Yǒnglè Encyclopedia

The Yongle Encyclopedia (traditional Chinese: 永樂大典; simplified Chinese: 永乐大典; pinyin: Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn; Wade-Giles: < i>Yung-lo Ta-tien; lit. "Great Canon of Yongle") is a largely lost Chinese leishu encyclopedia commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1403 and completed in 1408. It consisted of 22,937 manuscript scrolls or chapters, in 11,095 volumes. Fewer than 400 volumes survive today, comprising about 800 chapters (scrolls), or 3.5% of the original work. Most of it was lost in the second half of the 19th century, in the middle of the Western attacks and social unrest. Its vast scope and size made it the largest general encyclopedia in the world until it was surpassed by Wikipedia in late 2007, almost six centuries later.

Background

Although known for his military achievements, the Yongle Emperor was also an intellectual who enjoyed reading. His love of research led him to develop the idea of classifying literary works into a reference encyclopedia, in order to to preserve rare books and simplify research. Emperor Yongle's transformation of Hanlin Academy was instrumental in this endeavor. Before his reign, the Hanlin Academy was responsible for various clerical tasks, such as writing proclamations and edicts. Emperor Yongle decided to raise the status of the Hanlin Academy and began selecting only the highest-ranking recruits for the academy. Administrative tasks were relegated to imperial officials, while the Hanlin Academy, now filled with elite scholars, began working on literary projects for the Emperor.

Development

The Yongle Dadian was commissioned by the Yongle Emperor (1402-1424) and completed in 1408. In 1404, a year after the work was commissioned, a team of 100 scholars, mostly from the Hanlin Academy, completed a manuscript called Complete Work of Literature. The Yongle Emperor rejected this work and insisted on adding other volumes. In 1405, under the Yongle Emperor, the number of scholars increased to 2,169. Scholars were sent throughout China to find books and expand the encyclopedia. Additionally, the Yongle Emperor assigned his personal advisor, Dao Yan, a monk, and Liu Jichi, the vice minister of punishments, as co-editors of the encyclopedia, supporting Yao Guangxiao. Scholars spent four years compiling the leishu encyclopedia, under the direction of general editor Yao Guangxiao.

Scholars incorporated 8,000 texts from ancient times to the early Ming Dynasty. Many topics were covered, such as agriculture, art, astronomy, theatre, geology, history, literature, medicine, natural sciences, religion and technology, as well as descriptions of unusual natural events.

The encyclopedia was completed in 1408 at the Guozijian (Imperial Academy) of Nanking (now Nanking University). It consisted of 22,937 manuscript scrolls or chapters, in 11,095 volumes, occupying about 40 cubic meters (1,400 cubic feet) and used 370 million Chinese characters, the equivalent of a quarter of a billion words in English (about six times more than the Encyclopedia Britannica). It was designed to include everything that had been written about the Confucian canon, as well as all history, philosophy, arts and sciences. It was a massive compilation of excerpts and works from all Chinese literature and knowledge. The Yongle Emperor was so pleased with the finished encyclopedia that he named it after his reign, and personally wrote a lengthy preface stressing the importance of preserving the works.

Style

The physical appearance of the encyclopedia differed from any other Chinese encyclopedia of the time. It was larger in size, used special paper, and was bound in a "wrapped spine" (包背裝, bao bei zhuang). The use of red ink for titles and authors, an ink reserved exclusively for the emperor, helped confirm that the volumes were of royal production. Each volume was protected by a hardcover wrapped in yellow silk. The encyclopedia was not arranged by topic, like other encyclopedias, but by 洪武正韻 (Hongwu zhengyun), a system in which characters are arranged phonetically and rhythmically. Using this system helped the reader find specific entries easily.. Although book printing already existed in the Ming Dynasty, the Yongle Encyclopedia was exclusively handwritten. Each manuscript entry was a compilation of existing literature, some of which came from rare and delicate texts. The importance of the Yongle Encyclopedia lay in the preservation of these texts and the large number of topics it covered.

