Special Research To Commentary Work On Classics In Guang-yun

Guang-yun is the most important and complete rime book for ancient Chinese language among all the other existing ancient rime books. It was edited by Ch' en Peng-nian and the others at the beginning of Sung dynasty in 1008, based on, and in fact an enlarged edition of, Qie-yun which was edited by Lu Fa-yan in 601. Guang-yun is considered to be a masterpiece with most complete information left for today' s phonologists as reference for rime categories of ancient Chinese language.Guang-yun is not only a rime book but also an important ancient dictionary. However, during the long period of time, the scholars just think highly of its influence on phonology,and overlook its value on commentary work. In view of this blank field, this paper probes into four subjects:its commentary way, the quotations of Guang-yun from Shuo-wen-jie~zi, variant and abnormal Chinese character in Guang-yun, semantic explanation of phonetic complement about " 易 " and those connected pictophonetic characters in Guang-yun. We try to make a generalization to its achievements and influences of commentary work in Guang-yun.