Taiping Yulan
Traditional Chinese	《太平御覽》
Simplified Chinese	《太平御览》
Literal meaning	Imperial Reader of theEra of Great Peace
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin 《Tàipíng Yùlǎn》 Wade–Giles T‘ai-p‘ing Yü-lan Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Taai3 ping4 Jyu6 laam5

TheTaiping Yulan, translated as theImperial Reader orReadings of theTaiping Era, is a massive Chineseleishuencyclopedia compiled by a team of scholars from 977 to 983. It was commissioned by the imperial court of theSongdynasty during the firstera of the reign ofEmperor Taizong. It is divided into 1,000 volumes and 55 sections, which consisted of about 4.7 millionChinese characters. It included citations from about 2,579 different kinds ofdocuments spanning from books, poetry,odes,proverbs,steles to miscellaneous works. After its completion, theEmperor Taizong is said to have finished reading it within a year, going through 3 volumes per day. It is considered one of theFour Great Books of Song.

The team who compiled the Taiping Yulan includes: Tang Yue (湯悅), Zhang Wei (張洎), Xu Xuan (徐鉉), Song Bai (宋白), Xu Yongbin (徐用賓), Chen E (陳鄂), Wu Shu (吳淑), Shu Ya (舒雅), Lü Wenzhong (吕文仲), Ruan Sidao (阮思道), Hu Meng (扈蒙), Li Fang (李昉), and others.

It is one of the sources used byMing andQing scholars to reconstruct the lostRecord of the Seasons of Jingchu.^[1]

One such copy of the Taiping Yulan is held atTōfuku-ji inKyoto, Japan. In 1244,Enni was approved by the Song government to bring back 103 volumes of the encyclopedia, and later on, an additional 10 volumes were brought in for circulation amongst Japanese monks. The 103 volumes are now classified as aNational Treasure.^[2][3]

In 2024, a grant from theAgency for Cultural Affairs and theYomiuri Shimbun will help conserve and restore the Tōfuku-ji encyclopedia, which is the only 1000 volume version to survive from the Song Dynasty.^[4]

• Kurz, Johannes L. (2003). "Das Kompilationsprojekt Song Taizongs (reg. 976–997)".Monographies Études Asiatiques Suisses. Peter Lang.ISSN 0172-3375.
• Kurz, Johannes L. (2007). "The Compilation and Publication of theTaiping Yulan and theCefu Yuangui".Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident.1 (H–S):39–76.doi:10.3406/oroc.2007.1069. in Florence Bretelle-Establet andKarine Chemla (eds.), Qu'est-ce qu'écrire une encyclopédie en Chine?. Extreme Orient-Extreme Occident Hors série (2007), 39–76.
• Endymion Wilkinson.Chinese History: A New Manual. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2012;ISBN 978-0-674-06715-8), pp. 651–652.

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