Ngiok-p'jian

The Ngiok-p'jian (玉篇, "Jade Volume") is a rhyming guide compiled and issued some time around 432 by the Sungh court for the expressed purpose of "preserving proper phonology". Though nominally a purely academic work, political considerations influenced the composition of the book heavily. The work was at the centre of a series of conflicts between embattled court factions. Under the assumption that cultural heritage from Menghe equated political legitimacy, the factions attempted to impose their views on the resulting work to assert their cultural heritage.

In terms of content, the Ngiok-p'jian is a rhyming dictionary, covering the pronunciations of 14,385 words in the Shinasthana language. A word is divisible into a "sound" (initial consonant) and a "rhyme" (the rest of the word). Words that share the same rhyme are grouped into the same "rhyme" (韻), and within each rhyme words are categorized into "small rhymes" (小韻), which share both rhyme and sound. The Ngiok-p'jian enumerates 492 rhymes and 7,935 "small rhymes" or distinct syllables. This figure far exceeds that of another other contemporary language in the Shinasthana family.

The Ngiok-p'jian has been received by later scholars as a monumental work that, aside from defining the proper pronunciation of each word, is also a statement of academic and cultural achievement. Some historians also consider that this work the beginning of a "Themiclesian identity" as distinct from the Menghean one, prior to total political independence declared in 542. Others assert that the new dynasty (the Sungh Dynasty began in 420, having deposed the Tsiehnh ruler) desired to pretend to political legitimacy by making a public effort to support and defend Menghean culture.

Impetus

While the Ngiok-p'jian was completed only in 432, work on it began as early as 423, a mere two years after the first Sungh ruler deposed the final Tsiehnh monarch. In the decree ordering work to commence, Liu Jiawk's court stated:

自季孟之喪，中國被夷狄之禍，國家傾覆，生民流離。九鼎遷乎帝都，神器淪於北廷。於戲！五胡彊暴，寡恥鮮仁，加殺戮諸於孟華億萬之麗，肆行凌侮於公卿之冑，此其誰堪？天既崇降不祥於我故土，夷狄之主中國也，必亂其俗；夫聖哲，起諸教化；教化，始於文章；文章，殿乎字詞；字詞，無不宣於口吻、登於帛竹者。故字音不正，字義不達，先王之雅頌失其聲音，古聖之墳典去其意義，屬文宏業，喪於凌夷矣。朕不可不監於季孟之失，亦不可不監於萬里之隔，尚書令王誨加秘書令，亟正字音字義，可稱萬代之宏圖。

Since the fall of the later-Meng, the Middle Realm suffered disasters at the hands of barbarians; the state is overthrown, and the people are seeking refuge. The Nine Tripods have been removed out of the imperial capital city, and the throne has been captured to the northern court. Alas! The five barbarian [peoples] are strong and brutal, having little shame and few empathies; they have massacred the innumerable and illustrious people of Meng and defiled the descendants of high ministers; who can bear this? Since the Heavens have caused a great misfortune to befall our former land, causing barbarians to rule the Middle Realm, it inevitably permits them to alter the customs. Sagacity arises from education; education begins with literature; literature are based on words. There are no words that are not spoken or written on silk and bamboo. Thus, if pronunciations are inaccurate, and meanings not conveyed, the poetry of former kings will lose their sounds, and the records of ancient sages will lose their meanings. Thus, the great mandate of kingship, the furtherance of culture, will be lost to attrition! I, the ruler, cannot fail to caution myself by the failings of the later-Meng or the separation of thousands of miles from our former land. Therefore, let the Director of Correspondence Administration take the title of Director of Secret Books and ascertain the proper pronunciation and definition of each word, such that it will serve great policy of ten-thousand generations.

Historical linguists have generally identified a series of vowel shifts as the substantive reason behind the creation of the rhyming guide. Poetry written during the Warring States period and prior in Old Menggok would have ceased to rhyme in many cases where it is expected around the year 200, due to the shift from /ɑ/ to /ɔ/. A few decades after that time, this phenomenon was noticed by contemporaries, who sometimes wrote about "inaccurate reading" but did not found it too troubling at the time. By the 400s, however, the discrepancy had widened sufficiently to cause widespread confusion.

This confusion implicated four leading scholars, who could not agree on the correct way to pronounce these rhymes; though this may seem trivial, two of those scholars belonged to families that moved to Themiclesia a century ago, while the other two had only arrived recently. In general, those that arrived before 420 are called the Tsiehnh clans (晉姓), and after, expat clans (僑姓). Conflicts in political interest between the two factions, amongst other things, revolved around the topic of cultural preservation. The clans of Tsiehnh believed that, as they had arrived earlier, their practices reflected Meng customs before it was "altered" by barbarians; their opponents claim that the clans of Tsiehnh themselves have altered Meng culture, and the expat clans were more recently familiar with Meng customs. In context of the phonology debate, the expat clans generally had the shifted pronunciation, while the Tsiehnh clans have retained the old pronunciations in some positions.

A lengthy debate spanning several years occurred between these factions, who each presented evidence in metrical work brought from Menghe to support their pronunciations. In this case, it was the Tsiehnh clans that overcame the other faction to legitimate their language as the "proper" language.

