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Description
Cover title.
On double leaves, oriental style. Ming Jiajing 41 nian zhi Ming Longqing yuan nian [1562-1567] jian zhi mo xie hong hei liang se chong chao ben. Ba hang er shi ba zi. 明嘉靖41年至明隆慶元年[1562-1567]間之摹寫紅黑兩色重抄本. 八行二十八字. Manuscript, in red and black ink, copied between the 41st year of the Jiajing - 1st year of the Longqing reign periods of the Ming dynasty. Eight columns per half-folio; 28 Chinese characters per column.The Yongle Encyclopedia (Yongle dadian 永樂大典), a title that could also be translated as the Great Compendium of the Yongle Reign, was commissioned in 1403 by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty to compile and preserve important texts from ancient and imperial China into a single set. When completed in 1408, the Encyclopedia consisted of 22,877 sections bound in 11,095 volumes and was considered the largest of its kind in the world. Organization of the content was based on the Hongwu zhenyn 洪武正韻, a rhyming dictionary developed in the fourteenth century. These sections, 10270 and 10271, of the Yongle Encyclopedia deal with the education of an heir apparent. Its contents were taken from the "King Wen as Son and Heir" chapter of the Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), a collection of texts on social forms and rituals compiled by Confucian scholars during the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). In 1557, after a fire that nearly destroyed the set, the Jiajing Emperor ordered copies to be made from the original. From 1562 to 1567, a team of 109 court scribes transcribed the entire Encyclopedia. Today only about 419 unique Jiajing volumes have survived. The fate of the original volumes is still unknown. Yongle Dadian volume: Sections 10270 and 10271 of the encyclopedia. This section deals with the education of the heir apparent to the emperor. Contents contain excerpts or interpretations from the Book of Rites, or Liji, a collection of texts on social forms and rituals created by Confucian scholars during the Warring State period (475-221 BC).
Yongle da dian--Manuscripts 永樂大典--Manuscripts Encyclopedias and dictionaries, Chinese Ming Chengzu, Emperor of China, 1360-1424 明成祖, Emperor of China, 1360-1424 Ming Shizong, Emperor of China, 1507-1567 明世宗, Emperor of China, 1507-1566 Manuscript
Source
Printed Books, Huntington Digital Library
Provenance
In 1900, this volume was taken out of China by Joseph Whiting, a Presbyterian missionary in Beijing, after the Siege of the International Legations from which many rare Chinese works then housed in the library of the Hanlin Academy were burned or looted.
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