Hi Suzanne

> > > I'm not sure, but I think the very first one was
> > > created by a group of drunken scholars under the
> > > (Northern? Southern?) Song dynasty.
>
> However, the rhyme tables date back even earlier.
>
> "The language of around 600 AD

<...>

> codified in the Qieyun (601 AD)"

Here's the story, from SR RAMSEY, The Languages of
China, Princeton University Press, 1987, page 116:

"Our history of the sounds of Chinese begins in AD 601
, when the celebrated rhyming and pronouncing
dictionary _Qieyun_ was completed. [...]
In his preface, the compiler Lu Fayan describes how
_Qieyun_ was created: 'Once about fifteen or twenty
years ago Liu Zhen and others --in all eight persons--
came to visit me and stayed the night. When it grew
late and we had been drinking wine for most of the
evening, we began discussing the sounds and the
rhymes. (...] we discussed the rights and wrongs of
the North and the South [...] then Compiler Wei said
to me, "Up to now we have been talking and arguing and
all the questionable points have been resolved. Why
don't we write down what we have said? [...]". So
under the candlelight I took up my brush and jotted
down an outline [...]'.
[...] What made _Qieyun_ useful as an aid to
pronunciation was the fact that it contained a system
for 'spelling' the readings of characters. This
system, called _fanqie_ in Chinese, is one in which
the reading of a character is indicated by using two
other, presumably known, characters. The first or
upper character represents the initial consonant, and
the second or lower character represents the rest of
the syllable -- the 'final' and its tone."

G.

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