List of official books. It is also known as the "Summary of the Four Libraries". Two hundred volumes. The "General Head" was headed by Yongying, the sixth son of Qianlong, and was actually composed by Ji Yun, the chief compiler. Ji Yun (1724-1804), the word Xiaolan, the word Chunfan, the number Shiyun. A native of Zhili Xian County (now Hebei). In the nineteenth year of Qianlong (1754), he was a scholar, an official to the Ministry of Rites, a co-organizer of the university, and died in Wenda. He is the author of "Notes on Reading Wei Caotang" and "Ji Wenda Gong Testament". The "General Catalogue" was compiled to accompany the "Siku Quanshu". Since the 37th year of Qianlong (1772), the Qing government spent about ten years and concentrated a large number of manpower and material resources to compile and repair a large-scale series of books, "Siku Quanshu". Books taken from various provinces were revised by the special "Siku Quanshu" librarians, and summaries were written and attached to each book. The summaries of each article were then comprehensively balanced, revised and supplemented, classified and arranged by the chief compiler, and combined into the "General Heading". The first draft of the "General Catalogue" was completed in the 46th year of Qianlong (1781), and its content was supplemented and changed several times with the continuous addition and replacement of the "Siku Quanshu", and it was not until the 54th year of Qianlong (1789) that it was finally written and published by Fu Wuyingdian.
The "General Catalogue of the Four Libraries" contains a total of 10,254 books from all dynasties before Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, and 172,860 volumes. Among them, 3,461 books and 79,309 volumes are included in the "Siku Quanshu", and 10,254 "ordinary works" (172,860 volumes) that are not included in the "Siku Quanshu" are also included in the "Inventory Catalogue". These books were rigorously and repeatedly screened according to the political standards of the Qing government, and all contents that were deemed to be offensive were discarded and excluded. The "General Heading" is divided into four parts according to the scriptures, histories, sub-categories, and collections, and is divided into 44 categories, and those that should be subdivided under the category are divided. There are ten categories of scriptures: Yi, Shu, Poems, Rites (Zhou Rites, Rites, Rites, Three Rites, General Rites, General Rites, Miscellaneous Rites), Spring and Autumn, Filial Piety, Five Classics, Four Books, Music, Primary School (Exegesis, Character Books, Rhyme Books). 15 categories of the Department of History: official history, chronicles, chronicles, other histories, miscellaneous histories, edicts and recitals (edicts, recitals), biographies (sages, celebrities, general records, miscellaneous records, special records), historical records, records, seasons, geography (general chronicles, metropolises, counties, rivers and canals, frontier defense, mountains and rivers, historic sites, miscellaneous records, travelogues, foreign records), official (official system, official motto), political documents (general system, ceremonies, state planning, military and political affairs, decrees, examinations), catalogues (scriptures, gold and stone), historical commentary. Fourteen sub-sections: Confucianism, soldiers, legalists, farmers, doctors, astronomical algorithms (pushing, arithmetic), arithmetic (mathematics, astrology, phase house and phase base, divination, life books and books, yin and yang five elements, miscellaneous techniques), art (calligraphy and painting, piano scores, seal carving, acrobatics), music (utensils, recipes, plants, trees, birds, beasts, insects and fish), miscellaneous (miscellaneous studies, miscellaneous examinations, miscellaneous sayings, miscellaneous products, miscellaneous compilations, miscellaneous compilations), similar books, novelists (miscellaneous things, strange news, trivial words), Shijia, Taoism. There are five categories of collections: Chu Ci, special collections, general collections, poetry and literary reviews, and lyrics and songs (word collections, word selections, words, word scores, word rhymes, and northern and southern songs). Each radical has a general description, describing the changes in the academic flow of each department. Each category is preceded by a small preface, which records the evolution of the category and the passage of schools. At the end of each genus, a case is listed to explain the reasons and criteria for the establishment of the category. Each category is listed first as the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" as a book, and the second is as the "Inventory" book. The title of each book and the number of volumes are based on the edition, indicating that it is a copy taken by an official, or a copy in the collection of the Inner Government, a copy of the Yongle Canon, a certain periodical, a popular version, etc. Then there's the synopsis of the book.
