Yongle da dian 
The Great Standard of Yongle
or Encyclopedia Maxima
These volumes constitute five of the surviving 400 volumes of the original
Yongle da dian, the Encyclopedia Maxima, bearing the emperor
Yongle's 
(1402-1424) reign name. The original edition of this large work was comprised
of 917,480 pages—in 11,100 bound volumes 
divided into 22,877 sections 
.
Produced by a commission of over two thousand scholars in 1408, it purported
to record all knowledge of the Confucian canon, Buddhism, history, philosophy,
astronomy, geography, medicine, and the arts. The subject headings are
written on the outer edges of the pages. Although a printed edition was
intended—indeed, the Chinese had been printing block books since
the tenth century—multiple production of such a massive text proved
prohibitive. Instead, two manuscript copies were made in 1567.
In the 17th century, the original and one copy of the text were lost in a fire. Then, during the Boxer Rebellion (the Siege of Peking) in 1900, the Han-Lin Academy, where the first copy had been housed since the late Ming dynasty, was set on fire. Its library—along with the Yongle da dian—was almost entirely destroyed.
Gift of Charles Wason.
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Copyright
© 2002 Division of Rare & Manuscript
Collections
2B Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853
Phone Number: (607) 255-3530. Fax Number: (607) 255-9524
For
reference questions, send mail to:
rareref@cornell.edu
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