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introduction
"Yongle", as the name of the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, the Ming Dynasty has achieved unprecedented development during the Yongle Dynasty, concentrating imperial power, Zheng He going to the West, economic take-off, and more importantly, under the order of Zhu Di, ordering Xie Jin, Yao Guangxiao and others to compile an unprecedented "Yongle Canon".
Why do we speak so highly of the Yongle Classic? It is precisely because it contains most of China's various history, science and technology, culture, art, techniques and other records. Even folk tales are recorded in the archives, with 22,877 volumes, 11,095 volumes, and a total of 370 million words.
(Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty)
It is the culmination of ancient and modern times, highlighting the prestige of the Ming Dynasty. We can see from here that Zhu Di's ambition is to raise the prestige of the mainland. However, the "Yongle Classic" gradually disappeared from people's sight in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. To this day, there are many losses. In an auction in 2020, a copy of "Yongle Classic" sold for a high price of 32 million.
And behind the "Yongle Classic", there are still some people who believe that the mystery of the rise of Westerners is also hidden in it, what is going on?
(The Yongle Classic)
1. The "Yongle Classic" that has never been seen before
For modern people, the "Yongle Dian" is a national treasure-level existence, in fact, as early as the Zhu Yuanzhang period, he planned to write such a book, but it was unsuccessful. So after Zhu Di took the throne, he began to work on the matter, and he ordered Xie to start compiling books.
Its purpose requires that all books of hundreds of schools since the beginning of the book deed, including astronomy and geography, yin-yang, medicine, divination, religion and other fields, must be compiled, do not feel too many and complicated. So after receiving the order, Xie Xie immediately began to find someone to compile the book, and it took more than a year to compile a "Complete Book of Literature", but Zhu Di was not satisfied.
(Xie Jin)
Zhu Di thought that this book did not include all the books in the world, so he asked Xie Jin, Yao Guangxiao and others to open a library in Nanjing's Wenyuan Pavilion to rebuild, and compiled it from 1405 to 1408, and finally compiled a world's most precious "Yongle Dian". After the completion of the "Yongle Classic", the Ming court repeatedly ordered people to repair, trace, copy, draw and other work.
Even because there were too many people involved, it was impossible to count at all, and during the Yongle period, only one copy of the "Yongle Classic" was copied, so it was also called the "Yongle Original". During the Ming Jiajing period, because the Jiajing Emperor loved this book too much and was afraid of damage, he copied a copy called "Jiajing Copy".
At that time, Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, and he took some books, including the "Yongle Dian", and moved to Beijing. However, in 1449, a fire broke out in the Wenyuan Pavilion in Nanjing, and it is said that all the original manuscripts were burned, and the Yongle Dian, which began his troubled future.
(The Yongle Classic)
In the thirty-sixth year of Jiajing, the palace in Nanjing caught fire, and the "Yongle Classic" was almost destroyed in the fire again. In the forty-first year of Jiajing, Zhu Houxi ordered Gao Gong, Zhang Juzheng and others to re-enter the "Yongle Classic". Subsequently, it was originally returned to Nanjing, and the copy was left in the "Imperial History Palace" in Beijing.
However, in the late Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the original records of the "Yongle Dian" gradually disappeared, and it is not known where it is to this day. And the entire book in the Qianlong period, only 8,000 copies remained, a few thousand different from the original book, where did those lost books go? This became a mystery.
During the Qing Dynasty, Quan Zuwang and Li Fu, as famous scholars, came into contact with the Yongle Canon during the Yongzheng period, which the two called the "treasure of the universe", and even saw many books that they had never heard of. So they planned to write a book, write out the books they felt should be left behind, and there was the "Records of the Copying of Yongle".
(Yongle Ceremony)
They sorted out many contents one by one, and this also laid the foundation for the compilation of the Siku Quanshu in the Qing Dynasty. Nowadays, some people also jokingly call the "Siku Quanshu" a castrated version of the "Yongle Dian". Because there are many records in the "Yongle Classic", the world is so big that it will not favor any side.
However, because the "Siku Quanshu" was prevalent in the Qing Dynasty's literary prison, it was careful everywhere, leaving behind Confucian classics, and this gap came out at once. During the Kangxi and Yongzheng years of the Qing Dynasty, the "Collection of Ancient and Modern Books" started by the three brothers can also be regarded as the Qing Dynasty's own "Yongle Classic".
However, just when Qianlong was repairing the book and was about to use the "Yongle Classic", he found that there were only 8,000 volumes left, and the whereabouts of more than 2,000 disappeared volumes were unknown. And the compilation of the "Siku Quanshu" also has to turn out a large number of non-books for reference.
(Siku Encyclopedia)
Second, the disappearing "Yongle Classic", the secret of the West
It is also worth mentioning that the binding of the "Yongle Dian" far exceeds that of other ancient books, 50 cm high and 30 cm wide. The outer book cover is wrapped in multiple layers of hard xuan, and even each layer is wrapped in yellow silk. Because it was too tenacious, when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, the Hanlin Courtyard was besieged at that time, and the Qing army even used the "Yongle Classic" to shield the enemy artillery shells.
