The Fāngyán 方言 ('Dialect[s]' or 'Topolect[s]'), usually attributed to Yáng Xióng 揚雄 (53 BCE–18 CE), a famous fù 賦-poet and philosopher, is a collection of dialectal and regional (including non-sinitic) expressions compiled during the end of the Western Hàn period (206 BCE–9 CE, Norman 1988:185). It is the first attested study on linguistic geography and dialectolog…