Grammata Serica Recensa

Blurb

The Grammata Serica Recensa is a dictionary of Old Chinese published by the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in 1957.
Bernard Karlgren made fundamental contributions to the study of the phonology of Middle and Old Chinese, which he called Ancient and Archaic Chinese respectively. In the course of his study of the sound system of Old Chinese, Karlgren focused on the clues provided by phono-semantic compound characters. His "homorganic principle", that the initials of characters sharing a phonetic component had a common point of articulation, has been central to subsequent studies of Old Chinese. In 1923 he published his Analytic dictionary of Middle Chinese, grouping characters by phonetic series and drawing inferences about Old Chinese sounds. An expanded dictionary including Karlgren's reconstructions in Old Chinese, the Grammata Serica, appeared in 1940. An extensive revision, the Grammata Serica Recensa appeared in 1957, including the results of Karlgren's studies of pre-Han texts, as well as indicating tones, which were omitted in the first version.