A Study on the Illustrations of the Sinjajeon: An Important Stepping Stone for the Modern Korean Dictionary

Abstract

This paper seeks to study illustrations in the Sinjajeon 新字典 (1915), the “New Dictionary of Chinese Characters” created by the Joseon Gwangmunhoe 朝鮮光文會, which compiled and distributed Korean classics as part of an effort to promote knowledge of them. The illustrations were based on various sources, including ceremonial books, and reflect the academic culture in Korea of ritual thought (yehak 禮學), Jongmyo Royal Ancestral Rites (Jongmyo jerye 宗廟祭禮), Ritual Music for the Royal Ancestral Shrine (Jongmyo jeryeak 宗廟祭禮樂), and Ritual Music for the Confucian Shrine (Munmyo jeryeak 文廟祭禮樂 ). The illustrations in the Sinjajeon were intended to be innovative and modern, with some included in the actual text, a new method not found in Korean dictionaries at the time. The Sinjajeon thus made possible the development of modern dictionaries and their illustrations. The Sinjajeon illustrations are also useful as visual materials for understanding Sino-Korean characters. For this purpose, I focus on illustrations in the Sinjajeon to investigate which headwords were illustrated, and what this tells us about the historical context in which the dictionary was made.