The Grammata Serica Recensa is a dictionary of Old Chinese

Old Chinese

The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....

 published by the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in 1957.

Bernard Karlgren made fundamental contributions to the study of the phonology of Middle

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

 and Old Chinese, which he called Ancient and Archaic Chinese respectively.
In the course of his study of the sound system of Old Chinese, Karlgren focused on the clues provided by phono-semantic compound characters.
His "homorganic principle", that the initials of characters sharing a phonetic component had a common point of articulation, has been central to subsequent studies of Old Chinese.
In 1923 he published his Analytic dictionary of Middle Chinese, grouping characters by phonetic series and drawing inferences about Old Chinese sounds.
An expanded dictionary including Karlgren's reconstructions in Old Chinese, the Grammata Serica, appeared in 1940.
An extensive revision, the Grammata Serica Recensa appeared in 1957, including the results of Karlgren's studies of pre-Han texts, as well as indicating tones, which were omitted in the first version.

Alrough Karlgren's Old Chinese reconstructions have been superseded, his comprehensive dictionary remains a valuable reference for students of Old Chinese.
As late as 1998 it was described as "the only good Chinese–English dictionary of Classical Chinese".
Supplements to the GSR continue to appear, remedying such defects as the limited indexing and obsolete reconstructions.
The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) project uses an electronic form of the GSR and has donated a mapping to Unicode, which is now included in the Unicode dataset.

Organization

Each numbered entry consists of a series of character

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s with a common phonetic element.
Characters within each entry are labelled by lowercase letters (excluding "w"), supplemented with prime symbols as required.
Some of these are ancient variant forms.
Each distinct character is given with pronunciation in Old Chinese

Old Chinese

The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....

, Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...

 and Modern Standard Chinese, as well as definitions from ancient sources.
An example entry is

(In the original the characters are handwritten at the top of each page separately from the text.)
Tones (omitted in the earlier Grammata Serica) are indicated in the Middle Chinese form by appending ":" (rising tone) or "-" (departing tone), with the level and entering tones unmarked.
The names of texts containing the various uses are abbreviated, here Shï for Shijing, Lunyü (The Analects), Tso for Zuo Zhuan

Zuo Zhuan

The Zuo Zhuan , sometimes translated as the Chronicle of Zuo or the Commentary of Zuo, is among the earliest Chinese works of narrative history and covers the period from 722 BCE to 468 BCE. It is one of the most important sources for understanding the history of the Spring and Autumn Period...

, Shu for Shujing and Yi for I Ching

I Ching

The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...

.

These entries are grouped according to the rhyme groups extracted by traditional Chinese scholarship from the rhyming practice of the Shijing, in accordance with the observation of Duan Yucai

Duan Yucai

Duan Yucai , courtesy name Ruoying was a Chinese philologist of the Qing Dynasty. He made great contributions to the study of Historical Chinese phonology, and is known for his annotated edition of Shuowen Jiezi.-Biography:...

 that characters in the same phonetic series fell in the same rhyme group.

Entries	Spelling	Rhyme group	Entries	Spelling	Rhyme group
1–31	-â	歌 (part)	697–765	-âng	陽
32–107	-o	魚 (part)	766–800	-âk	鐸
108–138	-u	侯 (part)	801–807	-âg	魚 (part)
139–267	-ân	元	808–843	-eng	耕
268–312	-ât	月	844–860	-ek	錫
313–348	-âd	祭	861–880	-eg	支/佳
349–360	-âr	歌 (part)	881–902	-əng	蒸
361–392	-en	真	903–935	-ək	職
393–411	-et	質	936–1001	-əg	之
412–415	-ed	脂	1002–1015	-ông	冬/中
416–485	-ən	文/諄	1016–1038	-ôk	覺/沃
486–507	-ət	物/術	1039–1116	-ôg	幽
508–540	-əd	微	1117–1128	-ok	藥
541–605	-ər		1129–1171	-og	宵
606–627	-âm	談	1172–1201	-ung	東
628–642	-âp	葉/盍	1202–1228	-uk	屋
643–674	-əm	侵	1229–1238	-ug	侯 (part)
675–696	-əp	緝

The radical

Radical (Chinese character)

A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...

index covers only the head character in each entry.