The two most well-known Chinese characters dictionaries are Songben Yupian from China and Quanyun Yupian from Korea. These dictionaries contain a wealth of information on Chinese characters at the diachronic and synchronic level, while also retaining much information on Chinese characters during the period of its movement overseas. This paper is a corpus-based study which analyzes the differences in the style of arrangement, phonetic notation mode, interpretation, form interpretation, and other aspects of the two dictionaries, and further summarizes the laws of the development of Chinese characters in overseas dissemination. The result of this study indicates that the function of the two dictionaries is different, that the Chinese characters remained stable during their transmission to other countries, and that the overall trend in the evolution of the characters is toward simplification, and that the main way that Chinese characters morph extraterritorially is via phonetic and semantic replacement.

There is a view in the scholarly community that although the Codex Yupian (卷軸本《玉篇》) was a detailed text with many explanations, it neglected the phonetic-meaning relations. Taking the Codex Yupian as the research material, we analyze the phonetic-meaning relations of the initial tone of one phonetic, initial tone of one phonetic+youyin (又音), initial tone of two phonetics, initial tone of two phonetics+youyin, initial tone of three phonetics, and no phonetic entries, and analyze the relations between phonetic and meaning in the context of literature, The similarities and differences in the meanings of the items, and the comparison with the Daguang Yihui Yupian (《大廣益會玉篇》), Jingdian Shiwen (《經典釋文》) and Codex Yupian, as well as the source of youyin and the corresponding relationships between phonetics and meanings, to illustrate that Codex Yupian edited by Gu Yewang (顧野王) has a very complicated explanation. This study shows that Gu Yewang had a clear explanatory style and a matching relations between sound and meaning, and that the emergence of multiple sounds and multiple meanings. It is the result of Gu Yewang’s “summarizing all the texts and studying all the classics” and “studying the Six Classics and studying all the Hundred Books”, and it is the result of the fusion of the peoples of the North and South Dynasties. It is also the result of the development of language under the ethnic fusion of the North and South Dynasties and the compilation of the literature of the time. The book plays an important role in standardizing and clarifying the relationship between morphology, phonology and meaning during the North and South Dynasties.

Chinese traditional dictionaries are often named after “文”, “ 字” or “dictionary” such as Shuowenjiezi, Zihui, Kangxi Dictionary, etc. The dictionary named Yupian began with Guyewang in the Liang Dynasty. It has its own cultural meaning to use jades comparing to characters. This paper analyzes the reasons for the naming of dictionaries in their own history. And the particularity of Yupian’s naming by examining the taking of such treasure as ‘yu’, a metaphor of Chinese characters. From this rhetorical perspective, it can also be seen that the things named ‘jade’ have their characteristics as well. According to the records of ‘jade’ in classical literature and its influence on people’s ideology in ancient cultural life, it is, in fact, found that the meaning of ‘jade’ has gradually developed and spread. Its metaphorical meaning has also extended to various fields in the same fashion. From the standpoint of the relation between jades and Chinese characters, and that between language and culture, this paper will explore the origin of the naming of Yupian as a dictionary and its influence on the naming of Japanese and Korean dictionaries.

Child education (xiaoxue, 小學) literature of the original manuscript of Yupian quoted includes approximately eleven kinds, and the quotation of the literature is about 2,936 times. What is found, in comparison with the standing version of child education literature, is that there are many lexical and expressional relations worth examining and distinguishing in the original manuscript of Yupian quoted, which includes those of characters of the borrowing, the misused, the variant form, the mutual usage, and so on. The value of research into the words and expressions in child education literature of the original manuscript of Yupian quoted is in fact inestimable especially in terms of philology, lexicology, and literary studies. Not only can it explain the abovementioned relations but calibrate the variant forms, folk characters, and semantic errors in dictionary entries. Moreover, it can supplement the errors in omission, and also offer some materials of differentiation between the original manuscript of Yupian and the standing version of child education literature.

Yupian (Jade Chapters) edited by Gu Ye-Wang (519-581) in the Liang Dynasty is an important work in the history of lexicography, grammatology, and philology of Chinese characters. In 674, during the Tang Dynasty, Sun Qiang revised and expanded Yupian. In 1013, a scholar in the Song Dynasty, Chen Peng-Nian further revised Yupian and expanded into Daguang Yihui Yupian (Expanded and Enlarged Jade Chapters). In this work, Gu analyzes and interprets Chinese characters mostly with the terminology used in Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters) by Xu Shen (c. 58 – c. 148), where jinzuo (modern form) is a term involving topics covering “orthographic form and modern form”, “variant”, “derivative characters”, and “phonetic loan characters”. To trace the origins of such changes, this paper investigates the origins of the form and interrelations of characters in their modern form through a comparative study of archaeological findings, historical literature, the surviving parts of Gu’s Yupian, and Daguang Yihui Yupian published by Chung Hwa Book Company, Limited.

ZECUNTANG YUPIAN was edited by Zhang Shi-jun. It is usually called the Song YUPIAN. Actually the Song YUPIAN had largely changed the features of YUPIAN inscribing in the Song Dynasty, including characters change, errors correction, means addition, head characters addition or amalgamation, etc. So it has lower philology value than the SONGBAN YUPIAN and the Song Subsection YUPIAN, even lower than Cao Yin Edition. The Song Subsection YUPIAN can emendate the SONGBAN YUPIAN, and it has special significance in document system of YUPIAN as a bridge connecting the SONGBAN YUPIAN style with the Subsection style.

In this paper, the author studied dictionaries that was named as Yupian in the Joseon Dynasty and modern times. and also studied the versions and characteristics of these dictionaries. The results show that the Chinese dictionaries in Korean development process from early to mature stage.

Clean the number of variant in the dictionary be handed down from ancient times, in order to describe the characters of standardization and the transmission condition of Chinese character. Through sorting out the unauthorized character in Song Edition Yupian宋本玉篇, we can find that the development of Chinese characters is a dialectical process: ancient SuTi, today Zheng Ti; today Su Ti, ancient Zheng Ti. The evolution of Chinese characters is from standard to the variation and from the new standard to the variation. Each standard of characters all make characters tend to brief and easy-to-use. The new standard substratum is always the original constraint mechanism. The original constraint mechanism is always adapt to the new development and presents different canonical form.