The Jijiupian is a Chinese character primer that was compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Shi You around 40 BCE. Similar to an abecedarium, it contains a series of orthographic word lists, categorized according to character radical, and briefly explained in rhymed lines. In the Qin and Han dynasties, several similar othographic primers were in circulation, such as Cangjiepian, but the Jijiupian is the only one that survived for two millennia.
Title
The Jíjiùpiān "Quickly Master [Character] Chapters" is also called the Jíjiùzhāng 急就章 "Quickly Master [Character] Sections" and simply Jíjiù 急就.
The title Jíjiùpiān uses the word piān 篇, which is attested in Han dynasty texts with the meaning of "book, written document" (such as in the Hanshu 漢書 chapter on Wu Di, "著之於篇，朕親覽焉。"). Several other Chinese dictionary titles use pian, for example, the (c. 500? BCE) Shizhoupian "Historian Zhou's Chapters" (c. 220 BCE) Cangjiepian "Cangjie's Chapters" (c. 543) Yupian "Jade Chapters", and (1066) Leipian "Categorized Chapters".
Jíjiù has several possible interpretations, depending on the meanings of jí 急 "urgent; hurrying; rapid; fast; hasty; distress" and jiù 就 "proceed; advance; accomplish; achieve; accomplish; finish". The Science and Civilisation in China collaborators Joseph Needham, Lu Gwei-djen, and Huang Hsing-Tsung say, "One hardly knows how to render its title, unless 'Handy Primer'." Thomas Lee translates jijiu as "quickly getting to". The Chinese lexicographers Heming Yong and Jing Peng say that jijiu 急就 "instant success" suggested "fast learning", as seen in the first words of the Jijiupian preface. Quickly learn the rarely seen drinking vessels and many different things: listing the names of objects, people, and family names; classify them into different sections so that they will not be easily mixed up. Occasional consultation will definitely be a great delight—for it is quick to retrieve, and, if hard effort is put into it, there will surely be surprising rewards. Please follow the guidelines in each chapter. This passage is notably the earliest recorded discussion of how to classify characters into different textual sections.
While the title is usually transliterated Jijiupian, Chi-chiu-p'ien, etc., some English translations are: Handy Primer Quick Access [to Characters] Quick mastery of the characters The Instant Primer Primer for Quickly Learning Chinese Characters For Urgent Use Wood-Prism Bundles for Rapid Attainment
History
The first reference to the Jijiupian and Shi You 史游 is found in the Yiwenzhi "Treatise on Literature" bibliographical section of the (111 CE) Hanshu "Book of Han", listed among early dictionaries: "In the time of Emperor Yuan of Han (r. 48-33 BCE), the court scholar Shi You composed the Jijiupian" (元帝时黄门令史游作急就篇). This section also uses the Jijiu title; Jijiu yipian 急就一篇 "The Jijiu, in one chapter".
In the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-25 CE), the teaching of characters was emphasized, and scholars compiled other character primers and wordbooks besides the Jijiupian, for instance, the Fanjiangpian 凡將篇 The General Primer by Sima Xiangru (c. 179 – 117 BCE) and 32-7 BCE Yuanshangpian 元尚篇 The Yuanshang Primer by Li Zhang 李長, both of which are lost works. These proto-dictionaries facilitated the development of Chinese xiǎoxué 小學 "minor learning; pre-modern 'linguistics'; philology" (which now means "primary school"), and laid the academic foundation for the compilation of wordbooks, vocabularies, and dictionaries. The Han dynasty experienced the transition of Chinese lexicography from wordlists and glossaries to character dictionaries and word dictionaries. The Jijiupian generalized the practice of logically classifying characters into different sections, which inspired the "macro-level stylistic format of the Chinese dictionary".
From the Han to the Six Dynasties (220-589), the most popular character textbook was the Jijiupian. During the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-589), several other popular textbooks appeared, such as the Qianziwen "Thousand Characters Text", Baijiaxing "Myriad Family Surnames", and Sanzijing "Three-character Classic". By the Tang, the Jijiupian had been replaced by the Qianziwen and Baijiaxing, both of which were deliberately written so that few characters they contain occur more than once. They were memorized generation after generation for over 1,000 years. In the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) and Qing dynasty (1644-1912), the most popular primer was the Sanzijing. Contemporary Chinese scholarship admires the Jijiupian because of its high factual content as contrasted with the much more moralistic tendencies of similar later works such as the Sanzijing.