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On July 7, 2020, a remarkable auction was held in Paris, France. The auction featured two treasures that attracted countless buyers - two volumes of the Yongle Canon, which were finally auctioned for a high price of 64.9 million yuan.
Fortunately, in the end, these two volumes of the Yongle Canon were auctioned off by a collector in Zhejiang, China, and after a hundred years of wandering, these two ancient books finally "went home". However, this also makes many people wonder if "Yongle Ceremony" is really worth so much money?
Yongle Canon, encyclopedia of the Ming Dynasty
In the 5,000-year history and culture of the mainland, many ideas and great works have appeared. And if you want to talk about the most famous of them, then "Yongle Canon" must be on the list. Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor who ordered the writing of the "Yongle Canon", also once said that this was a masterpiece that made him comparable to the Tang Dynasty and Song Zu in history. So what is the origin of this "Yongle Canon"?
The Yongle Canon has a total of 22,877 volumes and about 370 million words. It can be called an encyclopedia, bringing together astronomy and geography, yin and yang gossip, medical divination, monk skills, and so on. At that time, more than 3,000 people participated in the compilation, and it took five years to complete the copying.
How big is this project? Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, all the ideas that have appeared in the Ming Dynasty have been recorded here, and all the technical work of the people, including carpentry, building houses, etc., are recorded, and it can be said that the medical knowledge of Chinese civilization for many years has been included.
In short, as long as there is any skilled profession that appeared in ancient times, the "Yongle Canon" will pick out its most quintessential content and then compile it into the "Yongle Canon".
In addition to these knowledge contents, there are also many folk stories and proverbs, etc., which can be learned about the daily life of ordinary people during the Ming Dynasty through the "Yongle Canon". Even now, the Yongle Canon has been one of the important bases for mainland archaeologists to study the culture of the Ming Dynasty.
But if you think that the Yongle Canon is just an encyclopedia, you are very wrong, and there is another content that the current encyclopedias cannot replace—teaching. Nowadays, encyclopedias basically have only one function, and that is to tell you the definition and principle of a thing. But the Yongle Canon can tell you how to achieve it.
I think that the "Yongle Canon" is not just a record of some documents, they really record all the content in the form of tutorials. If you are a doctor, when you encounter a medical problem, you will go to the book and look at the previous cases. And the "Yongle Canon" will tell you how to treat it, and why this disease is like this.
If you are a carpenter and you want to build a Luban lock, you only need to go through the "Yongle Canon" to know how to build it. And you can also learn the principle of Luban lock from it, and thoroughly learn how to make Luban lock.
There is actually a small story about "Yongle Canon", and the person who originally planned to write it was not Zhu Di, but Zhu Yuanzhang. At that time, someone proposed to Zhu Yuanzhang to compile a high-quality book, and Zhu Yuanzhang immediately agreed after listening to it. But later, due to some things, the official who made the suggestion left the court, and Zhu Yuanzhang had no intention of doing it.
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang thought that he should do something before he died, so he re-proposed the idea of compiling a high-quality book. But just when all the civil and military officials began to prepare, Zhu Yuanzhang had already passed away. In the end, the writing had to be abandoned. It wasn't until Zhu Di ascended the throne that he decided to write it, and then there was the "Yongle Canon".
So why is it rare to see such an excellent masterpiece among the people? Even in primary and secondary school classrooms, there is rarely any mention of the content of the Yongle Canon?
Second, the circulation of the situation, the history of the unsolved case
Now we rarely hear anyone talk about the "Yongle Canon", and even in many primary and secondary school textbooks, it is difficult to see the relevant information of the "Yongle Canon", not that we don't care about the "Yongle Canon". Rather, it is because the original copy of the "Yongle Canon" has been missing.
Why is it that a book that took five years to complete is suddenly missing? Although countless scholars have worked hard for many years to find a record of the text of the Yongle Canon, they have not received any news in the end.
At first, the disappearance of the text of the Yongle Canon was based on the belief that there was a fire in the court of the Ming Dynasty, which caused the Yongle Canon to be burned in the fire. After historical inquiry, it was indeed a fire in the court of the Ming Dynasty in 1597 AD, and the Forbidden City suffered heavy losses, and there are many records describing the fire.
