Xu Shen (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! X Shen was a Chinese philologist of the Han Dynasty. He was the author of Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary with character analysis, as well as the first to organize the characters by shared components. It contains over 9,000 character entries under 540 radicals, explaining the origins of the characters based primarily upon a study of the earlier seal script. A number of Xu Shen's character analysis is erroneous, as the seal script differs considerably from the older bronzeware script and oracle bone script, both of which were then unknown to Xu Shen. Xu Shen completed his dictionary in 100 CE but, for political reasons, waited until 121 CE before having the work presented to the Emperor An of Han China by his son.