《説文》“孌、慕也”辨

On the Shuo Wen Glossary “luan, mu ye”（孌，慕也）

Abstract

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.

《説文》有“孌”字，訓爲慕；段玉裁進一步把“孌、戀”視爲古今字。但古籍中以“孌”表示戀/慕的用例却未見，《説文》所訓成爲孤證。細檢《説文》，發現“孌”在兩個字目下出現，與全書通例不符；但另一方面，古籍中常見的戀字，在《説文》却無立目，可見“孌”當爲“戀”之誤。

The graph luan 孌 is glossed as “longing” in the Shuo Wen, and Duan Yu Cai further takes luan 孌and luan戀 as allographs. But there is no evidence in the literature that luan 孌 is ever used in the sense of longing. Upon close scrutiny, it is discovered that, in violation of the common practice, luan 孌 is listed under two entries in the Shuo Wen while the extensively used luan 戀is missing. It is argued that luan孌 is mistaken for luan 戀 as a result of corpus corruption.