Taiping Yulan | |||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 《太平御覽》 | ||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 《太平御览》 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | Imperial Reader of the Era of Great Peace | ||||||||||||
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The Taiping Yulan,translated as the Imperial Reader or Readings of the Taiping Era ,is a massive Chinese leishu encyclopedia compiled by a team of scholars from 977 to 983. It was commissioned by the imperial court of the Song dynasty during the first era of the reign of Emperor Taizong. It is divided into 1,000 volumes and 55 sections,which consisted of about 4.7 million Chinese characters. It included citations from about 2,579 different kinds of documents spanning from books,poetry,odes,proverbs,steles to miscellaneous works. After its completion,the Emperor Taizong is said to have finished reading it within a year,going through 3 volumes per day. It is considered one of the Four Great Books of Song .
The team who compiled the Taiping Yulan includes:Tang Yue (湯悅),Zhang Wei (張洎),Xu Xuan (徐鉉),Song Bai (宋白),Xu Yongbin (徐用賓),Chen E (陳鄂),Wu Shu (吳淑),Shu Ya (舒雅),LüWenzhong (吕文仲),Ruan Sidao (阮思道),Hu Meng (扈蒙),Li Fang (李昉),and others.
It is one of the sources used by Ming and Qing scholars to reconstruct the lost Record of the Seasons of Jingchu . [1]
One such copy of the Taiping Yulan is held at Tōfuku-ji in Kyoto,Japan. In 1244,Enni was approved by the Song government to bring back 103 volumes of the encyclopedia,and later on,an additional 10 volumes were brought in for circulation amongst Japanese monks. The 103 volumes are now classified as a National Treasure. [2] [3]
In 2024,a grant from the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Yomiuri Shimbun will help conserve and restore the Tōfuku-ji encyclopedia,which is the only 1000 volume version to survive from the Song Dynasty. [4]
Wang Xizhi was a Chinese politician and writer from the Jin dynasty (266–420) known for his mastery of Chinese calligraphy. He is often regarded as the greatest calligrapher in Chinese history. His most famous work,composed in 353,is the Lantingji xu.
Southern Tang was a dynastic state of China that existed during Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Located in southern China,the Southern Tang proclaimed itself to be the successor of the Tang dynasty. The capital was located at Nanjing in present-day Jiangsu Province. At its territorial peak in 951,the Southern Tang controlled the whole of modern Jiangxi,and portions of Anhui,Fujian,Hubei,Hunan,and Jiangsu provinces.
The Siku Quanshu,literally the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries,is a Chinese encyclopedia commissioned during the Qing dynasty by the Qianlong Emperor. Commissioned in 1772 and completed in 1782,the Siku quanshu is the largest collection of books in imperial Chinese history,comprising 36,381 volumes,79,337 manuscript rolls,2.3 million pages,and about 997 million words. The complete encyclopedia contains an annotated catalogue of 10,680 titles along with a compendiums of 3,593 titles. The Siku Quanshu surpassed the 1403 Yongle Encyclopedia created by the previous Ming dynasty,which had been China's largest encyclopedia. Complete copies of the Siku Quanshu are held at the National Library of China in Beijing,the National Palace Museum in Taipei,the Gansu Library in Lanzhou,and the Zhejiang Library in Hangzhou.
The Book of Song is a historical text of the Liu Song dynasty of the Southern Dynasties of China. It covers history from 420 to 479,and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories,a traditional collection of historical records. It was written in 492–493 by Shen Yue from the Southern Qi dynasty (479–502).
The Four Great Books of Song was compiled by a team of scholars during the Song dynasty (960–1279). The term was coined after the last book was finished during the 11th century. The four encyclopedias were published and intended to collect the whole knowledge of the new state.
Cefu Yuangui (冊府元龜) is the largest leishu (encyclopedia) compiled during the Chinese Song dynasty (AD 960–1279). It was the last of the Four Great Books of Song,the previous three having been published in the 10th century.
Chen Dao,courtesy name Shuzhi,was a military general of the state of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period of China. He previously served under the warlord Liu Bei,the founding emperor of Shu Han,in the late Eastern Han dynasty.
