The Yongle Encyclopedia Gathers China’s Written Knowledge

In 1403, the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty ordered the creation of a massive reference work designed to assemble and preserve existing literary texts. The emperor had previously transformed the role of the Hanlin Academy, reassigning routine clerical chores to imperial officers so that elite scholars could concentrate on major intellectual endeavors. An initial compilation completed in 1404 by Xie Jin and a team of 147 scholars failed to satisfy the monarch, who demanded a much broader collection. To achieve this larger objective, the court assembled more than two thousand scholars in Nanjing, led by Xie Jin and the former Buddhist monk Yao Guangxiao.

Scholars traveled across the realm to locate rare volumes, transcribing literature into what became known as a leishu, or reference encyclopedia. Completed in 1408 at the Guozijian in Nanjing, the completed Yongle Encyclopedia encompassed 22,937 manuscript rolls bound across 11,095 volumes. Totaling roughly 370 million characters, it incorporated vast commentaries on the classics, historical accounts, philosophical treatises, arts, and sciences. The emperor contributed a detailed preface celebrating the preservation of these writings and bestowed his own reign title upon the monumental compilation.