Zilin
| Zilin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 字林 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | character forest | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 字林 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 자림 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kanji | 字林 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hiragana | じりん | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Zìlín |
| Wade–Giles | Tzu-lin |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | Zi4lam4 |
| Southern Min | |
| Hokkien POJ | Jīlîm |
| Middle Chinese | |
| Middle Chinese | DziH lim |
| Old Chinese | |
| Baxter-Sagart | Mə-dzə(ʔ)-s[r]əm |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| McCune–Reischauer | Charim |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Revised Hepburn | Jirin |
The (c. 350) Zilin 字林 or Forest of Characters was a Chinese dictionary compiled by the Jin dynasty (265–420) lexicographer Lü Chen 呂忱. It contained 12,824 character head entries, organized by the 540-radical system of the Shuowen Jiezi. In the history of Chinese lexicography, the Zilin followed the (121) Shuowen Jiezi (with 9,353 character entries) and preceded the (c. 543) Yupian (with 12,158 entries).
Lü Chen compiled the Zilin to supplement the Shuowen jiezi, and included more the 3,000 uncommon and variant Chinese characters. Yong and Peng (2008: 186) describe the Zilin as a "more influential character dictionary" than the Shuowen jiezi.
Lü Chen's younger brother Lü Jing 呂靜 was also a lexicographer, who compiled the (c. 280) Yunji 韻集 "Assembly of Rimes". Other than their dictionaries, little is known about either brother.
The title Zilin, translated as "Forest of Characters" (Zhou and Zhang 2003: 72) or "The Character Forest" (Yong and Peng 2008), combines zì "character; script; writing; graph" and lín "forest; woods; grove; group; collection of literary works; many; numerous". Titles of several Japanese dictionaries adapted this rin 林 "forest" metaphor, such as the (1988) Daijirin 大辞林 "Great Forest of Words" and (1992) Dai Kangorin 大漢語林 "Great Forest of Chinese".
The Zilin was popular in the Northern and Southern dynasties period (420–589), when "lexicography in China entered the stage of exploration and development. There were more new dictionary types coming into being and discoveries were waiting to be made in format and style, in mode of definition, and in phonetic notation." (Yong and Peng 2008: 275).
During the Liu Song dynasty (420-479), Wu Gongceng 吳恭曾 from Yang Province compiled the first commentary to the Zilin, the Zilin yinyi 字林音義 "Pronunciations and Meanings in the Zilin" in 5 volumes.
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