Xiaoxue 小學, Lexicography and "Lesser Learning"

The literary type of lexicography (xiaoxue lei 小學類), the "lesser learning", is a sub-category to the literary category of Confucian Classics (jingbu 經部) in the imperial series Siku quanshu 四庫全書.

The term xiaoxue originally designated the six minor or "trivial" arts (liuyi 六藝), namely rituals, music, shooting, charioteering, writing, and arithmetics. From the Han period 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) on it became a specific term for the study of Chinese characters and their meaning.

Later on, during the Tang period 唐 (618-907), the discipline of lexicography was divided into the branches of glyphology - investigating the shape of characters (wenzi 文字) -, phonetics - making research about the pronunciation (yinyun 音韻) -, and etymology - looking for the original and modern meanings of characters (xungu 訓詁). All these fields included the study of bronze and stone inscriptions, seal carvings and calligraphy and soon developed into a discipline laying the base for all other studies.

The term xiaoxue thus has also the connotation of "elementary learning", a field which is normally designated with the words mengxue 蒙學, tongxue 童學, tongmeng 童蒙, dizizhi 弟子職 or youyi 幼儀.

The compilers of the Siku quanshu put the instruction on behaviour into the section of Confucian treatises, books on calligraphy into the arts section, and the books on elementary learning into the stories or encyclopaedias sections.

The three fields of lexicographic studies are each derived from one leading book: etymology (xungu 訓詁, 12 books) from the Erya 爾雅, which is included in the canon of the Confucian Classics, glyphology (zishu 字書, 36 books) from the Shuowen jiezi 說文解文, and phonology (yunshu 韻書, 33 books) from the book Guangyun 廣韻.

The lexicographical section of the Siku quanshu includes 81 books.