Trigault’s Alphabetical Order in Liè Yīnyùn Pǔ

The syllables generated by the phonetic wheels denote the places for Chinese characters listed in the Liè Yīnyùn Pǔ, the second volume of the Ulmoçu. In this volume, each romanized syllable serves the heads of entries, under which homophonous characters are listed. These entries must be properly arranged to allow more efficient and simpler retrieval than in

contemporary Chinese dictionaries. Trigault’s solution was alphabetization that employed the pre-established alphabetical order to arrange syllables, thus creating an index of Chinese characters that was supposedly more easily accessible.²³ The alphabetical order and the alphabetization pattern are Trigault’s specific designs to the Chinese language and differ from the convention adopted in today’s dictionaries of European languages. To facilitate our discussion, I would use “Trigault’s order” to refer to the alphabetical order, and “Trigault’s alphabetization” to the alphabetization to arrange syllables in the Liè Yīnyùn Pǔ.

Today, to alphabetize items implies to sort them in the order <a, b, c, d, e....>. It is not necessary to write all the 26 letters here because it is generally accepted that what follows

<e> is <f> and the last three letters are <x, y, z>. Trigault’s order is different. All letters for vowels (i.e., <a>, <e>, <i>, <o>, <u>) are moved to the beginning of the alphabets, and the consonants follow the vowels in a unique order. Figure 4.5 compares Trigault’s order and today’s conventional order of Roman alphabet. I am unable to explain the rationale with which Trigault made this alternation. Probably, Trigault moved the vowels to the beginning to

23 Today’s alphabetical order had its prototype in the Ugaritic Cuneiform Alphabet. Dated to 1300 BCE, the Ugaritic alphabet is the ancestor of the Roman alphabet. A tablet unearthed in 1949 shows the Ugaritic alphabetical order. The transliteration of this tablet reads:

a b g h d h w z ḥ ṭ y k š l m d n ẓ p ṣ q r t ġ t u s2

We can find <a> precedes <b> as in Roman alphabet, and the order of <k>, <l>, <m>, <n>, <p>, <q>, and <r>

is still retained today, if we ignore several interrupting letters. With this evidence, it is certain that today’s alphabetical order had been partially formed three millennia ago. Barry B. Powell, Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 157.

highlight their importance, for the vowels are the most frequently used letters in Chinese romanization. However, the order of consonants looks idiosyncratic and reveals no clue to explain it.

Trigault’s order becomes a strange feature in the Ulmoçu. The mnemonic principle of symbolic place-making requires the utilization of a pre-established, conventionalized order rather than introducing a new one. However, this deviation can be explained in the context of the early Sino-European encounter. When Trigault published the Ulmoçu for the Chinese literati, they did not know the Roman alphabet, so any alphabetical order could be the dominant order for alphabetization at this time.

This explanation implies that I assume that Trigault’s order in the Ulmoçu was the version that he transferred to Chinese literati. This speculation is verifiable through the

Darkened letters are not used in Chinese romanization.

Figure 4.5 Trigault’s rearrangement of the Roman alphabet. This figure compares the Roman letters in the common alphabetical order and the Chinese romanization in the Siju

Ulmoçu. Besides moving the vowels to the beginning, I find no clear pattern of adopting the

alphabetical order. Note that this figure ignores aspiration.

Yuǎnxi Qíqì Túshuō 遠西奇器圖說 (1627),

²⁴ the physics treatise delivered by Johann Terrenz Schreck in Chinese with Wáng Zhēng’s revision. In the Yuǎnxi Qíqì Túshuō, Wáng Zhēng marked the diagrams with the letters, which are arranged in the identical order to Trigault’s order in the Ulmoçu. In the Convention of the Yuǎnxi Qíqì Túshuō, Wáng Zhēng explained his reason to adopt the Roman alphabet:

The notation has to make use of western characters. The western characters look difficult to memorize at a first glance. However, as they are difficult to memorize, readers would consult the list [of the alphabets] to get them. Nevertheless, there are only twenty distinctive signs. They are neither troublesome nor difficult.²⁵

This remark indicates that the readers of Yuǎnxi Qíqì Túshuō have to be familiar with the Roman alphabet and their order. In fact, the alphabetical order adopted in the Yuenxi Qiqi

Tushuo is actually Trigault’s order appeared in the Ulmoçu (Figure 4.6). Because the Chinese

literati were not pre-occupied with a specific alphabetical order, they could acquaint Roman letters with any order through frequent consulting. The Ulmoçu lists the alphabet in Trigault’s order on many pages. This arrangement encourages readers to consult these alphabet lists for becoming familiar with the alphabet and Trigault’s order.

24 Manuscript in National Central Library. Call Number 307.4 06863.

25 Ibid. 號必用西字者。西字號，初似難記。然正因其難記，欲覽者怪而尋索，必求其得耳。況號

只二十，形象各異，又不甚煩不甚難乎。

Yuǎnxi Qíqì Túshuō

1627

Siju Ulmoçu

1626

Figure 4.6 A Comparison of the alphabets in Yuǎnxi Qíqì Túshuō 遠西奇器圖說 (left) and the Siju Ulmoçu 西儒耳目資 (right). The alphabetical orders are identical.

