"Yongle Dadian" is the earliest encyclopedia-style book in Chinese history (and the world). It was compiled during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty and took six years to complete. It preserves the content of Chinese history, geography, literature and art, philosophy, religion and other encyclopedia documents before the 14th century. It was compiled more than 300 years earlier than the encyclopedia compiled by Diderot in France and the Encyclopedia Britannica in Britain. It is the most famous large-scale ancient classic in China.
Early Dictionary
"Yongle Dadian" has a total of 22,877 volumes, 60 volumes of catalogue, and is divided into 10,095 volumes. The whole book has about 370 million words. The content of "Yongle Dadian" is extensive and the scale of the book is large, far exceeding all similar books compiled in the previous dynasties. Even the largest similar book compiled in the Qing Dynasty, "Ancient and Modern Books Collection", only has 10,000 volumes and 160 million words. Not even half of "Yongle Dadian". Moreover, the scale of "Yongle Dadian" cannot be compared with that of contemporary Western classics.
According to rough statistics, there are as many as 7,000 or 8,000 kinds of ancient classics selected and preserved in "Yongle Dadian". Five or six times the number of books such as "Gui", the large-scale series "Sikuquanshu" compiled in the Qing Dynasty only contains more than 3,000 books.
The compilation and description of "Yongle Dadian" were all copied stroke by stroke by calligraphers using the official regular script of the Ming Dynasty - Guange style. The landscape objects painted in "Yongle Dadian" all use line drawing techniques, which are exquisite and delicate. The compilation and copying of "Yongle Dadian" took more than 2,000 people five years to complete. After the book was completed, it took another two years to finalize and copy it. On average, as many as 500,000 words were copied every day.
Many of the calligraphers in the Qing Dynasty were famous calligraphers from various places. Since the existing "Yongle Dadian" was re-recorded during the Jiajing period, the original calligraphy traces from the Yongle period no longer exist. After seeing the Yongle edition, Xu Jie, who was in charge of the re-recording work during the Jiajing period, once praised that the old edition was so well-reproduced that it is difficult to find such a calligrapher now. Judging from the Jiajing reprint, the calligraphy of "Yongle Dadian" is relatively slender, similar to European calligraphy, and looks smooth and straight. In comparison, the pavilion style of the Qing Dynasty appears more rounded. Of course, there are also some calligraphers with strong craftsmanship in "Yongle Dadian", so one cannot judge ten from one.
This is the statue of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva drawn with the same line drawing technique
"Yongle Dadian" has gone through several catastrophes, and there are not many parts left in the world, only 100% of the whole remains. One or two, more parts have been lost in the long river of history. But from the only remaining book fragments, we can still see the exquisite and realistic illustrations. As the "Zheng He Treasure Ship" that carries a portrayal of historical civilization and human progress, it truly reflects the advanced level of the described society, humanistic conditions and natural information, and inspires people's instinctive impulse to explore and hunt for treasures.
The complete "Yongle Dadian" no longer exists, but we can still get a glimpse of its majestic, vast and upright figure and amazing achievements from other classics and records. Of course, this also makes us regret its incompleteness even more.
Forbidden City