Huanglan
The Huanglan or Imperial Mirror was the oldest Chinese encyclopedia or leishu "classified dictionary". Cao Pi, the first emperor of the Wei, ordered its compilation upon his accession to the throne in 220 and it was completed in 222. The purpose of the Huanglan was to provide the emperor and ministers of state with conveniently arranged summaries of all that was known at the time. Complete versions of the Huanglan existed until the Song dynasty (960-1279), when it became a lost work, although some quotations did survive in other encyclopedias and anthologies. The Huanglan was the prototype of the classified encyclopedia and served as a model for later ones such as the (624) Tang Yiwen Leiju and the (1408) Ming Yongle dadian.
The title combines huáng "emperor; imperial" and lǎn "see; look at; watch; inspect; display" (compare the Taiping Yulan encyclopedia). This character 覽 redundantly combines jiàn 見 "‘see" and the phonetic element jiān 監 < Old Chinese *kˁram "see; look at; inspect", which was an ancient graphic variant character for jiàn < *kˁram-s 鑑 or 鑒 "mirror", cognate with jìng 鏡 *qraŋ-s "mirror".
Five centuries before the title Huanglan first occurred, but the words huang (before it meant "emperor") and lan co-occur in the Chuci poem Li Sao "Encountering Sorrow", believed to be written by Qu Yuan (c. 340-278 BCE). The 1st line establishes the poet's noble ancestry from Zhuanxu, the legendary Yellow Emperor's grandson, the 2nd describes his auspicious birth, and the 3rd line says, "My father, seeing the aspect of my nativity (皇覽揆余初度兮), Took omens to give me an auspicious name" (tr. Hawkes 1985: 68). In this context, huang 皇 means "august; stately; revered" in reference to the poet's father and lan 覽 means "see".
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