Abstract:

The four-corner decimal indexing, the most important way in which Chinese characters are arranged after the indexing systems by radicals and strokes, was developed in the early 1900s when there was a lexicographic and cultural boom in China. However, with the popularization of arranging Chinese characters according to the phonetic order and the employment of indexes, few people know the four-corner system, which is closely related to CiYuan, an etymological Chinese dictionary, and other important dictionaries in the Chinese lexicographic tradition. This paper proposes that the four-corner decimal indexing should play its deserved role at the present time when the problem of inconsistencies between the old and new schemes is solved and the old and new forms of characters are standardized.