东汉著名学者许慎于西元100年（ 东汉和帝永元十一年） 编著了中国历史上第一本字典《说文解字》(Shuo Wen Jie Tzi)， 其子许冲将这本著作于西元121年献给朝廷。中国文字的奥妙在于汉字的形体是由不同的笔画结构而成的，许慎将这些不同的字形结构取出相同的部位作为查字的依据，我们称之为部首，所以《说文解字》全书是以部首排列，共分540个部首，原文以小篆体(small seal script)书写。
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相关连结
1. To understand the historical context in which Shyu-Shen created the first Chinese dictionary you may want to read more about the Han Dynasty at the UCLA Silk Road site.
2. The Consortium for Language Learning and Composition at Humboldt State in Arcata, California has a fine page about Chinese orthography in which Shyu-Shen (Xu Shen) is mentioned.
3. Set your web browser's text encoding setting to "Traditional Chinese Big5" and check out the essay by Xie Guanghui describing Chinese characters and the theory of the origin of Chinese characters mentioned by Shyu-Shen (Xu Shen).
