article also pointed the shortcomings of it.The first part of this article summarize the characteristics of this reference book in content: It made a whole gathering of the eight style ancient Chinese characters, and has a most abundant reference materials. The second part is about the book's trait of scientific selection of materials from the Yin Shang dynasty to the end of 20 century, and stressed the inherit of characters theory in it. The third part is about the book's compile style. The forth part talks about how can we make use of the large reference book .The fifth part is about the other achievements of this book and its shortcomings existing.