Classical dictionaries Rüdenberg/Stange and Couvreur

[Kobo-Daishi]

Zeppa wrote:

although my blog is coming up to its tenth anniversary

Uh...where's your blog?

Though I haven't posted anything to my blog in ages, at least it's listed in my signature.

I was going to start blogging again this year after finding the password lost for years, but, then I had a catastrophic hard drive failure.

It's taken most of my time to try to regain everything lost.

Kobo.

[Zeppa]

So I attach them here, do I?

[Kobo-Daishi]

Thanks for the scans.

You're right. I won't be using them for my blog.

Kobo.

[Zeppa]

My blog has nothing to do with Chinese. It's at transblawg.eu

I do know the photos are not as good as scans, but I hope you appreciate the effort I put in for you in a short space of time. They are absolutely good enough for you to assess the dictionaries. I don't want to exacerbate my back problems by carrying these dictionaries around outside the room. Think about that while you're young and fit!

[Kobo-Daishi]

I do appreciate your effort, hence the thank you in my last post.

I'm not using your images not because of the quality, but, because of the content. They don't match what I'm going to post.

As for the "young and fit", you should have got to me 20 or 30 years ago.

Kobo.

[Zeppa]

OK, sorry to have taken it the wrong way. I would also appreciate the extracts you posted if I knew more Chinese!

The Grand Ricci has come out on Pleco now, at least in a beta version.

[White Whirlwind]

In my experience the best "Classical dictionaries" are simply the best overall dictionaries (the Hanyu dacidian 漢語大詞典 and the Hanyu dazidian 漢語大字典). I don't think anything has yet surpassed the Morohashi (for the uninitiated: Morohashi Tetsuji's Dai Kan-Wa Jiten 大漢和辞典, 1955), which itself was the basis for the Hanyu dacidian.

For specifically Classical dictionaries, the most useful one I've used is Wang Li's (Wang Li gu Hanyu zidian 王力古漢語字典).

[OneEye]

It was the 中文大辭典 that was based on Morohashi, not the 漢語大詞典. But yes, the Morohashi is indeed the most comprehensive dictionary out there. The trouble for most of us is, of course, that it's bilingual (Chinese-Japanese).

I second the recommendation for 王力's 《王力古漢語字典》, as well as his 《古漢語常用字字典》, his 《古代漢語》, and his 《中國古代文化常識》.