Talk:Yongle Encyclopedia

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 June 2019 and 31 July 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): KobeBuckets24.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:19, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Mentioned by Borges
Should it be mentioned that, according to Zhang Longxi- Borges also mentioned the Yongle Dadian in one of his stories ("The Forking Paths")? Have yet to verify it to provide proper referencing, but I thought it might be of interest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.206.196.109 (talk) 22:26, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

related to Yuan Empirial book?
During Mongol occupation of China, Yuan empire developed kind of encyclopedia called Yuan Empirial Book (Mongolian: Yuan Gurnii Sudar) isnt Yongle actually that encyclopedia? And the Yuan Empirial Book has over 100 volumes. 71.191.21.18 (talk) 03:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Please read the article. The Yongle Encyclopedia was started by the Yongle Emperor in 1402 and it consisted of 11095 volumes. While Yuan dynasty came to its end in 1368. Temur (talk) 01:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Vs. Wikipedia.
Does anyone know the ratio of content in the Yongle Encyclopedia compared to Wikipedia?


 * Well, http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla62/62-davd.htm says >370 million words in 22,937 volumes for the Yongle Encyclopedia; according to Special:Statistics for the English Wikipedia, there are 1,521,342 actual articles & 6,660,666 pages of various kinds in total. The detailed statistics record that as of June 2006, there were 511 million words. So a naive answer would be 370:511, but that's comparing apples and oranges: English to Chinese words, encyclopedia articles to encyclopedia/original texts, different styles of writing, etc. Even the sizes are highly imprecise: 370 million is really just a guess about the Yongle Encyclopedia, and for Wikipedia, it's not listed how the 511 million is obtained - the pages says "(excl. redirects, html/wiki codes and hidden links)", but is that really an accurate count of readable text? So, the answer is that Wikipedia is larger than the Yongle Encyclopedia - maybe. --Gwern  (contribs) 21:08 7 December 2006 (GMT)


 * You must know, Yongle Encyclopedia was written in Ancient Chinese(Wenyan), which characterized by its massive meaning and efficient expressing ability. A sentence with 16 characters may be translated into English in more than a paragraph. For example,"大学之道，在明明德，在新民，在止于至善"（from 大学，or Great Learning)can be roughly translated into"The Way of the great learning involves manifesting virtue,renovating the people, and abiding by the highest good." And the translation lost most of its implications and allusions. So 50 million characters may contain a lots of knowledge, probably larger than Wikipedia. But that's just my personal view. Dreamback1116 (talk) 06:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

When completed?
Any sources for either 1407 or 1408? -- Jeandré, 2007-01-28t13:58z


 * Yes... 1407:, . 1408: . --Gwern (contribs) 18:20 28 January 2007 (GMT)

Link to image
Changed the link to the image of one page of the encyclopedia as the previous linked page is no longer online.,2007-11-24

hidden in tomb complex
Do we have an article on "tomb complex of Yongling"? Yongling doesn't link. RJFJR (talk) 19:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Yongling is 永陵 in simplified chinese, literally Yong Tomb. It seems it was one of emperor's tombs of Qing dynasty. I am not sure about the detail. Dreamback1116 (talk) 06:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Tomb of Jiajing Emperor, Ming Dynasty.--刻意(Kèyì) 04:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Ate the Encyclopedia
It doesn't sound right, but even if it's true, it's a bit vague, without any citation so I banged a onto it

