Shuowen Jiezi And Ancient Handicraft Trade

Shuowen Jiezi(说文解字) written by Xu Shen in Donghan Dynasty is the first dictionary in Chinese nationality which analyzes the character pattern, explains the word's meaning and recognizes the sound. It is an immortal exegetics monograph work.The paper chooses the words whose meaning reflect ancient handicraft trade and interprets and analyzes these words. Firstly, the paper classifies the words in Shuowen Jiezi into seven kinds: Divided into pottery, metal smelting, textile, printing and dyeing, brewing paper, seven types of spices production. Scendly, the paper analyses the words about handicraft trade from the angel of the exegetics, but also anslyses and evaluates words that Xu Shen interpreted. And on the basis of explanation of the form and meaning of the Chinese characters, the paper interprets Handicraft trade knowledge. Finally, the paper simply evaluates the Shuowen Jiezi and ancient handicraft trade knowledge.