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In:Basilio Brollo’s Dictionarium sinico-latinum (Chinese-Latin dictionary): A critical edition of the manuscript Rinuccini 22e (Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana)
Gabriele Tola
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 134] 2026
► pp. 109–127

Chapter 7
Linguistic aspects of rice terminology

A preliminary study on rice cultivation in Brollo’s Dictionarium sinico-latinum

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Abstract
This chapter addresses the linguistic and sociocultural insights into rice cultivation up to seventeenth-century China as gleaned from Brollo’s dictionary, further detailing the associated agricultural practices.
It is divided into four sections. The first section, through an introduction to rice cultivation and its relevance to Chinese history from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, clarifies the sociocultural context of Brollo’s dictionary and offers a glimpse into the agricultural practices as reflected in the dictionary. The second section briefly delves into the overview of the linguistic terminology related to rice and its cultivation in the same period, in order to prepare and better orient the reader to the research focus in the third and in the final section. In the third section, after an accurate explanation of the process of digitalisation of the dictionary, the main features of the database, the operational modes, and the query methods for it, the authors focus on the entries “oriza” as reflected in Brollo’s work. In the fourth section, some case studies have been illustrated, specifically related to rice varieties as mentioned in Brollo’s dictionary.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The economic significance of rice in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries
    • 2.1The introduction of Champa rice and its sociocultural impact
  • 3.Rice varieties and different terminology: An overview
  • 4.Analysis of the terms related to rice in Brollo’s dictionary
  • 5.Case studies
    • 5.1Qin 秦
    • 5.2Zong 糉
    • 5.3Xian 秈
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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