Taiping Yulan
The Taiping Yulan (Chinese: 太平御覽; pinyin: Tàipíng Yùlǎn), sometimes translated as the Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era, is a massive leishu encyclopedia compiled by a number of officers commissioned by the imperial court of the Song dynasty with the lead editor being Li Fang from 977 to 983 during the era of Taiping Xingguo. It is divided into 1,000 volumes and 55 sections, which consisted of about 4.7 millions Chinese characters. It included citations from about 2,579 different kinds of documents spanning from books, poetry, ode, proverbs, steles to miscellaneous works. After the compilation, the Emperor Taizong of Song is said to have finished reading the book within a year with 3 volumes per day. It is considered one of the Four Great Books of Song.
References
- Kurz, Johannes L. (2003). Das Kompilationsprojekt Song Taizongs (reg. 976-997). Peter Lang. ISSN 0172-3375.
- Kurz,, Johannes L. (2007). "The Compilation and Publication of the Taiping Yulan and the Cefu Yuangui". Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 1 (H-S): 39–76. doi:10.3406/oroc.2007.1069. in Florence Bretelle-Establet and Karine Chemla (eds.), Qu'est-ce qu'écrire une encyclopédie en Chine?. Extreme Orient-Extreme Occident Hors série (2007), 39-76.
- Endymion Wilkinson. Chinese History: A New Manual. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2012; ISBN 978-0-674-06715-8), pp. 651–652.