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Shenglei

Shenglei
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 聲類
Simplified Chinese 声类
Literal meaning sound categories
Korean name
Hangul 聲類
Hanja 성류
Japanese name
Kanji 声類
Hiragana せいるい

The (c. 230 CE) Shenglei 聲類, compiled by the Cao Wei dynasty lexicographer Li Deng 李登, was the first Chinese rime dictionary. Earlier dictionaries were organized either by semantic fields (e.g., c. 3rd-century BCE Erya) or by character radicals (e.g., 121 CE Shuowen Jiezi). The last copies of the Shenglei were lost around the 13th century, and it is known only from earlier descriptions and quotations, which say it was in 10 volumes and contained 11,520 Chinese character entries, categorized by linguistic tone in terms of the wǔshēng 五聲 "Five Tones (of the pentatonic scale)" from Chinese musicology and wǔxíng 五行 "Five Phases/Elements" theory.

The title combines shēng "sound; voice; declare; reputation; tone (in Chinese linguistics); initial consonant (of a Chinese syllable)" and lèi "kind; type; class; category; genus; form class (in Chinese linguistics)" (Bishop 2015).

English translations of the title include: Sounds Classified (Needham et al. 1986: 218), Sound Categories (Creamer 1991: 2603), Classification of Sounds (Pulleyblank 1999: 105), Categories of Pronunciation (Zhou and Zhang 2003: 72), and Dictionary of Initial Consonants (Yong and Peng 2008: 42). This last translation interprets sheng 聲 in the 4th-century Shenglei to mean the contemporary linguistic term shēngmǔ 聲母 "initial consonant (of a Chinese syllable)"; exemplifying Yong and Peng's practice of assigning a "startlingly anachronistic English title" to some Chinese dictionaries, such as The Ready Guide for the venerable Erya (Ford 2009: 16.2).

Chinese texts from circa the 6th century to the 13th century referred to the Shenglei, after which it was lost. In the 19th century, Chinese scholars collected hundreds of Shenglei fragments and quotations, enabling better understanding of the text.

Many works mentioned the Shenglei together with the second oldest rime dictionary, the (c. 280) Yunji 韻集 "Assembly of Rhymes", by Lü Jing 呂靜 of the Western Jin Dynasty. Neither of these works has survived, but judging by later rime dictionaries, they were clearly stimulated by the fanqie method of indicating character pronunciation (Pulleyblank 1999: 105). Both borrowed Chinese music terms in order to lexicographically collate words by pronunciation: the contrasting terms qīng 清 "clear; high pitch" and zhuó 濁 "muddy; low pitch", and the wǔshēng 五聲 "five musical tones (of the pentatonic scale)": gōng 宮, shāng 商, jué 角, zhǐ 徵 and yǔ 羽—equivalent to do, re, mi, sol, and la in western solfège (Creamer 1991: 2603).


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