The Taiping Guangji,sometimes translated as the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era,or Extensive Records of the Taiping Xinguo Period,is a collection of stories compiled in the early Song dynasty. The work was completed in 978,and printing blocks were cut,but it was prevented from official publication on the grounds that it contained only xiaoshuo and thus "was of no use to students." It circulated in various manuscript copies until it was published in the Ming dynasty. It is considered one of the Four Great Books of Song (宋四大書). The title refers to the Taiping Xinguo era,the first years of the reign of Emperor Taizong of Song.
The Wenyuan Yinghua,sometimes translated as Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature,is an anthology of poetry,odes,songs and writings from the Liang dynasty to the Five Dynasties era.
The leishu is a genre of reference books historically compiled in China and other East Asian countries. The term is generally translated as "encyclopedia",although the leishu are quite different from the modern notion of encyclopedia.
The Book of Chen or Chen Shu was the official history of the Chen dynasty,one of the Southern dynasties of China. The Book of Chen is part of the official Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was compiled by the Tang dynasty historian Yao Silian and completed in 636 AD. The Chen Shu is a biographical history book with thirty-six volumes,recording the historical facts of 33 years from the accession of Chen Baxian to the last emperor Chen Shubao.
Wuzhun Shifan was a Chinese calligrapher,and Zen Buddhist monk who lived during the late Song Dynasty (960–1279).
The Taiping Huanyu Ji,or "Universal Geography of the Taiping Era [976–983]," is a 10th-century AD geographical treatise by Chinese scholar Yue Shi 樂史(930–1007),written during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Song in the Northern Song dynasty. Comprising 200 scrolls,it has entries for nearly all areas of China at the time of its publication,complete with place-names and their etymologies. The work generally follows Tang dynasty systems of geographical and political designation,dividing China into 13 "Circuits",and then subdividing further into the more traditional "prefectures" and "counties". Because it is largely based on Tang works,it constitutes an important source for the study of Tang geography.
Eighteen History Books of Jin are the history books which were published and used as the history books of the Jin dynasty before the Book of Jin was published.
Meng Xuanzhe (孟玄喆) (937–991),courtesy name Zunsheng (遵聖),formally the Duke of Teng (滕國公),was a crown prince of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period Later Shu state under his father Meng Chang,the last emperor of the state. After Later Shu was destroyed by the Song dynasty,Meng Xuanzhe served as a general and official for Song.
Xu You,was a Chinese official most active in the Southern Tang dynasty as a court minister,royal tutor,and artist. A member of the Xu family,comprising many government officials and civil servants,and descendant of Emperor Wu,he served as the Grand Guardian of Li Yu and enjoyed a close relationship with the royal family.
The Huanglan or Imperial Mirror was one of the oldest Chinese encyclopedias or leishu "classified dictionary". Cao Pi,the first emperor of the Wei,ordered its compilation upon his accession to the throne in 220 and it was completed in 222. The purpose of the Huanglan was to provide the emperor and ministers of state with conveniently arranged summaries of all that was known at the time. Complete versions of the Huanglan existed until the Song dynasty (960-1279),when it became a mostly lost work,although some fragments did survive in other encyclopedias and anthologies. The Huanglan was the prototype of the classified encyclopedia and served as a model for later ones such as the (624) Tang Yiwen Leiju and the (1408) Ming Yongle dadian.
Xu is a Chinese-language surname. In the Wade-Giles system of romanization,it is spelled as "Hsu",which is commonly used in Taiwan or overseas Chinese communities. It is different from Xu,represented by a different character.
The Way of the Taiping,also known as the Way of the Great Peace,was a Chinese Taoist movement founded by Zhang Jue during the Eastern Han dynasty. Its adherents all around China participated in the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184,with the rebellion being suppressed within the same year by the Eastern Han government. The religious movement was greatly reduced and died soon afterwards. The Way of the Taiping was one of the two largest movements within early Taoism,with the other being the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice. During the reign of Emperor Ling of Han,the movement was recorded to have been popular in eight Provinces:Qing Province,Xu Province,You Province,Ji Province,Jing Province,Yang Province,Yan Province,and Yu Province.。
Fujiwara no Chōnen was a Japanese Buddhist monk and traveller.
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