However, being familiar with Trigault’s order is not enough to be a skilled user of the

Ulmoçu, but a user is also required to understand Trigault’s alphabetization, because Trigault

did not simply arrange syllables in absolute alphabetization, which is the pattern applied in today’s English dictionaries as well as DeFrancis’s ABC Chinese-English Dictionary. Instead, Trigault classifies Chinese characters through a three-step procedure, which not only applies alphabetization but also employs tones and the length of letters to classify Chinese characters phonetically. This unique pattern involves three sequences: (1) the Roman alphabet in

Trigault’s order, (2) the five Chinese tones, and (3) the numbers of letters in one syllable.

Among these sequences, (1) and (2) have a designated order defined by Trigault, and (3) can also be ordered from small to large. Thus, Trigault had three sequences to arrange the

distinctive syllables of Chinese, and he applied these sequences to create subdivisions in which Chinese characters were placed. These subdivisions inherit the order from the three sequences and become the guidance for efficient collection and retrieval of Chinese characters. According to the analogy between the art of memory and lexicography, these subdivisions are like memory places arranged in a proper order. With these subdivisions, thousands of Chinese characters are grouped into smaller and smaller sets.

Classification of syllables into subdivisions requires three steps. The first step to create subdivisions for Chinese syllables, which I would call “the primary subdivision,” classifies Chinese characters by their finals, regardless of tones. The primary subdivision groups the Chinese characters into 50 subdivisions. All 50 finals are presented in the Yùnmǔ Mùlù 韻母 目錄, lit. ”The Table of Contents of Finals” and “the List of Finals” (Figure 4.7). This list serves as the table of contents of the Liè Yīnyùn Pǔ, and it is also the place to observe Trigault’s alphabetization applied in the primary subdivision. First, Trigault arranged the finals according to the length of finals. This step creates four subgroups that start with the five one-letter finals and 22 two-letter finals and 22 three-letter finals follow, and finally

comes the only four-letter final. Then, Trigault applied alphabetization to each subgroup of finals independently. That means, for example, the alphabetization of the two-letter finals does not affect the order of three-letter finals because the difference of length has classified them into two subgroups. Thus, two-letter finals always precede three-letter finals. Moreover, the alphabetization in the primary subdivision only involves five vowels and three ending sounds, namely <a>, <e>, <i>, <o>, <u>, <l>, <m>, and <n>. The result of the

alphabetization in the primary subdivision is shown in the following table:

Figure 4.7 The List of Finals in Liè Yīnyùn Pǔ Yùnmǔ Mùlù (Partial)

order ^{1 2 3 4 5} 一字元母

Yīzì yuánmǔ

Mothers sign a e i o u

order ^{6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13}

sign ai ao am an eu em en ia

order ^{14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21}

sign ie io iu im in oa oe ua

order ^{22 23 24 25 26 27}

二字子母

Èrzì zǐmǔ

Sons

sign ue ui uo ul um un

order ^{28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35}

sign eao eam iai iao iam ieu ien iue

order ^{36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43}

sign ium iun oai oei oam oan oen uai

order ^{44 45 46 47 48 49}

三字孫母

Sānzì sūnmǔ

Grandsons

sign uei uam uan uem uen uon

order ⁵⁰ 四字曾孫母

Sìzì zēngsūnmǔ

Grand-grandson sign iuen

Table 4.2 The result of Trigault’s alphabetization of finals

The next step, which I would call “the secondary subdivision,” groups the characters by their tones attached to the final. Trigault’s romanization has five tones, so each primary subdivision has five secondary subdivisions. Trigault sorted these five secondary subdivisions by the prescribed order: qīngpíng 清平, zhuópíng 濁平, shǎngshēng 上聲, qùshēng 去聲, and finally rùshēng 入聲. After the two steps of subdivision, a user can narrow range of search to several pages and greatly save the effort to flip around the pages for inquiry. Finally,

“the tertiary subdivision” deals with the combinations of 20 initials and the final in the particular subdivision. These combinations are Chinese syllables, which denote places to list homophonous Chinese characters. All these syllables are alphabetically arranged in Trigault’s order.

With these subdivisions, a user may narrow his scope step-by-step to find the character.

For example, if a user is looking for characters pronounced /kin̄/, he should first identify the final of this syllable, as Trigault recommended:

Now if you want to get the place of each sound, identify the final first. There is a method to identify finals. Final is what you hear when you lengthen a word and what resonates at the final. What resonates at the end of 江 jiāng is 央 iāng, and iāng must be the final of jiāng....all sounds follow this rule.²⁶

Then, the user opens the subdivision of/in/finals (created in the primary subdivision) and locates the Qingping Subdivision (created in the secondary subdivision), in which all characters rhyming in/in̄/ are placed. If the user is familiar with Trigault’s order, he would quickly focus on the place between <’ch> and <’k>, where the initial <k> is located. Finally,

26 Ulmoçu II, 3b-4b. 今欲得每音每韻之位，先察其母，察其母有道，凡念字聲長所聞之餘，響於末

者，母也。響於江音之末，央也。央音必是江音之母...萬音萬韻無不如此。The romanization in this quotation is in Pinyin because Trigault does not provide the Jesuit romanization here. The Jesuit romanization of this sample syllable is <kiām>

he reaches the subdivision of /kin̄/ (created in the tertiary subdivision) and finds 18 characters, including some common ones, such as <巾> “a strip of cloth,” <今> “now; today,” and <金>

“gold; money,” completing an inquiry in the Liè Yīnyùn Pǔ.

在文檔中 場所、影像、詞書編纂：金尼閣的教育背景如何影響《西儒耳目資》 (頁 101-109)