Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China

The Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China (or the Gujin Tushu Jicheng) is a vast encyclopedic work written in China during the reigns of the Qing dynasty emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng. It was begun in 1700 and completed in 1725. The work was headed and compiled mainly by scholar Chen Menglei (陳夢雷). Later on the Chinese painter Jiang Tingxi helped work on it as well.

The encyclopaedia contained 10,000 volumes. Sixty-four imprints were made of the first edition, known as the Wu-ying Hall edition. The encyclopaedia consisted of 6 series, 32 divisions, and 6,117 sections.^[1] It contained 800,000 pages and over 100 million Chinese characters,^[2] making it the largest leishu ever printed. Topics covered included natural phenomena, geography, history, literature and government. The work was printed in 1726 using copper movable type printing. It spanned around 10 thousand rolls (卷). To illustrate the huge size of the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China, it is estimated to have contained 3 to 4 times the amount of material in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.^[3]

In 1908, the Guangxu Emperor of China presented a set of the encyclopaedia in 5,000 fascicles to the China Society of London, which has deposited it on loan to Cambridge University Library.^[4] Another one of the three extant copies of the encyclopedia outside of China is located at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University. A complete copy in Japan was destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

One of Yongzheng's brothers patronised the project for a while, although Yongzheng contrived to give exclusive credit to his father Kangxi instead.

^ "Ku-chin t'u-shu chi-ch'eng (Completed Collections of Graphs and Writings of Ancient and Modern Times)". npm.gov.tw. Archived from the original on 2010-11-25. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
^ Allen, Tony; Grant, R. G.; Parker, Philip; Celtel, Kay; Kramer, Ann; Weeks, Marcus (June 2022). Timelines of World History (First American ed.). New York: DK. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-7440-5627-3.
^ Fowler, Robert L. (1997), "Encyclopaedias: Definitions and Theoretical Problems", in P. Binkley, Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, Brill, p. 9; citing Diény, Jean-Pierre (1991), "Les encyclopédies chinoises," in Actes du colloque de Caen 12–16 janvier 1987, Paris, p. 198.
^ "Introduction to the Chinese Collections". Cambridge University Library. Archived from the original on 2012-12-23. Retrieved 2012-07-25.

[1] "Ku-chin t'u-shu chi-ch'eng (Completed Collections of Graphs and Writings of Ancient and Modern Times)". npm.gov.tw. Archived from the original on 2010-11-25. Retrieved 2012-07-25.

[2] Allen, Tony; Grant, R. G.; Parker, Philip; Celtel, Kay; Kramer, Ann; Weeks, Marcus (June 2022). Timelines of World History (First American ed.). New York: DK. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-7440-5627-3.

[3] Fowler, Robert L. (1997), "Encyclopaedias: Definitions and Theoretical Problems", in P. Binkley, Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, Brill, p. 9; citing Diény, Jean-Pierre (1991), "Les encyclopédies chinoises," in Actes du colloque de Caen 12–16 janvier 1987, Paris, p. 198.

[4] "Introduction to the Chinese Collections". Cambridge University Library. Archived from the original on 2012-12-23. Retrieved 2012-07-25.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]