Yongle Dadian
The Yongle Encyclopedia ( Chinese 永樂大典 / 永乐大典 , Pinyin Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn ) is in the Yongle - era (1402-1424) of China's Ming Dynasty Resulting work, which as the most comprehensive encyclopedia of Chinese imperial period applies. It was created by over 3,000 scholars and completed in 1408 ; the work comprised 22,877 chapters in 11,095 fascicles . The space required for the manuscripts is said to have been 40 m³, which would correspond to a shelf length of well over 300 m.
Overview
The original manuscript of the Yongle encyclopedia kept at the imperial court was lost for unknown reasons; there is only one copy that has been mutilated and badly damaged over the course of the six centuries of its existence. Today only about 400 volumes exist worldwide, that is only about four percent of the complete works; 221 of them are in China. The Chinese National Library has been collecting remnants of the encyclopedia since 1912 and has been trying to restore the fragments since 2002 .
Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the original; there are four hypotheses:
- It was destroyed in a fire in Nanjing in 1449 ;
- it burned in the Palace of Heavenly Purity in the Forbidden City under the reign of Emperor Jiaqing during the Qing Dynasty ;
- it was destroyed with the Imperial Library ( Wenyuange ) in the Forbidden City at the end of the Ming Dynasty ;
- it was hidden.
See also: History and Development of the Encyclopedia
Web links
- Destruction of Chinese Books in the Peking Siege of 1900 (in English)
- In Search of the Yongle Encyclopedia ( Memento of February 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (in English)
- Chinabroadcast ( Memento from September 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Yongle Encyclopedia . World Digital Library. Retrieved January 24, 2013.