Mystery of the disappearing great books

The canon was a compilation of ancient Chinese documents that included books - possibly as many as 8,000 of them - written between the pre-Qin days (before 221 BC) to the early Ming Dynasty, covering literary classics, astronomy, geography, medicine, divination, theater, crafts and agriculture, among others.

The canon was especially abundant with materials regarding the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties.

Each volume was 50.3 cm tall and 30 cm wide, mostly including two rolls. Stencil tissue paper and ink stick produced in Huizhou, now in Anhui province, were applied, considered the best choice for handwriting.

Thus, much of the blank space in the existing volumes was cut out for private use or imitating scripture paper later in history, causing severe damage to the canon.

Instead of simply being a compendium of ancient books, the canon was arranged more like a dictionary. The ancient documents were distributed by paragraph or by passage, rearranged and attached to different entries.

Each entry started with a certain Chinese character, followed by any materials related to the character, such as phonation, earliest record, meanings and illustrations of what they looked like in different Chinese calligraphy fonts.