Sancai tuhui 三才圖會

Sancai tuhui 三才圖會 "Collected illustrations of the Three Realms", also called Sancai tushuo 三才圖說, is a richly illustrated encyclopaedia compiled during the Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by Wang Qi 王圻 (jinshi degree 1565) and his son Wang Siyi 王思義. Wang Qi is also known for his statecraft encyclopaedia Xu wenxian tongkao 續文獻通考.

The "Three Realms" of the title are Heaven, Earth, and man. The book was finished and printed in 1607. It is divided into 106 juan, and the themes are arranged in 14 fields covering themes from Heaven and astronomy to geography, personalities, agricultural activities through the year, palaces, tools and implements, the human body, clothing, human affairs, rites and etiquette, jewels, writing, and finally animals and plants. The core part of the book are the countless illustrations, of which each is accompanied by an explanatory text. The illustrations are of scientific character, and the Sancai tuhui is one of the few books of traditional China providing the reader which an ample amount of illustrations (another is, for example, the Tiangong kaiwu 天工開物). The objective of Wang Qi was to bring together the illustrations dispersed in many different books which are often hidden between many text pages and thus not easy to find. The illustrations are presented first and then described with a short text. Although the collection Sancai tuhui presents a vast amount of knowledge from different fields, the weakness lies just in its overemphasizing the illustrations and neglecting the text.

Figures 1-7. Illustrations with text from the Sancai tuhui 三才圖會

Chart of the starry sky during the first lunar month, with the Milky Way.

Imaginative landscape of Lake Taihu 太湖, Jiangsu.

Collage of two pages showing geomantic imaginations of mountains and auspicious and inauspicious forms of houses.

Image and text describing the people of the Jurchens (Nüzhen 女真), the later Manchus.

Iron-clad war ships.

Collage of an image showing the acupoints related to the liver (gan jing zhu xue 肝經諸穴), and the spirit of the liver (ganshen 肝神), imagined as a kind of dragon.

Images of different kinds of board games (shuanglu 雙陸).

The earliest surviving prints date from the Wanli 萬曆 (1573-1619) and the Qianlong 乾隆 (1736-1795) reign-periods. The Chinese Academy of Sciences 中國科學院 keeps a printed edition from the late 19th century. In 1970 the Chengwen Press 成文書社 in Taipeh published it as a six-volume edition, in 1987 the Guangling Guji Press 廣陵古籍刻印社 has published a downscaled reprint, and in 1988 the Shanghai Guji Press 上海古籍出版社 published another facsimile edition.