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Xu Shen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Xǔ Shèn (Traditional Chinese: 許慎; Simplified Chinese: 许慎; Wade-Giles: Hsü Shen; ca. 58 CE – ca. 147 CE) was the author of Shuōwén Jiězì (說文解字), which was the first etymological Chinese character dictionary, as well as the first to organize the characters by shared components. It contains over 9,000 character entries under 540 section headers (部首 bùshǒu, radicals), explaining the origins of the characters based primarily upon a study of the earlier seal script. Xu completed his dictionary in 100 CE but, for political reasons, waited until 121 CE before presenting the finished work to the Emperor An of Han China.
Xǔ Shèn lived during the Eastern Hàn Dynasty, and was from the present-day Yancheng District (郾城) City of Luohe (漯河) in Henan Province. He was a renowned Confucianist scholar who specialized in the Five Classics, and wrote the Wujing yiyi (五經異義 "Differing Meanings in the Five Classics"). Although the original text was lost and corrupted by the Tang Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty scholar Chen Shouqi (陳壽棋, 1771–1834) partially reconstructed the Wujing yiyi from fragments and quotations.