The Ziyuan (; or "Essays on Chinese Characters") was a Chinese dictionary attributed to the Eastern Jin Dynasty scholar Ge Hong. The original text was lost, and the small modern Ziyuan recension has 34 headwords, mostly Chinese Buddhist loanword terminology.
The Ziyuan is notable for having the first occurrence of the Chinese borrowing ta (; tÃÂ; t'a; "tower; pagoda"). Feng (2004:205) classifies ta as a "monosyllabic phonemic loanword," and notes: <blockquote>å¡Â/ta/=浮屠/futu/=æµ®å¾/futu/=ä½Âå¾/futu/=æ°æÂÂæ³¢/shudoupo/=å Âå©Â/doupo/ï¼ÂBuddhist tower: "å¡Â,ä½Âå Âä¹ [The ta is Buddhist tower]" (Ã¥ÂÂèÂÂ), "ä½Âä¹Âå±Âæµ®å¾ To build the Buddhist tower with nine levels" (æ°´ç»Â注), "å¡Â亦è¡è¨Â, ç¹å®ÂåºÂä¹Â. [ta comes from languages of Hu nationalities, it means tower.]" (éÂÂ书). It was borrowed from buddhastupa of Sanskrit. The process of pronunciation change is as follows: Buddhastupa stupa tupa tâÂÂap. </blockquote>