214 KangXi Radicals

The second Qing Emperor KangXi (reigned. 1662 - 1722) commisioned the compilation of a dictionary of chinese characters. The work took about five years to complete, and in 1716 appeared the KangXi ZiDian or KangXi's Character Dictionary. It collected a total of 47,035 character grouped under 214 "bushou" (section headings), widely known as 'radicals'. This radicals system was first popularised a century earlier, in the work known as ZiHui or 'Character Lexicon' but it's popularity only grew with the new KangXi dictionary due to the ease with which one can locate characters and access the information within it, and it has become practice to call the bushou Kangxi radicals.

The 214 bushou are listed below, with examples of their usage in the composition of hanzi. Note the positioning of the radicals themselves, and the variant forms they take on.

We see that the radicals can be positioned between components, above, below, to the sides, or to one corner. Some are split with components inserted within, others look different from their radicals form.

By the time that the KangXi Dictionary was compiled, many variant forms of characters had been created. In the next page, we shall see more variants, this time, characters which can be used interchangeably.

This page was created on Sunday 11th February 2001
and last updated on Thursday 22nd February 2001.