Rime table
The method gave a significantly more precise and systematic account of the sounds of those dictionaries than the previously used fǎnqiè analysis, but many of its details remain obscure.
The earliest rime tables are associated with Chinese Buddhist monks, who are believed to have been inspired by the Sanskrit syllable charts in the Siddham script they used to study the language.
The oldest extant rime tables are the 12th-century Yunjing ('mirror of rhymes') and Qiyin lüe ('summary of the seven sounds'), which are very similar, and believed to derive from a common prototype.
Earlier fragmentary documents describing the analysis have been found at Dunhuang, suggesting that the tradition may date back to the late Tang dynasty.
Some scholars, such as the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren, use the French spelling rime for the categories described in these works, to distinguish them from the concept of poetic rhyme.
[1] The Qieyun, produced by Lu Fayan (陸法言; Lù Fǎyán) in 601, was a rime dictionary, serving as a guide to the recitation of literary texts and an aid in the composition of verse.
The děngyùnxué (等韻學 'study of classified rhymes') was a more sophisticated analysis of the Qieyun pronunciations, initially developed by Chinese Buddhist monks who were studying Indian linguistics.
The Sìshēng děngzǐ (四聲等子) was probably created during the Northern Song, and explicitly introduced broad rhyme classes (shè 攝), which were previously implicit in the ordering of the tables.
[8] The Jīng shǐ zhèng yīn Qièyùn zhǐnán (經史正音切韻指南), produced by Liú Jiàn (劉鑑) in 1336, was the basis for one of the two sets of rime tables at the front of the Kangxi dictionary.
The Qieyun zhizhangtu, incorrectly attributed to the 11th century scholar Sima Guang, was believed to be the oldest of the rime tables, and was used in the earliest reconstruction efforts.
[11] A rime table book presents these distinct syllables in a number of tabular charts, each devoted to one or more sets of parallel rhyme groups across the tones.
[17][18] For example, the first of the 43 charts of the Yùnjìng is shown below (the Arabic numerals are modern annotations): The five big characters on the right-hand side read Nèi zhuǎn dìyī kāi (內轉第一開).
Initials are classified according to The order of the places and manners roughly match that of Sanskrit, providing further evidence of inspiration from Indian phonology.
The above chart covers four parallel Guangyun rhyme groups, the level-toned 東 dōng, the rising-toned 董 dǒng, the departing-toned 送 sòng, and the entering-toned 屋 wū (which in Middle Chinese ended in -k, the entering tone counterpart of -ng).
Their meaning remains the most controversial aspect of rime table phonology, but is believed to indicate palatalization (transcribed as the presence or absence of -j- or -i-), retroflex features, phonation, vowel quality (high vs. low or front vs. back) or some combination of these.
[23] Li Rong, in a systematic comparison of the rhyme tables with a recently discovered early edition of the Qieyun, identified seven classes of finals.
The earliest documentary records of the rime table tradition, the Dunhuang fragments, contain lists of 30 initials, each named after an exemplary character.
