Huyuan wrote General Rules for Rhyme at All Times and in All over the World(《古今中外音韻通例》) in the 1886A.D, and it is the assembly of Huyuan’s phonological theory. He employed phonology to make a detailed analysis on old Chinese sound, modern one and dialectal one. Besides, he also recorded dialectal accent characteristics in Yangze River and Huai River Districts, especially Nanking and Yangzhou, in late 19th century. It is a masterpiece outstanding in application of phonology and dialect investigation. The previous scholars mainly focused on analyzing the phonetic system of the Fifteen Phonology Map(十五總圖) and reached a general conclusion that it took the Jianghuai mandarin Hongchaopian as the basic dialectal accent. However, the researches rarely mentioned Huyuan’s achievements in dengyunxue(等韻學), archaic Chinese phonology and modern phonology.
The seven chapters of this thesis are divided into four topics, which include Huyuan’s Voice and Rhyme Theory, Archaic Chinese Phonology, Dialectology and Translatology. The most important characteristics of it is taking the phonology map as the basis of all voices and extending it to the research on ancient voice, dialectal voice and translation. Generally speaking, Huyuan had been extremely elaborate in the analysis of voice, and he was to some extent capable in dialectal accent investigation. However, he was limited by the lack of recording medium, correct cognition of diachronic and synchronic variation and he was influenced by Neo-Confucianism. All these factors lead him being unable to break away from the research scope of the phonology scholars in Qing dynasty, thus the research was incapable in competing with the western phonology theory later.