Size
There is a factual discrepancy in the English and the Chinese version of this article. The English version claims there be 50M Chinese characters, the Chinese version of this article claims there be 370M. I Google searched "yongle dadian", many other sources on the Internet tend to show 370M. 64.229.196.34 (talk) 00:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The Chinese wiki gives no source. Most of the other language wikis that state 50 million use the same single source. Unless someone can find another source, then I guess it stays. 98.113.222.37 (talk) 09:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Found a source in Chinese from National Library of China. Indeed, it's 370million or 3.7billion Chinese characters. http://www.nlc.gov.cn/old2008/service/wjls/pdf/04/04_04_a4b7c3.pdf I will change and add the source in both the Chinese and English wiki, I dunno about the other ones.. so please help.Gw2005 (talk) 18:05, 7 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Is this number of 370 million consistent with the number of Chinese characters in the surviving scrolls? If there were slightly more then 22.000 scrolls each scroll will roughly contain either 2.3K or around 16.5K Chinese characters. That cannot be too difficult to check. Best regards 212.238.38.91 (talk) 22:27, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Equivalent number of English words
Any idea what the English-language equivalent number of words would be? Is there a rough conversion factor, like 1.5 Chinese characters is (on average) equivalent to 1 English word? —DIV (1.129.104.2 (talk) 01:24, 21 April 2019 (UTC))

The factor seems to be around 1.4 to 1.7, although that would be based on modern Chinese.  So this would make 370 million Chinese characters equivalent to about 240 million English words. —DIV (1.129.104.2 (talk) 01:30, 21 April 2019 (UTC))


 * Yongle Dadian is written in literary chinese which is more compact at expressing its meaning. We are comparing apples to oranges here. 135.0.8.202 (talk) 22:24, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Comparison(s) for context
Obviously this was a huge encyclopaedia — indeed the biggest ever. But it might help to compare it to: Obviously the latter is printed rather than hand-written, so I think comparison on the basis of (equivalent) words would be fairest. Contrast could also be made on pages, volumes, number of topic entries (perhaps not known for this), etc.. —DIV (1.129.104.2 (talk) 01:41, 21 April 2019 (UTC))
 * the next biggest in history (I don't know what that is) in any language;
 * a widely known reference point for typical readers of the en.WP, which would have to be the Encyclopædia Brittanica.

The Encyclopædia Brittanica article states: "Over 70 years, the size of the Britannica has remained steady, with about 40 million words on half a million topics." [emphasis added]. Thus the Yongle Encyclopedia is around six times bigger by (equivalent) word count. —DIV (1.129.104.2 (talk) 01:47, 21 April 2019 (UTC))

Reinstated content
I have reinstated " — the equivalent of about a quarter of a billion English words (around six times as many as the Encyclopædia Britannica). ", which was removed by User:Atlan without justification. —DIV (1.129.105.93 (talk) 06:36, 11 July 2019 (UTC))

How was it organised or indexed
How was it organised or indexed - by subject hierarchy or 'alphabetical' ? - Rod57 (talk) 03:44, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Does it contain the only copy of many earlier documents
It sounds like there was no new content and it was 'only' a collation of copies of existing documents. How much of what survives is not otherwise known ? - Rod57 (talk) 03:44, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

More details on the surviving books
Can anyone add more on the locations and contents of the surviving books eg the 41 in the US LOC and the 51 somewhere in the UK ? - Rod57 (talk) 04:18, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Yongle Encyclopedia online
Is there an online version of the Yongle Encyclopedia. I tried to find one to add as an external link, but I couldn't find one. Is there one and if so where is it. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:41, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * See Reference desk/Humanities. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 11:05, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

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Unlikely to have run out of funds
Any credible source to suggest that the encyclopedia was not printed for the public because the Ming had "run out of funds"?

The Ming was in the middle of a golden age (1402-1424) and was able to continue other projects, including the expedition to South China sea and Indian ocean and expansion to the western and north east territories. It is unbelievable that "run out of funds" can be the real reason for not doing anything at that time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yihuaeyang (talk • contribs) 16:47, 4 June 2017 (UTC)


 * That's sourced to Endymion Wilkinson's Chinese History: A Manual, which is a highly acclaimed academic publication. -Zanhe (talk) 01:14, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

"Yongle dadian" capitalization
Minor point: A lot of sources (see) capitalize "Yongle" but not "dadian". Thoughts?--Gen. Quon[Talk] 13:31, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Longest encyclopedia before wikipedia
I am not sure this claim is true -- the Siku Quanshu is usually quoted as being longer than the Yongle encyclopedia -- https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2762 137.205.72.7 (talk) 13:35, 26 October 2023 (UTC)