Collection of Gods

Chapter 912 The Book of Ten Thousand Books
As time passed, the treasures in the wooden boxes were unveiled one by one. After the efforts of many experts from the National Museum, it was confirmed that their initial guess was correct and the entire set of the "Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature" was indeed buried here.

During the Qianlong period, under the auspices of Emperor Qianlong, the Siku Quanshu was compiled by more than 360 high-ranking officials and scholars including Ji Yun, and copied by more than 3800 people in total. It took thirteen years to compile.

Because the "Siku Quanshu" is divided into four parts: classics, history, philosophy, and collections, it is named Siku. The book has a total of more than 3500 books, 7.9 volumes, 3.6 books, and about 8 million words. The classics include the Thirteen Confucian classics and related works, the history includes historical books, the philosophy includes works and encyclopedias of various schools of thought, and the collection includes collections of poetry and prose and special collections, etc., basically covering all the books in ancient China.

After the compilation of the Siku Quanshu, Emperor Qianlong ordered people to hand-copy seven copies of the Siku Quanshu and ordered them to be stored in various parts of the country. The first four copies were stored in the Wenyuan Pavilion of the Forbidden City, the Wensui Pavilion of Liao Province, the Wenyuan Pavilion of Yuanmingyuan, and the Wenjin Pavilion of Beihe Province, which are now called the "Northern Four Pavilions". The next three copies were stored in the Wenhui Pavilion of Yangzhou, the Wenzong Pavilion of Zhenjiang, and the Wenlan Pavilion of Hangzhou, which are now called the "Southern Three Pavilions".

However, since the First Opium War, the entire Qing Dynasty has been targeted by Western powers. In subsequent wars, only the Wenyuan, Wenjin and Wensui Pavilions have been preserved to this day, and only a part of the Wenlan Pavilion has been preserved. Therefore, it is said that only three and a half volumes of the "Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature" are currently in existence.

It is obvious that the complete "Siku Quanshu" discovered by everyone now came from the Wenyuan Pavilion of the Old Summer Palace, which was rumored to have been burned down by the British and French forces.

Tang Yuan looked at the boxes of "Siku Quanshu" in front of him, and the feeling in his heart was indescribable. You know, there are only three and a half copies of "Siku Quanshu" left in the world. One is collected in the Palace Museum in Taiwan Province, one is collected in the Gansu Provincial Library, one is collected in the National Library, and the other half is collected in the Zhejiang Provincial Library. All of them are treasures of their respective provinces and even the country, and are not open to the public on weekdays.

Nowadays, Tang Yuan can actually collect the entire "Siku Quanshu" by himself. This will be really awesome if it gets out. Tang Yuan has even begun to think about whether he should build a private library after returning to China. After all, the ancient books he collected during this trip to Changjing Island are indeed too rich.

Not to mention the palace secrets unearthed yesterday, just this entire volume of the "Siku Quanshu" is enough to deserve a separate private library.

However, just as Tang Yuan's mind was full of thoughts, something unexpected happened again in the distance, attracting the attention of everyone present again.

"The ancestors are blessed!"

"The ancestors are blessed!"

Just as Tang Yuan heard the sound and hurried over, he saw a white-haired expert from the National Museum of China kneeling on the ground, looking up at the sky with tears streaming down his face. He was so excited that his face became unusually red.

"Master Zhao, don't get excited!"

"Calm down, please calm down, take a blood pressure pill first!"

Dong Wenhui had already taken the initiative to step forward to support the old man, and took the antihypertensive drugs from the accompanying team doctor, and handed the drugs to the old man in front of him as if he was coaxing a child.

In this regard, the old man did not even use water, but chewed the blood pressure pills raw. Then he held Dong Wenhui's arms tightly with both hands, staring at Dong Wenhui with tearful eyes: "Director Dong, this is the Yongle Encyclopedia. This is all the Yongle Encyclopedia!"

"what?"

"The Yongle Encyclopedia?"

"How is this possible!" As soon as the old man finished speaking, not only Dong Wenhui, but everyone at the scene felt as if struck by lightning. Even several experts from the National Museum who were about the same age as the old man, their faces instantly became unusually rosy.

In an instant, the scene became a mess.

"I rely on!"

"No!"

“Even the Yongle Encyclopedia has come out?”

"It seems like I have to build this private library!"

Tang Yuan stood in the middle of the crowd, feeling a little confused. He originally thought that it was outrageous enough to dig out the entire "Complete Library in Siku" from here, but he never expected that even more outrageous things were still to come. Now even the "Yongle Encyclopedia" had appeared.

What kind of existence is the Sikuquanshu?

It is the largest cultural project in ancient China!

It is the richest and most complete integration of Chinese traditional culture!
It can be said that almost all disciplines in Chinese literature, history, philosophy, science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine can find their source and bloodline in it!
However, even the Siku Quanshu, which is unprecedented in scale, still has to crawl under the glory of the Yongle Encyclopedia, and even always pales in comparison with the Yongle Encyclopedia.

The Yongle Encyclopedia is arguably the most famous ancient Chinese classic and the largest encyclopedia in the world to date. It was compiled during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty and is a large-scale encyclopedia compiled in ancient my country. The book contains 22877 volumes of text and 60 volumes of catalog, bound into 11095 volumes in total, with a total of approximately 3.7 million words.

The book preserves more than 8000 kinds of lost texts and secret books from the Pre-Qin, Song and Yuan Dynasties to the early Ming Dynasty. It is a precious cultural heritage of the Chinese nation. Its scale far exceeds all the encyclopedias compiled in previous generations.

Judging from the number of words alone, the Siku Quanshu may be far superior to the Yongle Encyclopedia. Logically speaking, the Siku Quanshu should have surpassed the Yongle Encyclopedia and become the most famous ancient classics from ancient times to the present. However, when the Siku Quanshu was being compiled, it was the product of Emperor Qianlong's policy of cultural autocracy in the name of "Jiugu Youwen". Emperor Qianlong destroyed, extracted, and deleted books that were not conducive to the rule of the Qing Dynasty, and destroyed and tampered with a large number of documents.

In addition, it seriously highlights Confucian literature and literature reflecting the "civil and military achievements" of the Qing Dynasty rulers, places Confucian works in a prominent position, puts Confucian classics at the head of the four parts, and puts general Confucian works at the head of the sub-part.

At the same time, it extremely despised scientific and technological works, believing that modern Western science and technology were "the most heretical" and that their skills could be "restricted and their academic knowledge banned". Except for a few scientific and technological works on agriculture, medicine and astronomy and algorithms, general scientific and technological works were not included. Moreover, it also excluded all literature with democratic colors or daring to criticize Confucianism, as well as dramas and popular novels such as Song and Yuan dramas, vernacular novels, and Ming Dynasty legends.

Under this circumstance, the Sikuquanshu is doomed to be no better than the Yongle Dadian, because the two classics were already judged superior in terms of purpose and structure at the beginning of their creation, and this is also the reason why only the Yongle Dadian is qualified to be called the "Book of Ten Thousand Books"...

(End of this chapter)