Beyond Phonetics: Xu Kai’s Conception of Jiajie in the Shuowen Jiezi Xizhuan

Abstract In the tenth century, the Southern Tang court official Xu Kai 徐鍇 (920–974) wrote the Shuowen jiezi xizhuan 説文解字繫傳, which is the first known commentary on the Shuowen jiezi 説文解字. In his commentary, we find the first elaborate discussion of the liushu 六書 (“six scripts”) categories in Chinese lexicography. From the vantage point of the jiajie 假借 (lit. “borrowing and lending”), this paper explores Xu Kai’s study of the Chinese script. Specifically, it examines how Xu Kai expands upon Xu Shen’s work in the Shuowen by providing a more comprehensive account of the Chinese script beyond its formative stage. Furthermore, this paper argues that Xu Kai’s understanding and handling of the jiajie are closely linked to his notion of the Chinese script as imbued with moral and cosmological meaning. This emphasis on the Chinese script’s philosophical significance – which derives from the close relationship between character structures and natural patterns – leads Xu Kai to highlight the Chinese characters’ semantic aspects and downplay phonetic borrowing. Therefore, Xu Kai draws a sharp distinction between two types of jiajie: one which corresponds to semantic extension, which he associates with “men of wisdom”, and another which corresponds to phonetic borrowing, which he associates with “men of shallow understanding”. Throughout his analysis of individual characters, Xu Kai attempts to show how new meanings can develop in a logical fashion without reliance on phonetic borrowing. At the same time, he demonstrates how borrowing based only on phonetic connections typically leads to confusion and textual distortion.