The Yongle Dadian: A massive, lost encyclopedia of all human knowledge.
In short: Commissioned by the Yongle emperor, the Yongle Dadian represents an ambitious attempt to compile all existing knowledge into a single work. This video explores the history and significance of this monumental text, which remains a centerpiece of historical scholarship regarding the Ming dynasty.
The Yongle Dadian was conceived as an exhaustive encyclopedia intended to capture the entirety of human knowledge. The surviving volume held by the British Library, cataloged as OR 12020, is a copy of this original massive undertaking. It serves as a testament to the intellectual scale of the Ming era.
The text was featured in the exhibition 'Ming: 50 years that changed China,' which ran at the British Museum from 18 September 2014 to 5 January 2015. This exhibition highlighted the profound cultural and political shifts that occurred during this pivotal half-century of Chinese history.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Ming: Yongle Dadian, The Great Canon of Yongle era 永乐大典
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