Jiang shi yin xue shi shu 江氏音學十書 [Ten Writings on Phonology by Mr. Jiang]

Eight vols. 8vo, orig. blue wrappers, orig. stitching. [Shanghai]: Zhongguo shu dian 中國書店, [1928].




Facsimile reprint of a series of phonological studies by important Qing scholar Jiang Yougao (d. 1851), who wrote numerous studies on various aspects of Chinese historical phonology, a field of study that had developed substantially in the 18th and early 19th centuries. By Jiang's time, it was firmly established that the language of ancient China had been substantially different from that of the Qing period. Jiang's research progressed on this premise, deepening the description of the sound system of ancient Chinese. Yet Jiang also studied so-called "modern sounds" (jin yin 今音), meaning the phonology of the rhyme tables that first emerged in the Song period.


The studies included in our book reflect these interests. They cover the Poetry Classic and several of the other Confucian classics, the ancient literary corpus the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭), pre-Qing prose, the four tones in the rhyme books of the Tang dynasty, charts of so-called "assonance characters" (xiesheng 諧聲), tables of entering-tone characters, and "various theories regarding the graded rhymes" (dengyun congshuo 等韻叢說), referring to the rhyme tables. Our book is considered Jiang's "major work" (Xu, Chuantong yuyanxue cidian, 192).


A biography of Jiang is appended, printed in facsimile from a manuscript by Ge Qiren 葛其仁 dated 1852 (Xianfeng 2). Manuscript marginal notes have also been reproduced in places in the work itself.


Nice set, preserved in a hantao.