一切經音義 84.86

84.86

Crowd of petty scribes (諝徒; [諝 is] xi-yu fan; Zheng's commentary on the Rites of Zhou says: 'Xu is an appellation for talent and intellect.' The Shuowen gives it with the 'speech' radical and phonetic xu. In the treatise it is written as this 胥, meaning clerk or scribe; this is visual similarity and not the intended meaning).