Shilin guangji 事林廣記

Shilin guangji 事林廣記 "Vast records of the matters forest" is an encyclopaedia for everyday use compiled during the late Southern Song period 南宋 (1127-1279) by Chen Yuanjing 陳元靚 (c. 1250) from Jian'an 建州 (today's Nanping 南平, Fujian). Of his life, practically. nothing is known. He also compiled the books Suishi guangji 歲時廣記 and Bowenlu 博聞錄, the former being a kind of agricultural handbook, and the latter a collection of must-knows.

It was expanded during the Yuan 元 (1279-1368) and Ming 明 (1368-1644) periods.

As an encyclopedia, the Shilin guangji contains a very wide range of topics dealt with. Its characteristics in comparison with other contemporary encyclopaedias like the Taiping yulan 太平御覽 or the Yuhai 玉海 is that is contains a lot of information about daily life in the urban markets, like calculation methods of merchants, or colloquial terms, and that it provides a large amount of illustrations. The latter feature provided an important example for later encyclopaedias, like the Sancai tuhui 三才圖會, but also the large Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成.

Figures 1-3. Illustrations with text from the Shilin guangji 事林廣記 (1280 version)

Children learning polite gestures.

Circle of harmony of the five tones of the pentatonic scale (wuyin 五音), the twelve pitches (lülü 律呂) and the musical modes (gongdiao 宮調).

Charts showing different situations of a board game.

Because the book was not imperially issued it was reprinted as the market desired and therefore many different versions are available, each of them containing new chapters, additions and supplements. Chapters also vary in content, like the treatises about state offices, which were very different under the Song, the Yuan and the Ming dynasties. Today there are six versions surviving. Chen Yuanjin's lost original (zuben 祖本) was the basis for two different strands, namely 1) the so-called pre-Zhiyuan (referring to the Zhiyuan reign-period 至元, 1264-1294) text which became the original Zhishun version (Zhishun yuanben 至順原本, referring to the Zhishun reign-period 至順, 1330-1332, lost), of which one reprint exists in the Imperial Palace (Gugong Zhishun ben 故宮至順本, facsimile print by Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局), one copy of the Grand Secretariat (Neige Zhishun ben 內閣至順本), and a Ming-period copy (Hongwu ben 洪武本), of which all Japanese versions and copies are derived, as well as a print from the Chenghua reign-period (Chenghua kanben 成化刊本). There are also ten-series versions printed after the Zhiyuan reign-period by the Japanese Archives and Mausolea Department (Shoryōbu 書陵部) of the Imperial Household Agency. The second strand 2) is the ten-series version of the Zhiyuan reign-period (Zhiyuan kan shi ji ben 至元刊十集本), and its emulation of a print from the Taiding reign-period (Taiding ben 泰定本, lost), the direct ancestor of another Japanese print called He ke ben 和刻本 (facsimile Kyūko Shoin 汲古書院).

The oldest surviving edition is the 1330 version printed by the Jian'an Chunzhuang Library 建安椿莊書院 and reprinted in 1963 by the Zhonghua Shuju Press 中華書局. The second important version is that from 1325 which was reprinted in Japan in 1699. This version contains a lot of information on society and its language under the Mongol rule, and it shows how popular this old book still was among Chinese communities at the end of the 17th century.