This dictionary was compiled by all the teachers in the Ancient Chinese Teaching and Research Section of the Chinese Department of Renmin University of China and several comrades in the Chinese reference book editing room of the Commercial Press, starting from 1985. In order to master the first-hand information, we have spent nearly two years making cards of representative ancient books written in orthodox written languages, such as The Analects of Confucius, Mencius, Mandarin, Warring States Policy, Xunzi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Grandson, Lv Chunqiu, Lun Heng and Historical Records. Determining the scope and principles of word collection is mainly based on the nature of this dictionary, readers and actual needs. There are more than 10000 words, including some difficult words and commonly used variants. A total of more than 24,000 phonetic words were recovered, and a small number of encyclopedia entries were collected under the principle of focusing on words. For the establishment of meaning, we try to break through the preconceived framework and objectively summarize it from the actual materials of language. In terms of interpretation, we should try our best to be accurate and concise, and generally do not use the situation that the two statements coexist or are ambiguous.
Revision of the second edition
First, interpretation and documentary evidence are the focus of this revision. If the explanation is improper or there is serious injury, it should be corrected, if the documentary evidence is wrong or replaced afterwards. The replacement of documentary evidence can be divided into the following stages: pre-Qin, Han, Wei and Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties, Yuan Dynasty and below.
The second is to add some words with literature use cases, and correspondingly delete some rare words that can't be found in the word book. Some adjustments, additions and deletions have also been made to disyllabic words.
Third, read the pronunciation of words in falsetto, and don't fight alone; If the pronunciation of a common word is different from this word, the pronunciation of the word should be marked in brackets after the word, such as tin and the word "ci".
Fourth, strictly control variant forms of Chinese characters, and do not discriminate between those with different sounds and meanings, such as "repair", "engraving", "engraving" and "carving".
Fifth, the style of quoting books has been slightly revised, such as "Songs of the South" changed to "Li Sao" by Qu Yuan, and "Songs of the South" was not published; Selected Works of Tokyo was changed to Tokyo Fu by Zhang Heng, but the Selected Works was not published.
Six, the words used in the entry basically use the "General Specification Chinese Characters Table", and the words outside the table are not simplified by analogy.
7. According to the Chinese Character Radical Table and the Chinese Character Radical of GB 13000. 1 character set, the vocabulary of the dictionary is re-compiled. It is a representative ancient book written in orthodox written language in ancient times, among which the ancient books of pre-Qin and Han dynasties are the main ones. This dictionary contains about 10000 words and some difficult words, including those used for names and places. It also includes common variants. The second edition contains about 14200 words (including traditional characters and variant characters) and about 28000 disyllabic words.