Chen Di


Chen Di , courtesy name: Jili, was a Chinese philologist, strategist, and traveler of the Ming dynasty. A native of Fuzhou, he was versed in both pen and sword. As a strategist, he served under Qi Jiguang and others for many years before retiring to occupy himself with studies and travel. He wrote an account of an expedition to Taiwan in his 1603 Dōng Fān Jì, providing one of the first descriptions of the island and its indigenous inhabitants.
As a philologist, Chen was the first to demonstrate that Old Chinese has its own phonological system, rejecting the then prevailing practice of xiéyīn . Encouraged by his senior Jiao Hong , he wrote Máoshī Gǔyīn Kǎo and Qūsòng Gǔyīnyì, in which he shows the ancient pronunciations of 650 characters. The results are based on painstaking analysis of the rhyming schemes in Shi Jing and other ancient rhymed texts, including I Ching and the poems of Qu Yuan. In his preface to the former work, Chen writes famously: "There is the past and the present; there is the north and the south. It is only inevitable that characters evolve, and sounds change."