Guang bowuzhi 廣博物志

Guang bowuzhi 廣博物志 "Enlarged records about different topics" is an encyclopedic collection of miscellaneous informations compiled by the Ming period 明 (1368-1644) scholar Dong Sizhang 董斯張 (1586－1628). The 50 juan "scrolls" long Guang bowuzhi is a kind of supplement to the Bowuzhi 博物志 of the Jin period 晉 (265-420) scholar Zhang Hua 張華. Zhang's book is a very short and unsystematic collection of various interesting descriptions. It does not discern between facts and fantasy and is very short in the informations it presents. Therefore, the Song period 宋 (960-1279) scholar Li Shi 李石 had already written a supplement, the Xu bowuzhi 續博物志. Li copied the structure of the Bowuzhi and thus contributed new information, but did not raise the quality of the book. Dong Sizhang did both. He assembled a lot of information from pre-Tang period sources and arranged these in 22 chapters, talking about 167 different themes. For all the sources he indicated the origin and took over the text in verbatim form, without altering it. Because Dong did not have originals at hand, he made use of vast collections like the encyclopedias Taiping yulan 太平御覽 and Taiping guangji 太平廣記. Unfortunately, he quotes these two books as his sources, and not the original titles from the Southern and Northern Dynasties period 南北朝 (300~600), which makes it necessary to check the two books for the original sources. The Guang bowuzhi has later been criticized for its low scientific level.
The first print was made in 1607. Another print of Master Jiang's 蔣氏 Gaohui Studio 高暉堂 dates from 1761. The Xuehai Studio 學海堂 has made a print in 1879. In 1991, the Yuelu press 岳麓書社 published a modern edition. The Guang bowuzhi is included in the reprint series Siku quanshu 四庫全書.