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Encyclopédie des historiographies : Afriques, Amériques, Asies

 | 
Nathalie Kouamé
, 
Éric P. Meyer
, 
Anne Viguier

E

Encyclopaedias (China)

Encyclopédies (Chine)

Daniel Patrick Morgan

Résumé

Le leishu 類書 ou « livre de catégories » est le genre le plus proche de ce qu’est l’encyclopédie moderne dans l’histoire de la Chine pré‑moderne. Ouvrages de référence, les leishu se composent principalement d’extraits d’autres textes classés par catégories thématiques, rimes ou caractères.

Texte intégral

1It is difficult to speak of the history of the encyclopaedia in pre‑modern China, because to do so is to speak in artificial categories. What we call an encyclopaedia ‑ a “global” (enkyklios) “education” (paideia) or “circle of sciences” ‑ is a genre that emerged from the seventeenth‑century European dictionary, that took its modern form only in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie of 1751‑1772, and that was taken up by East Asian scholars only a century after that, e.g. Nishi Amane’s 西周 1872 Hyakugaku renkan 百學連環 (Connected Ring of the Hundred Studies). The first true Chinese encyclopaedia ‑ a “complete book of the hundred sciences” (baike quanshu 百科全書) ‑ was begun by Yang Jialuo 楊家駱 et al. in 1930, and before it was even finished, in 1936, scholars were already discussing its glorious two‑thousand‑year history in East Asia. Just as we today might speak anachronistically of Pliny’s 77‑79 Naturalis Historia as “the first”, the East Asian ancestry of the encyclopaedia was reimagined around the nearest thing at hand: leishu 類書, or “category books”.

2It is equally difficult to speak of the history of “category books”, because this term only first appears in the eleventh century ‑ a bibliographic classification regrouping various works previous filed under “Miscellaneous” (za 雜). Of the fifty‑five titles identified as such by eleventh‑century bibliographers, only four have survived more‑or‑less intact to our day: Du You’s 杜佑 766–801 Tongdian 通典 (Comprehensive Institutions), Xu Jian 徐堅 et al.’s 713‑742 Chuxue ji 初學記 (Notes for Elementary Instruction), Ouyang Xun 歐陽詢 et al.’s ca. 662 Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 (Literary Writings Collected by Category), and Yu Shinan’s 虞世南 ca. 605‑617 Beitang shuchao 北堂書鈔 (Book Excerpts from the Northern Hall). What these four have in common is that they are all very long, that they consist principally of excerpts of other works organised topically into hundreds of categories and subcategories, and that they were compiled upon imperial order, by imperial academicians and librarians, as reference works intended nominally for the emperor. What we know from titles, descriptions, and fragments of earlier works placed beside them in the eleventh‑century library – “category books” going back to Mu Xi 繆襲 et al.’s 220‑222 Huanglan 皇覽 (Imperial Digest) ‑ more or less comports with this characterisation. Each is indeed “encyclopaedic” in scope, but one notes that said scope is generally limited to literature, history, institutions, anecdotes, or classical learning, depending on the work, and that similarly encyclopaedic and categorically‑organised compendia in areas like medicine, omenology, metaphysics, and organised religion were not “miscellaneous” enough to be later included in this category.

3The consciousness of “category book” as a genre would seem to have crystallised around four subsequent projects sponsored by the founding emperors of the Northern Song (960‑1127): Wang Qinruo 王欽若 et al.’s 1013 Cefu yuangui 冊府元龜 (Outstanding Models from the Storehouse of Literature) and Li Fang 李昉 et al.’s 987 Wenyuan yinghua 文苑英華 (Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature), 982 Taiping yulan 太平御覽 (Imperial Digest of the Taiping Era), and 978 Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Extended Notes of the Taiping Era). Such projects were as much a celebration of the values of “broad learning” (boxue 博學), textual precedence, and historical models as they were, in modern terms, PR spectacles and team‑building exercises to get scholar‑officials working together (rather than fighting). These Northern Song projects set the standard for the genre as projected back onto the first millennium and as expanded, compounded, and perfected moving forward with such gigantesque works as Chen Menglei 陳夢雷 et al.’s 1728 Qinding Gujin tushu jicheng 欽定古今圖書集成 (Imperially Approved Synthesis of Books and Illustrations Past and Present). The readership of these imperially-commissioned “category books” was never particularly wide, but readership was never the point.

