Yuan dianzhang 元典章

Yuan dianzhang 元典章 "Statutes of the Yuan dynasty" is a collection of edicts on legislative matters from the Yuan period 元 (1279-1368). The edicts are arranged topically and only include such issued before 1322. The unabbreviated title of the collection is Da-Yuan shengzheng guochao dianzhang 大元聖政國朝典章 "Statutes of the sacredly governed the state of the Great Yuan dynasty".

During the reign of Emperor Chengzong 元成宗 (r. 1294-1307) it was ordered that in all local administration units edicts concerning legislative matters had to be collected and submitted for the compilation of a code.

The whole collection comprises 60 juan and is arranged according to ten topics, containing documents until the year 1320, with a supplement extending the content until 1322. Each topic is divided into smaller categories, headlines, and paragraphs (tiao 條), totalling 2,390. The arrangement is similar to the Tang liudian 唐六典 "The six statutes of the Tang dynasty 唐 (618-907)", but might also be derived from the categories into which the archives of the local districts had to be divided.

The Yuan dianzhang is a very rich and important source for the study of the administration of the Yuan period, containing informations about virtually all aspects of Yuan society, law, economy and politics. A very interesting is the use of common language used during that time in everyday conversation, as well as a lot of Mongolian expressions.

There are several slightly differing versions of the Yuan dianzhang. In 1908 the Law Academy of Beijing (Beijing Falü Xuetang 北京法律學堂) publshed the so-called Shen edition 沈刻本, but the most widespread edition is that reprinted by the Palace Museum in Taipeh (Gugong Bowuyuan 故宮博物院) from 1972. The newest edition is that of the Shanghai Guji Press 上海古籍出版社 from 1995.

A Chinese study of the Yuan dianzhang by Chen Yuan 陳垣 (1880-1971) appeared in 1931, and there are several Japanese studies of the collection.