Research and sources

Rather than having to record the phonetic value of every word by themselves, the Tsiehnh clans possessed a secret reference material: Lieh Teng (李登) wrote his rhyming guide Sounds Categories in Menghe in 253, when this change was not yet prevalent. Their possession of this material is a major contributing factor to their victory over the adversarial expat clans, whose language had been affected by the change. Lia Dzhjiehm's (呂忱) Rhyme Anthology (韻集), compiled in 301, the first rhyming guide in Themiclesia, also does not reflect this change at scale. Therefore, the Tsiehnh were able to assign a usable (correctly rhyming) phonetic value to each of the words that did not rhyme in the 400s.

Basis

If the premise that the Ngiok-p'jian is a representation of the Shinasthana language as it stood in 301, that also has its discrepancies with Old Menggok corrected or levelled ("archaicized"), is accepted, the question naturally follows what the sources used to "correct" their contemporary language itself represents. There are several competing theories over this dispute:—

1. The Categories (253) represents a natural dialect of Old Menggok, natively spoken in the Meng capital.
2. The Categories represents a learned language, used by the upper classes to read classical poetry.
3. That #1 and #2 are in reality the same; in other words, there was no difference between the learned and common language.
4. The Anthology (301) represents the learned or native language of the first waves of gentry settlers in Themiclesia.
5. The Anthology is an extension of the Categories, mixed with some local influences.

Since neither the Categories nor the Anthology survives in their entireties, no definite conclusion of the Ngiok-p'jian to either reference has been accepted generally. This is one of the several reasons why the language described in the Ngiok-p'jian is not considered a dialect of Old Menggok language, as its relationship to Old Menggok is not yet precisely determined. Scholars, however, have reached consensus on several characteristics of the Ngiok-p'jian:

1. It is a prescriptive work, at least in part, not a purely descriptive one.
2. Some (perceived or real) characteristics of Old Menggok have been incorporated into the Ngiok-p'jian to the end that Old Menggok poetry will rhyme when recited; all poems in the Classics of Poetry (c. 1100–600 BCE) do rhyme with the Ngiok-p'jian, whereas in contemporary speech some of them do not.
3. Complex initials have been preserved in some form.
4. That the language in which the scholar-gentry recite classical poetry is distinct from the language used in daily conversations, which is also different from the language that some other groups of early settlers spoke. This is known because a famed painter (also a noted poet) was once asked to read poetry using Chant at the River Meng, and he replied that it did not "warrant making the sounds of an old slave".

Contents

The official version of the Ngiok-p'jian opens with the above-quoted edict, akin to a prologue, that captures the official purpose and source of legitimacy of the book. A table of contents, listed in the form "tone, X rhyme, N words total", follows the prologue. The whole work is distributed in five volumes, though with modern printing, all five volumes can be bound into a single physical book. The first two volumes deal with words that have the flat tone (平聲), the third, the rising tone (上聲), the fourth, the departing tone (去聲), and the fifth and final, the entering tone (入聲).

Within each volume, terminal consonants determine order in the first priority; finals in vowels or -d are placed before those in -ng, which comes before -n, and that before -m. For the final volume for entering tones, those in -k are listed before -t, and -t before -p. Within each of those categories, the compilers ordered the rhymes by the main vowel; /ə/ preceedes /ɑ/, standing before /ɛ/, which comes in front of /u/, then /ɔ/, and finally /a/. Those that have an additional coda in -i are placed after the same vowel without. This clear and deliberate sequencing has assisted modern linguists in reconstructing the phonetic values of each rhyme. After this, rhymes are sub-ordered by the presence and nature of their medials; those without medials come first, then those with a plain /u/, and then in the order of /r/ /rj/ /j/ /ri/ /i/ /e/, each followed by its counterpart with /u/ before the next.

The following chart summarizes the rhymes mentioned in the Ngiok-p'jian [tba]

Notation

The Ngiok-p'jian relies on two methods to note the pronunciation of a word:

1. Reversal (反切, pjiuan ts'eet):—
   1. Upper character (反切上字), which defines the initial of the word
   2. Lower character (反切下字), which defines the medial, vowel, coda, and tone of a word.
      1. E.g. 東 (tong, "east") is given as 德紅反, which provides the initial of 德 (tehk) and the final of 紅 (ghong), giving 東 (tong).
2. Direct (直音): only used for words that have complex initials—
   1. The first character gives the prefixed consonants that are followed by the indeterminate vowel
   2. The second character provides a homophone of the character less any complex initial
      1. E.g. 海 (hmeh2, "sea") is given as 曉梅並, which provides the prefix consonant 曉 (hjiaw) attached to 梅 (meh2), giving 海 (hmeh2).

Influence

Role

The Ngiok-p'jian serves as a standard reference to the reading and composition of "old-style poetry" (古體詩), which includes all standard forms of poetry composed in Old Menggok language in Menghe and those by Themiclesian poets in imitation of these styles. In addition, most poetry from the beginnings of Themiclesia to around 480 are also deemed "old-style", which stands in opposition to "contemporary-style poetry" (近體詩), which differs from its antecedent in several respects, not only in the language used to read and compose them. In respect whereof, the Ts'eet-ghiuehnh is employed in like fashion.

The Ngiok-p'jian also defines the reading dialect, which is taught in Themiclesian secondary schools for reading (in reality, chanting) "old-style poetry", which are regarded as a foundational corpus of metrical texts not only in the country's literary tradition but also political and philosophical thought.

Methodology

The notation used in the Ngiok-p'jian is inherited by the Ts'eet Ghiuehnh, written in 545, though the latter of the two methods is not used, as the newer reference does not stipulate complex initials, which have been lost. The Ts'eet Ghiuehnh also conserves the order in which the rhymes are presented.

See also

• Menghean language