The book discusses three major topics: 1.Putting the research object against the background of the imperial examination of the Southern Song Dynasty and investigating its development and evolution, the book focuses on the evolution, emendation and supplement of official published rhyme books in the Song Dynasty. 2. TakingLi Bu Yun Lue with Emendation and Annotation(Li)as the research subject and regarding its characteristics revealing as the starting point to solve the related problems. Therefore, the book can clarifyLi’s style evolution, each supplement and the relationship with relevant rhyme books; 3. TakingGuangyun(《广韵》) andJiyun(《集韵》)as references, the book can comprehensively and systematically investigate the research objects and broaden the research domain.
The book, from the perspective of the history of rhyme books of the Song Dynasty and based on its historical documents, rectifies predecessors’ biased understanding of the academic value ofLi.With the study of the history of phonology, the book intensively discusses rhymes of “yi-qie”, “e-qie” and variant pronunciation, which can indicates the standard pronunciation of the Song Dynasty as well as the Chu-qu dialect. Through the comparison with modern pronunciation of the dialect, the book provides precious materials for the study of the history of the Chu-qu dialect. The book also, relying on the phonetic evolution of the new rhyme characters and variant pronunciation and combining achievements of philology and critical interpretation of ancient texts, probes into reasons of the additions of new rhyme characters and variant pronunciations and excavates the phonetic basis of their production and existence to make reasonable explanation for specific phonetic phenomena.
There are two guiding philosophies supporting the book:
1. Distinguishing clearly differences and similarities between different versions ofLiand being clear about their origins, which is of great significance to comprehensively revealing logics and historical facts of the development of rhyme books for imperial examination and clearly show their whole evolution traces. 2. Correcting the biased judgement that the value of rhyme books relies on how many pronunciations involved in.