4The politics and tradition of grand imperial projects carried on, the underlying interest in “broad learning” shifting to the “investigation of things to plumb [the universal moral] order” (gewu qiongli 格物窮理), with the rise of Neo‑Confucian metaphysics, and then to questions of epistemology and philology, with the rise of “evidential scholarship” (kaoju xue 考據學). All the while, however, individual and private scholars were writing their own, expanding the genre in new directions in service of personal, practical, specialist, and/or financial ends. Here, readership was a consideration and, to secure it, private printing houses competed to innovate, economise, and expand the genre to fill heretofore unexplored niches: travel, food, and collectors’ guides, for all the various luxuries of the idle rich; “category books for daily use” (riyong leishu 日用類書) providing a popular audience with general cultural factoids and practical information on travel, customs, law, religion, agriculture, and home economics; and, perhaps most importantly, test-preparation materials, mixing excerpts with synthetic lessons and sample Q&A, such as continue to dominate the Chinese book industry to our day.

5Those “category books” mentioned here all began as manuscripts; they were later printed with woodblocks, and it is in print that they have survived to the present day. To make these more accessible, modern scholars have since produced punctuated critical editions of these texts and digitised them to make them publically available in various forms online. “Category books” blur the line between anthologies, guidebooks, dictionaries ‑ categorised by character or rhyme ‑ and, indeed, entire libraries, and they are one of the most important sources available to modern historians of China. More than anything, they are ingenious reference works, and they preserve bits and pieces of all the literature that has not survived the test of time.

Document. Organisation of the Qinding Gujin tushu jicheng 欽定古今圖書集成 (Imperially Approved Synthesis of Books and Illustrations Past and Present) of 1728 (after Wilkinson Endymion Porter, 2000)

Sec.

vols.

subsecs.

Category I. 曆象 Astronomy and Astrology

1

乾象 The Heavens

21

100

2

歲功 The Agricultural Year

43

116

3

曆法 Mathematical Astronomy

6

140

4

庶徵 The Multitude of Omens

50

188

Category II. 方輿 The Quarters of the Earth

5

坤輿 The Earth

21

140

6

職方 Administrative Regions

223

544

7

山川 Mountains and Rivers

401

320

8

邊裔 Border Peoples

542

140

Category III. 明倫 Human Relationships

9

皇極 The Emperor

31

300

10

宮闈 The Imperial Household

15

140

11

官常 The Offices of Government

65

800

12

家范 The Family Model

31

116

13

交誼 Social Intercourse

37

120

14

氏族 Clan and Family Names

694

640

15

人事 Man and His Attributes

97

112

16

閨媛 Women

17

376

Category IV. 博物 The Wider World of Things

17

藝術 Arts and Occupations

43

824

18

神異 Spirits and Prodigies

70

320

19

禽蟲 Beasts and Insects

317

192

20

草木 Grasses and Trees

700

320

Category V. 理學 Neo‑Confucian Learning

21

經籍 Classics and Nonfiction

66

500

22

學行 Learning and Conduct

96

300

23

文學 Literature

49

260

24

字學 Characters and Writing

24

160

Category VI. 經濟 The Political Economy

25

選舉 The Examination System

29

136

26

銓衡 The Official Career

12

120

27

食貨 Foods and Commodities

83

360

28

禮儀 Ritual and Cerimonials

70

348

29

樂律 Music and Tono-metrology

46

136

30

戎政 The Military Administration

30

300

31

詳刑 Law and Punishments

26

80

32

考工 Craft and Manufacture

154

252

Totals

6,109

10,000

Bibliographie

Books

Loewe Michael, 1987, The Origins and Development of Chinese Encyclopaedias, China Society Occasional Paper 25, London, 20 p. [9780851870243]

Wilkinson Endymion Porter, 2000, Chinese History: A Manual, 2nd ed., Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, MA, p. 601‑609, 1148 p. [9780674067158]

Contribution to Book

Bretelle‑Establet Florence & Chemla Karine (dir.), 2007, Qu’était‑ce qu’écrire une encyclopédie en Chine ?, Hors‑série 2007, Extrême‑Orient, Extrême‑Occident.

Auteur

CNRS, Paris

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