Hanyuan 翰苑

Hanyuan 翰苑 was an encyclopaedia compiled by Zhang Chujin 張楚金 (d. 690). He was an official and man of letters active mainly during the reigns of Emperor Taizong 唐太宗 (r. 626-649) and Empress Wu Zetian 武則天 (r. 690-704) of the Tang dynasty 唐 (618-907). He was a descendent of Zhang Daoyuan 張道源. After passing the civil service examination, he served in various posts, including the Ministry of Justice (xingbu 刑部), the Ministry of Personnel (libu 吏部), and in the prefecture of Huzhou 湖州. He was later exiled to Lingnan 嶺南 (today's province of Guangdong) and executed on the order of Wu Zetian. The poems and essays attributed to him in the historical record were not his compositions and can be dated to the mid- and late 8th century. The most significant work of these is the Shenjie 紳誡 "Admonitions to the elite".

The Hanyuan was a 30-juan-long compilation, of which only the fragment "Section on Barbarians" (Fanyi bu 蕃夷部) with a length of 7 juan, remains today, preserved in Japan. In addition, some lost passages from the work are still found scattered in other extant Japanese sources. The book was introduced to Japan during the Tang period, but in China it was entirely lost after the Yuan era 元 (1279-1368); it seems to have disappeared from circulation in Japan as well after the seventeenth century.

The work's format was distinctive: the main text was written in parallel prose (pianli 駢儷), accompanied by interlinear annotations in double columns citing other works to explain the text. This was the first instance of such a style in a reference compilation. Many of the cited works in these annotations are not found in any surviving editions in China and thus deserve particular attention in efforts to recover lost texts.