However, there is a problem here, according to the memoirs of Ming officials about the fire, they do not mention the burning of the Yongle Canon. And there is no mention in the official history that the "Yongle Grand Canon" was burned in the fire. You must know that such a time-consuming and labor-intensive tome would definitely be recorded if it were burned.
In addition to the theory that it was destroyed by fire, there is another kind that was lost in the war at the end of the Ming Dynasty. It is said that Ming officials copied a copy of the Yongle Canon and returned the original to Nanjing, where it was later destroyed in the war. But this statement is also inaccurate and questionable.
Because no evidence was found in the official history, even if it was burned by the peasant rebel army, according to ancient customs, they would record in the history books that the "Yongle Canon" was burned by a certain army, and there should not be no record.
Of course, there are two other theories, one of which is that the fire in the Qianqing Palace during the Jiaqing period burned the original copy of the "Yongle Canon". However, in the Qianlong period, there was no record of the "Yongle Canon" in the list of books collected in the palace.
Another theory is that it was used by the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty to be buried, which is also the most reliable point that many scholars believe, from the historical record of the "Yongle Canon", the time of the disappearance of the text is also almost consistent with the time of the death of the Wanli Emperor.
However, since the archaeological work on the tomb of the Wanli Emperor has not yet been completed, this statement is only used as a reference for now. If it was really used for burial, it means that we have the opportunity to see the original copy of the Yongle Canon intact.
However, the copy of the "Yongle Canon" is very clear in history. During the Qing Dynasty, it was collected in the Jin Hanlin Academy, and many scholars and editors had the opportunity to refer to it. But after all, it is a copy, and there are still many deficiencies compared to the original, and according to scholars, at least 2,000 volumes are missing.
Why is there so much content missing? If it is an original copy, it should be copied word for word. Some people speculate that it may have been in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, when the national power declined, and many Qing Dynasty officials stole copies of the "Yongle Canon" and sold them in order to make money.
Some people also believe that it was caused by the clash with the Boxers after the Eight-Nation Coalition entered Beijing, because the British embassy was next to the Hanlin Yuan. According to historical records, during the Boxers' battle against the Eight-Nation Alliance, someone threw torches into the Hanlin Courtyard, causing a fire. So it's also possible that a lot of books were burned at that time.
3. The influence of the Yongle Canon on the West
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, less than one percent of the original number of Yongle Dadian remained, only 64 volumes. Some people believe that it is very likely that the Western powers of the time took away most of the contents of the Yongle Canon.
Some people may wonder why the Western powers came to snatch the Yongle Canon when their scientific and technological development far exceeded that of the mainland? Shouldn't you grab some porcelain or other artifacts?
In fact, there is a basis for querying here, you must know that encyclopedias began to appear in the West in the 18th and 19th centuries AD. During this period, the languages of Western countries had not yet developed, and their vocabulary was very scarce, as can be seen from their literary works before this. They had almost never had any great writers and works of literature before.
In this context, how could Western countries possibly write such a thing as an encyclopedia?
Then there is only one explanation, that is, during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, a large number of Western missionaries entered the mainland to learn the culture of the mainland. And there is a record of this in history, Xu Guangqi, who was in charge of the compilation of the "Yongle Canon", knew a Western missionary, and he once recommended many Western scientific and technological items to the emperor. So some people are speculating whether the Yongle Canon was given as a gift to Western missionaries at that time.
In addition, many Western scholars have said that the source of European encyclopedias is Chinese knowledge. Therefore, after the Eight-Nation Coalition entered Beijing, it was not impossible to snatch the "Yongle Canon". This can be seen in the book "China in the European Encyclopedia", and the Western world was studying and exploring continental culture in the 18th and 19th centuries.
However, this is only a possibility speculated by scholars, because there is no real evidence that the Yongle Dadian appeared in the West at that time. Of course, it is normal to find the books of the "Yongle Canon" of the Ming Dynasty in the West, after all, so much time has passed, and Western countries have experienced a hundred years of war, and it is normal to lose and burn them in the war.
But if one day in the future, the "Yongle Canon" of the Ming Dynasty is really discovered, it will be a truly priceless treasure!
Resources:
North Evening Online——2020-07-09——64.9 million yuan! Chinese female collector auctioned two volumes of "Yongle Dictionary" in France
CNKI - Zhu Returns to Hepu and Returns to Hepu: The Return and Reinvention of Yongle Canon