Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era
Taiping yulan太平 御 览( German: Kaiserliche reading the reign Taiping ) is the title of a under the guidance of the scholars at the Chinese Imperial Academy and Finance Minister Li Fang李 昉( 925-996 ) compiled leishu, a western encyclopedias comparable multi-volume compendium of the song Dynasty. The collective work includes excerpts from many of the Chinese cultural history major ancient sources and reflects the level of knowledge on which a scholar officials of the Song period was able to draw. His total of 4,558 lemmas are divided into 55 departments at 1.000 part volumes.
Genesis
The history of Taiping is yulan by the compiler Wang Yinglin (王 应 麟, 1223-1296 ) narrates in his leishu entitled Yu Hai (Chinese玉海, sea of gemstones / Jade Sea '). Wang Yinglin had excerpted the Statutes of the Song Dynasty in his compendium and thereby also adopted the report on the emergence of the Taiping yulan.
The result was the Taiping yulan in the 976 to 997 permanent reign of, known under his temple name Taizong second ruler of the Song Dynasty Zhao Guangyi赵光义( 939-997 ). In the first year of his reign, Taizong called The reign with the title taiping Xingguo (time of great peace and the recovery of the country) and ordered just a year later, a fourteen- member commission headed by Li Fang for the creation of two leishu. Taizong adopted a circumference of exactly 1,000 volumes for the later part of Taiping yulan. Today's research suggests the requirement to compile a work with a legendary for its time scope, as " a clear sign that it was the Taizong Emperor a demonstration of his power, or to a legitimization of his rule. " (Winter )
Already in the year 983 of the supervised Li Fang and his co-editors compilation team delivered the finished work from at court. Wang Yinglin narrated the story that the emperor the Taiping yulan in the course of a year wanted to read it for yourself and it is therefore made to the task of coping with three sub- volumes every day.
Organization of content
Unlike in today's Chinese dictionaries, the entries of the Taiping yulan are not organized according to graphic but according to content. Winter summarizes this for most leishu system has been used principle as follows: ". The things described are increasingly branches out of basic units starting fine, according to the opinion of their position in the cosmos ", enshrined in the Chinese worldview idea of a naturally given order of things is thus leishu displayed in the chapters and subchapters of. Accordingly, the contents of Taiping Heaven ( yang principle), Earth ( yin principle) and the world of people located between two yulan are divided into three spheres. Within this order, special rules apply: so is about high moral standing in front of low moral standing and valued positive action is still negative valuated.
The in total 55 departments ( lei ) of the Taiping yulan organized 4,558 lemmas spread to Winter numerically as follows:
Tradition history
When completed, the Taiping came yulan first long forgotten. Winter explains this by the fact that the work " by Wang Yu Hai Yinglins a qualitatively superior competition was an adult ." A new edition took place only in the Qing Dynasty, when interest in ancient texts increased again. In the West, the plant was known as the Austrian orientalist August Pfizmaier (1808-1897) translated 1867-1875 selected chapters of the Taiping yulan in whole or in part. In 1934, the renowned Harvard - Yenching Institute published a detailed index to the work. Last appeared in 1960 in the Chinese publishing Zhonghua Shuju in Beijing, the reproduction of a print from the Song period.