Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成

The Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) book Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成 "Complete collection of pictures and books of old and modern times" is the largest encyclopaedia of premodern China. It has a total length of 10,000 juan and was compiled on imperial order of the Kangxi Emperor 康熙帝 (r. 1661-1722) between the years 1701 and 1706 under the supervision of Chen Menglei 陳夢雷 (1650-1741) and Jiang Tingxi 蔣廷錫 (1669-1732). The original title of the draft was Gujin tushu huibian 古今圖書彙編. In 1722, the Yongzheng Emperor 雍正帝 (r. 1722-1735) ordered Jiang Tingxi to revise the draft. The revision was finished in 1726, and the title was changed the known Gujin tushu jicheng.

The encyclopaedia is divided into six parts (bian 編) with 32 "canons" (dian 典, in the draft called zhi 志 "treatise") dealing with 6,117 themes. The index alone has a volume of 40 juan. The particular parts (bu 部) are composed of 9 different types of literary allusions, namely:

Not all types are used for each entry. The encyclopaedia quotes from 3,525 books, with 77,000 quotations in total, some of them used several times for different themes.

Figure 1. Beginning of the Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成

Assembled explanations (huikao 彙考) on the lemma "Heaven" (tian 天). The sources are listed in a kind of table of contents, naming chapters of the Yijing 易經, Liji 禮記, the apocryphal books Chunqiu wei 春秋緯, Heluo wei 河洛緯, etc. From the Liji, for instance, phrases from the chapters Quli 曲禮 and Yueling 月令 are quoted - the former including a commentary (zhu 注) quoting from the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, and the latter with no less than six examples (又...又...)

There are four different prints of the Gujin tushu jicheng, the first, a moveable letter print, was made in 1728 by the Imperial Printing Shop in the Wuying Hall 武英殿. The second print was made by the British newspaper publisher Ernest Major (1830?-1908, Chinese name Meicha 美查) in Shanghai between 1884 and 1888, in 1,500 copies. In 1889 the court ordered the Foreign Office (Zongli yamen 總理衙門) to negotiate with the Tongwen Press 同文書局 in Shanghai to publish a further edition. The print was finished in 1894. The 100 copies included 24 volumes of corrigenda (Kaozheng 考證).

In 1934, the Zhonghua Shuju Press 中華書局 in Shanghai published an edition in reduced size. In 1985 the Zhonghua Shuju Press and the Ba-Shu Press 巴蜀書社 reprinted the 1934 edition in 82 (in total 121) volumes.

Figure 2. Text from the Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成

Image and text explaining the declination of the sun through the "cold and warm" seasons of the year, as caused by its "vicinity and distance" (Rilun yuanjin fen hanshu tu[shuo] 日輪遠近分寒暑圖[說]).

There is a supplement published in 1977 by the Taiwanese Dingwen Press 鼎文書局 that is called Gujin tushu jicheng xubian chugao 古今圖書集成續編初稿 "A tentative draft of a supplement to the Complete Collection". This book of 78 juan length imitates the structure of the original encyclopaedia. It makes use of sources written after the Kangxi reign-period or even after the Qing period, like the treatises of the Qingshigao 清史稿, the Da-Qing huidian 大清會典, Qingchao xu wenxian tongkao or the Qingshilu 清實錄.