Taiping yulan 太平御覽

Taiping yulan 太平御覽 "Imperial overview from the Taiping [xingguo] reign (976-983)" is the first large encyclopaedia of ancient China. It is one of the so-called "four large books" (Song si da shu 宋四大書) of the Northern Song period 北宋 (960-1126). It was also called Taiping bianlei 太平編類, Taiping zonglei 太平總類 and Taiping leibian 太平類編.

The Hanlin academician Li Fang 李昉 took over the supervision of the compilation, which was done by 13 scholars, among them Hu Meng 扈蒙, Wang Kezhen 王克貞 and Song Bai 宋白. It is 1,000 juan "scrolls" long and divided into 55 topics with 5,363 articles. There are 63 articles appended to other chapters. The compilation began in 977 and was finished in 983 and submitted to the throne with the title of Taiping zonglei "General topics of the Taiping reign". Emperor Taizong 宋太宗 (r. 976-997) gave the encyclopedia the later known title because he had personally read through the whole manuscript. The imperial library was one main source for the Taiping yulan, but the compilers also made use of older encyclopedias of which the manuscripts were used and enlarged. These were, for example, the Xiuwendian yulan 修文殿御覽, Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 and Wensi boyao 文思博要, of which only the 100 juan long Yiwen leiju has survived. The Taiping yulan is, due to its quotations, a very important source for pre-Song sources which are not preserved. For the compilation 1,689 books have been used, of which a list has been made at the beginning of the encylopedia (Jingshi tushu gangmu 經史圖書綱目). The scholar Ma Nianzu 馬念祖 found out that in fact, 2,579 books have been quoted and used, but not all of them are listed in the tushu gangmu. About 70 to 80 per cent of the sources quoted are lost since. Unfortunately the compilers of the Taiping yulan made use of a lot of other, older encyclopedias instead of consulting the primary sources - if those were still available during the Northern Song period. As to the preserved books it is important to have the quotation in the Taiping yulan at hand in which often words are not identical to the commonly received versions of older books. One weak point of the Taiping yulan is its overall composition which has not been adjusted in all parts.

The oldest surviving fragment of a Song-period print has been reproduced by the Bisong Studio 皕宋樓, surviving in the Japanese Seikadō Studio 靜嘉堂. A further print was made in Sichuan in 1199. In 1573, a moveable character print was made. Another edition was published during the Wanli reign 萬曆 (1573-1619) by Ni Bingxiao 倪炳校, the so-called Huangzheng seben 黃正色本. In 1806 Wang Changxu 汪昌序 published another moveable type print, another moveable type print was done in 1855 by the Japanese scholar Kitamura N 喜多村氏. In 1894 the Jishan press 積山書局 in Shanghai published a first modern edition. The Shanghai shangwu press 上海商務印書館 made a facsimile of a Song period print in 1935 (the Hanfenlou Studio 涵芬樓 edition, see Hanfenlou miji 涵芬樓秘笈), which is included in the series Sibu congkan 四部叢刊. This series was reprinted in 1960 by the Zhonghua Shuju Press 中華書局. The Taiping yulan is included in the series Siku quanshu 四庫全書.