And this is one of the reasons why the "Yongle Dian" has become lost, and the Jiajing to modern times we mentioned above are actually copies of the Jiajing period. So where exactly did the real original go? There are several views in the academic community on this, the first of which is that it was damaged at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
Because there was a fire in the palace during the Wanli period, the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty said that they did not know where to go, and some people believed that it was destroyed in the war in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. But there is no clear evidence, and there are many people who support that the "Yongle Classic" is likely to be used by the Jiajing Emperor for burial.
(Jiajing)
This statement has been recognized by many scholars, because Emperor Ming Jiajing loved the "Yongle Classic" very much, even to the extent that he couldn't put it down. And the time when a copy of Jiajing appeared in the Ming Dynasty, and the sudden disappearance of the original copy, was very close to the time of Jiajing's burial.
So how did the copy gradually dissipate? First of all, as mentioned earlier, when Qianlong revised the Siku Quanshu, there were only more than 8,000 volumes left. Later, during the Daoguang period, because the "Yongle Classic" was abandoned in the Hanlin Courtyard, some officials secretly took away many volumes, which led to an inventory when Guangxu was restored, and only 800 volumes remained.
And this last fragment was also seriously injured when the eight-nation coalition invaded China. The Hanlin Courtyard became a battlefield, the allied forces looted, the Qing army blocked him, and the area where the fragments were preserved was devastated. Liu Keyi, who was in the translation museum at that time, once saw a fragment under the manger of a foreigner.
Today, only 418 fragments remain in the world, of which 224 are in the National Library and 59 in Europe. As a strange book that has influenced ancient China and modern times, I also hope that one day I can find all the true fragments.
(Fragment of the Yongle Classic)
So why do some people say that in fact, the "Yongle Classic" has seriously affected the West, and even become the secret of the rise of the West? This is because the Yongle Canon was written in the early 14th century, when there was only one such encyclopedia in the world, nearly 300 years before the encyclopedia compiled by the French and the British Encyclopedia Britannica.
Third, did the Yongle Canon really inspire Western civilization?
In a way, it can be said that when China flourished, European soil was more like a primitive stage without civilization. Therefore, some people think that Westerners cannot compile an encyclopedia for no reason, because they did not have so much culture before this, so gradually there is a saying that Westerners study the "Yongle Dian".
It is precisely because of this that the knowledge and technology of Westerners have been enhanced, and Xu Guangqi during the Wanli period was once close to Matteo Ricci, a missionary from Europe. At that time, Matteo Ricci spread Western knowledge, and Xu Guangqi was very interested, and the two even translated books such as The Primitive Geometry.
(Xu Guangqi)
The two have a close relationship and are academically integrated between East and West. Therefore, people speculate that Xu Guangqi was himself a scholar of Wen Yuange University at that time, could it be that he had privately communicated the content of the "Yongle Classic" with Matteo Ricci?
Even Reiner, a professor at the University of Viana, once proposed that Chinese knowledge is the source of European encyclopedia.
This makes people have to wonder, is the encyclopedia of Westerners popping up like spring shoots, really influenced by the "Yongle Dian"? However, these were not widely recognized by the academic community, mainly because even if Xu Guangqi and Matteo Ricci were on good terms, it was impossible to show these privately without the emperor's consent.
If there is a request, it will generally be recorded. Another is the emergence of European encyclopedias, because at that time, in the 17th and 18th centuries, Europe's own culture had risen, and once the first encyclopedia appeared, then the subsequent imitations of nature emerged.
(Encyclopedia Britannica)
It is not so much that it was passed down during the Ming Dynasty, but it is more likely that officials in the Qing Dynasty stole and then sold it to foreigners privately.
However, it is not completely impossible that the "Yongle Dian" influenced the rise of the West, because according to historical records, Western iron smelting technology was mature in the 14th century, and China was very mature as early as the Warring States period.
Of course, this is just a small speculation on my part, but from that point of view, I think it is not appropriate to pull the "Yongle Dian" with the progress of the West.
Before grappling with this question, I think that the first thing to do is to strengthen the collection of fragments of the Yongle Dian, and to discover our new history and unique books from this fragment. And its own cultural value is extremely high, it is a rich treasure left to us by the ancients, and it has left us with a lot of thoughts.
(Zhu Di and the Yongle Canon)
And from the ups and downs of the "Yongle Classic", we can also see the ups and downs of China, from the Ming to the Qing Dynasty, every disaster it has experienced seems to be linked to the prosperity of the country. In modern times, the Qing government was incompetent, and we were unable to protect culture, so much so that we are very sad today.
I can't help but think that in order to protect cultural relics, war-torn Syria shipped all their cultural relics to China. Preserving one's own civilization from the fires of war, just like China a hundred years ago, how many people behind the war are running to protect cultural relics.
Just like today, those who contributed to the return of the "Yongle Classic" to the embrace of the motherland.
Resources
YI Shun. The compilation, loss and return of the Yongle Classic[J].All walks of life, 2022(4):3.)
QIU Guangyu. The past and present of a big book in "Yongle Dian"[J].China Newsweek, 2019.)