Yongle Encyclopedia - Transcription and Disappearance

Transcription and Disappearance

Because of the vastness of the work, it could not be block-printed, and it is thought that only one other manuscript copy was made. In 1557, under the supervision of the Jiajing Emperor, the encyclopedia was narrowly saved from being destroyed by a fire that burnt down three palaces in the Forbidden City. Afterwards, the Emperor ordered the transcription of a third copy of the encyclopedia.

Fewer than 400 volumes of the three manuscript copies of the set survived into modern times. The original copy has disappeared from the historical record. The second copy was gradually dissipated and lost from the late 18th century onwards, until the roughly 800 volumes remaining were burnt in a fire started by Chinese forces attacking the neighboring British legation, or were looted by the Eight-Nation Alliance forces during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The surviving volumes are in libraries and private collections around the world. Today, the most complete of the surviving late Ming Dynasty copies of the Yongle Encyclopedia are kept at the National Library of China in Beijing. The National Library of China also holds the most copies, a total of 221 books of the Yongle Encyclopedia. The next largest single collection is at the National Palace Museum in Taipei: the museum holds 62 books. Further, there are 41 books of the encyclopedia at the Library of Congress in the United States; 51 books in the United Kingdom held at the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, and Cambridge University Library; and 5 books held in various libraries in Germany.

The fate of the original manuscript is unknown. There are several hypotheses:

• It was destroyed in the 1449 fire in Nanjing.
• It was burnt in the Palace of Heavenly Purity (in the Forbidden City) during the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.
• It was destroyed with Wenyuange (the Imperial library collection) at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
• It disappeared at the death of the Jiajing Emperor, having been taken by the emperor to his grave, and it has yet to be found in the tomb complex of Yongling.

A 100-volume portion was published in Chinese in 1962.