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The Grand Ceremony of Yongle is a China classic "Grand Ceremony" edited by Jie Jin, the chief cabinet book, in the Yongle period of Ming Dynasty, formerly known as "Literary Masterpiece". It is an encyclopedic collection of documents in China, with 22,937 volumes (60 volumes in the catalogue), 1 1095 volumes, with about 370 million words. This treasure house of ancient culture brings together seven ancient and modern books. However, apart from the fact that the original Yongle Dadian has not yet determined whether there is a Changling, the replicas of Yongle have been devastated and most of them died in the war. Today, there are less than 800 volumes. As a world-famous encyclopedia, Yongle Dadian shows the brilliant achievements of ancient Chinese culture and is a grand ceremony that embodies great achievements. Encyclopedia Britannica, known as the Yongle Grand Ceremony of Amin Dynasty in China, is "the largest encyclopedia in world history".
Overview of classic works
Yongle Dadian is the most famous large-scale ancient book in China and the largest encyclopedia in the world so far. Yongle Dadian is a kind of book, which was written in the Yongle period of Ming Dynasty and completed in six years (1403- 1408). The encyclopedias of China's history, geography, literature, art, philosophy and religion before14th century are preserved. Compared with the Encyclopedia compiled by Diderot in France and the Encyclopedia Britannica in Britain, it is more than 300 years earlier. It is a treasure of world cultural heritage and the most famous large-scale ancient book in China. Yongle Dadian has 22,877 volumes and 60 volumes, divided into 10095 volumes, with about 370 million words.
The scale of Yongle Dadian is far ahead of all the books compiled in previous generations. Even The Collection of Ancient and Modern Books, the largest book compiled in the Qing Dynasty, has only 1 1,000 volumes and 1 1,600,000 words, which is less than half of Yongle Dadian. The scale of Yongle Dadian is beyond the reach of western contemporary classics.
According to rough statistics, Yongle Dadian has selected and preserved as many as seven or eight thousand kinds of ancient books, five or six times as many as that of the previous generation, such as Lei Ju of Literature and Art, Taiping Yulan and Yuangui, etc. It is a large-scale series compiled in the Qing Dynasty, but there are only over three thousand kinds of books in its collection.
Style Introduction This is a complete volume of Yongle Dadian, with a height of 50.3 cm and a width of 30 cm. Measured by the scale of Ming dynasty buildings, it should be one foot five inches six minutes high and nine inches three minutes wide. This book is grand, with royal dignity and charm. The Grand Ceremony has about 50 leaves (pages) per volume, mainly in two volumes, but also in one or three volumes. The leaves of the book are made of white and thick bark paper, which is very elegant and beautiful after opening.
Book clothes of Yongle ceremony
The book jacket of ancient books is the cover of modern books, because it is wrapped outside the book like clothes worn by people. Book coat? The name of this image.
The book cover of Yongle Grand Ceremony is made of multi-layer rice paper, and the outermost layer is yellow silk, which is particularly solemn. This binding form, which is very similar to modern books, is called. Baobeizhuang? , is a common book binding method in Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Bao Beizhuang's books should be inserted vertically on the shelf, unlike the later thread-bound books, which were scattered on the shelf. It is conceivable that more than 10,000 volumes of Yongle Dadian are placed on the bookshelf, just like a small library, which can really be said to be a magnificent masterpiece.
There is a rectangular bookmark stuck on the top left of the front of the book cover. Title? Yongle ceremony? There are four big characters, and there are two lines of small characters below, indicating the number of volumes of this book. There is also a box attached to the top right of the front of the book cover, which is engraved with the rhyme of the book in ink, and the word "low" indicates which book the book belongs to. If you have a Wu Hong Zheng Yun in your hand, you can easily retrieve what you need from more than 10,000 volumes of the ceremony. Open the Yongle ceremony
Opening the cover of Yongle Dadian is the end of the book, which is the first page of the text. As you can see, the whole "Da Dian" is written in ink and ink. Zhu Bizhu should be used to draw the sidebar and write the author and title of the cited book; Ink pen is used to write the name, volume, rhyme, text and drawing of a book; The dot is a pen tube made of reed, bamboo, bone or jade, with a hollow inside and a round outside, which is stamped with cinnabar inkpad. The whole looks dignified and beautiful, and Zhu Mo is vivid.
Layout of Yongle Grand Ceremony
An Encyclopedia Britannica, its characters are arranged in the order of 26 letters in English, so in ancient China, how to organize the grand Yongle Canon into a whole, so that people can quickly retrieve what they are looking for? The editors of Yongle ceremony adopted it? Use rhyme to unify words, and use words to tie things? This method solves this problem. In this Yongle ceremony, under the first line of the scroll? Four? It's a rhyming order and name, second line? Send? Zi is the rhyme of Jiyun. Although there are only three words, it is very useful!
Content and Organization of Yongle Dadian When experts and scholars want to compile an encyclopedia, they often have to determine the items first, and then compile them one by one according to a large number of materials. Such as the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of China. The editors of Yongle Dadian should also determine the entries according to the words in the literature, but they don't write any words. Instead, copy all the records of this entry in various ancient books, even the whole book, and point out what articles and books it was collected from and who wrote it, so that we can clearly find out the place. This practice is somewhat similar to what Confucius said? Do it or say it? .
The general rule of recording the contents of Yongle Dadian is to write with one line of big ink, two lines of small ink to record the author and title, and ink to record the title and content of the book, just like this plate. There are also articles under the rhyme: the classics or articles edited by Yongle Dadian are generally listed under the title. But according to the specific situation, there are also some listed under the heading. Like the title characters in the chart? Zhao? Below, all the records about Lu in Zuo Zhuan are listed below, and one column is several volumes.
The Grand Ceremony of Yongle contains ancient sounds and characters: below the searched characters, the phonology, the earliest origin and interpretation of the word in Hongwu Zheng Yun should be indicated first, and various characters and variants such as seal script, official script, running script, cursive script and regular script should also be indicated. The content is very rich. Did you see the title? Hey? It's listed under the word? Hey? All kinds of writing are really like a calligraphy dictionary.
Yongle dadian responsibility system
Turning to the last page (page) of Yongle Dadian, we can see that there are several lines of fine fine print on the blank page, which is a common format of official books in past dynasties to record the titles of scribes, punctuators and proofreaders. This practice can also be seen from the earliest extant scriptures written by the Tang people. During the Yongle period, there was a strict responsibility system when copying the Yongle Dadian, and no one was allowed to hire someone to write it. The government supplies inkstone, pitcher, pen and ink, food and charcoal in winter. If you copy a wrong page, send a paper to write alone, no matter how many times you copy it, it is only one page. Those who are slow will be punished according to their crimes. The ceremony between Jiajing and Jiajing was also re-recorded in this way, and each person copied three pages a day. Today's Yongle Grand Ceremony has no traces of alteration, repair or addition, which shows the strict responsibility system at that time. On the last page of Yongle Dadian, we can see the names of the general school official, branch school official, scribe and delinquent, and their responsibilities are very clear.