Misquoting the ancients - The Kangxi zidian

The Kangxi zidian (or Kangxi Dictionary) is without question the most influential Chinese dictionary ever. Since it was first published in 1716, it has been at the foundation of every new dictionary project. Even in the 21st century, new editions come out almost annually, and most online dictionaries continue to cite its definitions and examples. Interestingly, the dictionary contained thousands of mistakes, which were subsequently corrected by a series of Chinese and Japanese scholars. Among the most common mistakes were the misattributed or imprecise quotations from primary sources, including the Confucian Classics. In this video, I look at the possible reasons for the misquotations, arguing that the problem was not that they quoted their sources incorrectly but that they did this through intermediary texts, such as more recent encyclopedias. If the encyclopedia misquoted the primary source, the editors of the Kangxi zidian adopted the quotation along with the mistake. If you are interested in this phenomenon and want to read about it in more detail, please read my article about this: Imre Galambos, “Misquoting the Ancients: Editorial Practices in the Kangxi zidian,” Historiographia Linguistica, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00154.gal ---Video's Table of Contents--- 00:00 The Kangxi Dictionary 03:21 Success story 07:08 Correcting the mistakes 11:00 Mistakes of attribution 14:48 Inaccurate quotations