Siku Quanshu

Siku Quanshu
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese四庫全書
Simplified Chinese四库全书
Literal meaningcomplete books of the four [imperial] repositories
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinSìkù Quánshū
Wade–GilesSsu-k'u Ch'üan-shu
Manchu name
Manchu scriptᡩᡠᡳᠨᠨᠠᠮᡠᠨ ᡳᠶᠣᡠᠨᡳᠪᡳᡨᡥᡝ
Möllendorffduin namun i yooni bithe

The Siku Quanshu, literally the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries,[1] was a Chinese encyclopedia commissioned by the Qing dynasty's Qianlong Emperor in 1772, and completed in 1782. It is the largest collection of books in imperial Chinese history, comprising 36,381 volumes, 79,337 manuscript rolls, 2.3 million pages, and about 997 million words.[2] The complete encyclopedia contains an annotated catalogue of 10,680 titles along with a compendiums of 3,593 titles.[3] The Siku Quanshu surpassed the 1403 Yongle Encyclopedia created by the previous Ming dynasty, which had been China's largest encyclopedia. Complete copies of the Siku Quanshu are held at the National Library of China in Beijing, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the Gansu Library in Lanzhou, and the Zhejiang Library in Hangzhou.

  1. ^ "Complete Library of the Four Treasuries". Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  2. ^ 四庫七閣、《四庫全書》、《四庫全書總目提要》. 中國大(第二版)(第21冊) (in Chinese). Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia of China. 2 March 2024. pp. 146–147. ISBN 9787500079583.
  3. ^ Guy (1987).