18
L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH
Hsieh's proposal approved, the emperor appointed him editor, and associated with him a staff of 147 assistants. For seventeen months they toiled diligently; then, on December 13, 1404, they submitted to the throne the first draft, entitled Wên-hsien ta-ch'êng. The emperor, however, was not satisfied. He ordered work resumed, adding two other scholars as co-directors of the enterprise: Yao Kuang-hsiao (1335 - 1418) and Liu Chi-ch'ih (1346 - 1423). The staff too was enlarged to the number of 2,169. On December 14, 1407, Yao submitted the Wên-hsien ta-ch'êng once more to the emperor. By this time it had grown in size to 22,211 chüan, bound in 11,905 pên. His majesty showed his satisfaction by bestowing on it the title Yung-lo ta-tien. But it was still not quite finished. A year later he contributed a preface, now included in the table of contents (an additional 60 chüan), in which he used the phrase "completed in the winter of our sixth year" (i.e., 1408). In this preface the number of chüan is given as 22,937. (The table of contents, excluding its own 60 ch., gives the figure as 22,877 ch. in 11,915 pên.) Obviously the editors had added some 700 chüan in the interim between Dec. 14, 1407, and the writing of the preface (Dec. 17, 1408).
The original was stored in the Wên yüan ko, Nanking, and a copy began to be made ready for printing in 1409. The cost was found to be so prohibitive, however, that this plan was abandoned. Woodblocks for a small number may, on the other hand, have been engraved. (This is the assertion of the eminent official and collector, Tuan-fang (1861-1911), who informed Professor Paul Pelliot that at one time he had seen more than one hundred chüan in printed form.) Following the removal of the capital, the YLTT was taken in 1421 to Peking and stored in the Wên lou in the palace area. In May 1557 a fire destroyed three palaces in the imperial precincts. Happily this work survived; it was then shifted to the historiography office.
Five years later (Sept. 11, 1562), because of the danger of another conflagration, Emperor Chu Hou-ts'ung (1507-67) ordered the making of another set, with the calligrapher Ch'eng Tao-nan in charge of more than one hundred scribes delegated for this service by the ministry of Rites. Other responsible persons were Kao Kung (1512-78) and Chang Chü-cheng (1525-82). As this work is essentially a mammoth