Welcome

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, scholars began to question the Yongle Emperor's motives for not commissioning more copies of the encyclopedia, rather than keeping them. Some scholars, such as Sun Chengze, a Qin scholar, theorized that the Yongle Emperor used the literary project for political reasons. At that time, Neo-Confucians refused to take civil service examinations or participate in any imperial duties, due to the Yongle Emperor's violent usurpation of the throne. The Yongle Emperor's literary enterprise did attract the attention of these scholars, who eventually joined the project. As the Yongle Emperor did not want a strictly Confucian point of view for the encyclopedia, non-Confucian scholars were also included, contributing to the Buddhist sections., Taoist, and divination of the encyclopedia. The inclusion of these topics intensified scrutiny against the Yongle Emperor among Neo-Confucians, who believed that the encyclopedia was nothing more than "wheat and chaff. However, Despite varying opinions, the encyclopedia is generally considered an invaluable contribution to preserving a wide range of Chinese historical works, many of which would otherwise be lost.

Disappearance

The Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn was not printed for the general public because the treasury had run out of funds when it was completed in 1408. It was placed in Wenyuan Ge (文淵 閣) in Nanking until 1421, when the Yongle Empire moved the capital to Beijing and placed the Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn in the Forbidden City. In 1557, during the reign of Emperor Jiajing, the encyclopedia was narrowly saved. of a fire that burned three palaces in the Forbidden City. The Jiajing Emperor commissioned a manuscript copy in 1562, which was completed in 1567. The original copy was later lost. There are three main hypotheses about its disappearance, but no conclusion was reached:

• Destroyed at the end of the Ming dynasty. Li Zicheng, rebel leader, defeated the Ming dynasty in 1644 and took the capital Ming, Beijing. A few months later, he was defeated by the coalition of Wu Sangui and Dorgon. Li burned the Forbidden City when he retired from Beijing. The " Engagement " It may have been destroyed in that fire.
• Buried with Emperor Jiajing. The moment when Emperor Jiajing was buried was very close to the time of the completion of the copy of the manuscript. Emperor Jiajing died in December 1566, but was buried three months later in March 1567. One possibility is that they were waiting for the manuscript to be completed.
• Burned in the Qianqing Palace fire.

The original manuscript of the Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn was almost completely lost at the end of the Ming dynasty, but 90% of the 1567 manuscript survived until the Second Opium War in the Qing dynasty. In 1860, the Anglo-French invasion of Peking caused a major fire and looting of the city, and British and French soldiers took large parts of the manuscript as souvenirs. By 1875, 5,000 volumes remained, less than half of the original, which was reduced to 800 in 1894. During the Boxer Rebellion and the occupation of Peking by the Eight Nations Alliance in 1900, hundreds of volumes were taken by Allied soldiers, and many were destroyed in the fire at Hanlin Academy. Only 60 volumes remained in Beijing.

News

The most complete collection is preserved in the National Library of China, in Beijing, with 221 volumes. The next largest collection is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, with 62 volumes. In 2007 the National Library of China reissued the Yongle Encyclopedia. In May 2019 an exhibition was held in Beijing in which reproductions of plates from the Yongle Encyclopedia.

Sections of the Yongle Encyclopedia (sections 10.270 and 10.271) are located at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

51 volumes are located in the United Kingdom, in the British Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and the Cambridge University Library; the United States Library of Congress has 41 volumes; Cornell University Library has 6 volumes; and 5 volumes are found in various libraries in Germany.

Two volumes were sold at auction in Paris on July 7, 2020, for €8 million.

Chronology

• 1408: The encyclopedia is finished, with 22877 volumes manuscript in 11095 books.
• 1562: It almost burns. A copy of the encyclopedia is made.
• 1875: 5,000 books survive.
• 1894: 800 books survive.
• 1900: It is looted, 400 books survive and spread around the world.