One of the characteristics of the summary content of the "General Heading" is that "the main focus is on the examination of similarities and differences, and there are many articles that are refuted". "In the first list of authors", "the gains and losses of the second examination of this book, the similarities and differences of the power of the public". In "the addition and deletion of texts, and the separation and integration of articles, they are all rated as fixed and distinguished". For books that have been settled for a long time, "but on the similarities and differences in their publication and biography, the beginning and end of the editing, additions and deletions, and whether the book is good or not." To a certain extent, the examination and revision of some ancient books absorbed the results of research at that time and corrected the deficiencies of predecessors. The second characteristic is that the evaluation of the books is mainly based on "expounding the sacred science and clarifying the way of the king", highlighting the political views of propagating feudal orthodoxy and attacking the heretical ideas of "deviant and deviant". As for "the mellow defects of character and learning, and the laws and precepts of the national discipline and the rules and regulations", "each one shows its own merits, and uses persuasion and punishment."
The Siku Quanshu General Catalogue is an unprecedentedly large and comprehensive solution catalog. Although a number of valuable books have been discarded due to political reasons, they still basically include important works of ancient China before the Qianlong Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty (especially the collection of books before the Yuan Dynasty is more complete), as well as 385 kinds of ancient books compiled from the Yongle Grand Canon, which is a unique bibliographic masterpiece in terms of volume. Moreover, it has a substantial summary of its contents, a general order and a small order of systematic classification and arrangement, and a complete system, which is a classic summary of the mainland's scholarship before the 18th century, and plays an important guiding role in the reading of books by future generations. To this day, there is still an important reference value.
The Siku Quanshu Catalogue inherits and develops the methods and forms of traditional catalogs in mainland China, and has important academic significance and influence in the history of bibliography. First of all, on the basis of the traditional four-part classification method, the "General Catalogue" fully absorbs the advantages of the classification of various types of bibliographies, and formulates a series of categories and the principles of classification according to the practical needs of book and academic development, thus forming a fairly complete classification system. Before the publication of the "General Catalogue", the classification and arrangement of various catalogues, especially the catalogues of private collections, were extremely disorderly, but after the publication of the "General Catalogue", they were quickly made in accordance with its classification system, and although there were revisions and additions later, there was no major breakthrough. To this day, it is still the basic rule of cataloguing and classifying ancient books. Second, the "General Catalogue" summarizes the ways and means of compiling the summary of the catalogue of public and private collections since Liu Xiang, especially in the Song Dynasty, and also draws on the methods and forms of reading inscriptions in the Qing Dynasty, thus forming a new form of summary that reflects the edition, text, and content of the book, and combines it with the political needs of the time to propagate feudal thought. It had a great influence on the compilation of the catalogue summary in the late Qing Dynasty, especially the emergence and development of the bibliographies. In addition, due to the breadth of the "General Catalogue" and the various shortcomings and fallacies in the collection, description, examination and revision of the "General Catalogue", it has aroused the research interest of bibliographers, and a series of catalogue works have been produced to correct and supplement the gaps in the "General Catalogue", such as Ruan Yuan's "Summary of the Uncollected Books of the Four Libraries", Yao Jinyuan's "Bibliography of the Banned Books of the Qing Dynasty", Shao Yichen's "Annotation of the Concise Catalogue of the Four Libraries", Yu Jiaxi's "Dialectical Evidence of the Summary of the Four Libraries", and Hu Yujin's "Supplement to the Summary of the General Catalogue of the Four Libraries", thus opening up a new field of bibliography research.
The achievements and significance of the "General Catalogue" in bibliography "can be said to be the only book since Liu Xiang's "Farewell Records." Its typical role has promoted the rapid development of various catalogs, not only invigorating the catalog cause at the end of the feudal society in the mainland, but also having an extremely far-reaching impact on the development of modern catalogs.
In the 58th year of Qianlong (1793), Wuying Hall was first printed, referred to as the palace book. In the 60th year of Qianlong (1795), Zhejiang, with the cooperation of local officials (Xie Qikun, Ruan Yuan) and gentry (Shen Qing, Bao Shigong), reprinted and engraved the palace book of Wenlan Pavilion, corrected many errors in the palace book, referred to as Zhejiang. All subsequent editions were reproduced from these two engravings. In the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), the Guangdong Book Company reproduced the Zhejiang book as the base, and individual words and sentences were changed according to the Dianben school, referred to as the Yueben. In 1964, Zhonghua Book Company used the Zhejiang book as the base book, and used the Dianben and the Guangdong book to proofread, and the proofreading was attached, which was broken by Mr. Wang Boxiang and typeset and published. Attached is the "Summary of the Cancelled Books of the Four Libraries" and the "Summary of the Uncollected Books of the Four Libraries", as well as an index of the titles of the books and the names of the authors. In 2019, the National Library Publishing House published the "Wuying Palace" series of basic classics of Chinese culture according to the collection of the Wuying Palace of the Qing Dynasty in the Tianjin Library.
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