Li Si, Chancellor of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), compiled it for the purpose of reforming written Chinese into the new orthographic standard Small Seal Script.
By the end of the Tang dynasty (618–907), it had become a lost work, but in 1977, archeologists discovered a cache of (c. 165 BCE) texts written on bamboo strips, including fragments of the Cangjiepian.
[3] During the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), there was a wide and confusing variety of unstandardized Large Seal Script characters, with the same word being written in several different ways.
After Emperor Qin Shi Huang had conquered all other Warring States and unified China in 221 BCE, he adopted a language-reform proposal made by the Legalist Li Si and promulgated a decree of Shutongwen 書同文 "Writing the Same Character".
[14] The Han philosopher and philologist Yang Xiong (53 BCE – 18 CE) first revised the Cangjiepian and wrote the Cangjiexunzuan 倉頡訓纂 Collections of Cangjie Exegesis supplement, which had 5,340 characters.
227–232) wrote the Picang 埤倉 The Augmented Cangjie Glossary, Guangya The Broad Ready Guide [sic], and Gujin zigu 古今字詁 The Exegesis of Ancient and Contemporary Characters.
[19] In 1977, archeologists excavated a (165 BCE) Han dynasty tomb at Shuanggudui and discovered a cache of texts written on bamboo strips, including the Yijing and Chuci.
Nevertheless, they admit it is undeniable that the Cangjiepian "laid a solid foundation and initiated an enlightening start in character standardization, corpus construction, and source material accumulation".
The excavated Han dynasty bamboo-slip Cangjiepian edition has two outstanding features in layout: rhymed 4-character phrases that are easy to recite and remember, and character collation that is semantically grouped and graphic radical-oriented.
They should make up their mind and study hard [*sə-loŋ-s 誦] and show perseverance [sic] in reading and reciting day and night [*trək-s 置].
Some Cangjiepian passages seem incongruous for a children's primer, for instance (quoted by Yan Zhitui[26]), "The Han Dynasty annexes the whole world and all the kingdoms observe its decrees.
An example of words meaning "length" is:[27] cùn 寸 "inch", báo 薄 "thin", hòu 厚 "thick", guǎng 廣 "wide", xiá 狹 "narrow", hǎo 好 "good", chǒu 醜 "ugly", cháng 長 "long", and duǎn 短 "short".
In addition, some Cangjiepian passages explain semantic extensions and polysemy, such as "措 means 置 "to handle", also 安 "arrange", and also 施 "implement".