This is the on-line version of Brill's A student's dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, which since its appearance has quickly established itself as the major dictionary for pre-1000 Classical Chinese in the English-speaking world. The Dictionary was compiled by Paul W. Kroll, Professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado, assisted by a small team of scholars including William Baxter, William G. Boltz, David R. Knechtges, Y. Edmund Lien, Antje Richter, Matthias L. Richter, and Ding Xiang Warner. 8,330 individual characters are included, with an abundance of alliterative and echoic binomes (lianmianci 連綿詞), assorted technical terms in various fields, and the identification of hundreds of plants and animals. The dictionary is meant to cover only the period from approx. 500 BCE to 1000 CE, not later usage; the various appendices, including one with reign eras and exact accession dates of emperors given according to both Chinese and Western calendars, are therefore restricted to the same period.
Selected items from two large Chinese reference databases: the Apabi Reference DB collection (choose "gongju tushu") and the CNKI Chinese Reference Works Online (link given above). Currently we have acquired 169 titles (371 vols.) in the Apabi, and 99 titles (122 vols.) in the CNKI collection. We additionally we have subscription based access to 15,000 vols via CNKI.
Please note that the new CNKI interface has problems with the Firefox browser. The Chrome browser works fine.
There are limitations on the number of concurrent users in the Apabi database; you may not be able to enter the database when too many people try this database at the same time. Please make sure to logout when you are done.
In the Apabi interface, make sure you select the option (which shows up automatically in the search box that you want to "search within the entries (zai gongjushu citiao zhong 在工具书词条中检索) to get results.
Included in these reference works are dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, biographical dictionaries, indexes, even compilations, etc. The two databases differ in their detailed search options, but in both cases you can check all their reference books at one go. For the Apabi books, click on “tushu” and choose “quanwen” for searching full text. Note that you should avoid the browser’s back button. We will arrange introductory sessions at the beginning of the academic year.
We have found and reported individual problems, such as in the 汉语大词典 a lack of easy access to the pinyin pronunciations. Please report any problems you find, or other suggestions for improvement to the Chinese Bibliographer (shown in the right column of this page) for forwarding to the publisher.
In the Apabi set are included such titles as 汉语大词典, 辞海, 中国大百科全书,著者别号书录考, 佛教大辞典, 京剧剧目概览, 难僻字字典, 道藏书目提要, 外国文学研究论文资料索引(1978-1985), 唐代长安词典, 宋元明清百部小说语词大辞典, 历代避讳字汇典, 中国古代科技史论文索引, 中国丛书目录及子目索引汇编, 中国宝卷总目, 中国历代思想家传记汇诠, 中国年谱辞典, 太平天国大辞典, 明人室名别称字号索引, 现代汉语大词典. For a complete listing, see the spreadsheet below:
In the CNKI set are included such titles as 本草名著集成, 传统语言学辞典, 古代名人字号辞典, 汉语方言大词典, 简明古籍整理辞典, 钦定理藩部则例, 历代名人室名别号辞典, 新汉英中医学词典, 中国电影电视艺术家辞典, 中国官制大辞典, 中国古代建筑辞典, 中国历代科技人物录, 中国历史地名大辞典, 中国现代文学词典, 中医妇科名著集成, 中医文献学辞典. For a complete listing, see the spreadsheet below:
Charles Muller's Digital Dictionary of Buddhism includes in addition to Chinese, Japanese and Korean information, also Indian, Tibetan and other references. The link goes to the wider Resources for East Asian Language and Thought Web page; the restricted digital dictionary is available from that page.
Le Grand Ricci is to all purposes the most comprehensive bilingual dictionary of Chinese (into French) in the Western world. It covers three millennia of the Chinese language, from the Classics to the modern age, and is encyclopedic in its scope. The compilers were able to draw on the full range of French sinological expertise in completing the project, and has paid especially attention to specialized terms in a wide variety of fields (religion, medicine etc.) It contains 13,392 main entries (single characters) and 280,000 expressions (or Chinese words composed of a set of characters). Entries can be looked up by Chinese character, by romanization (pinyin), by radical and strokes, and by the total number of strokes.
This is a Chinese Character dictionary that offers several different lookup methods (pinyin, radical, stroke count) and also contains some introductory tutorials on the history and structure of Chinese characters.It may be viewed from the main computer cluster in the EAL.
Trilingual (Chinese, English, French) dictionary on Chinese law with approximately 24,000 legal terms. Includes ancient law. Part of BrillOnline Chinese reference library. Has separate versions in Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters.
The Thesaurus Linguae Sericae (TLS) is an Historical and Comparative Encyclopaedia of Chinese Conceptual Schemes and is designed as a collaborative forum for discussion on the close reading of Chinese texts for a cross-cultural study of conceptual history. It provides a corpus of classical Chinese texts wherever possible with interlinear translations. TLS links the texts incorporated with an analytic dictionary of the Chinese language.
The Thesaurus was founded by Christoph Harbsmeier (University of Oslo) and is developed by Center for Informatics in East-Asian Studies (Kyoto University). It is hosted by Princeton University, Department of East Asian Studies, in cooperation with Ruhr University Bochum, Forschungszentrum für traditionelle chinesische Kulturen.
