Emperor Qianlong's Imperial Seal Authentic Manuscript

Author: Chen Qiangyi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1995-10-01
Features: This is the third volume of the book, collecting fifty-six works of the Qianlong Emperor. The pieces span from August 30, 1736 (the thirteenth year of the Yongzheng reign) to October 23, 1792 (the fifty-seventh year of the Qianlong reign). According to Qing dynasty customs, the mourning period for an emperor lasted one hundred days. During this time, the emperor was prohibited from using vermilion ink for reviewing documents and could only use blue or black ink. The Yongzheng Emperor passed away on August 23, 1736 (October 8, 1736 in the Gregorian calendar), and according to regulations, the mourning period lasted from August 23 to December 3, totaling one hundred days. During this period, the newly ascended Qianlong Emperor was required to review documents using blue or black ink. The first eight documents included in this volume are the black-ink reviews of the Qianlong Emperor. The earliest piece dates back to August 30, 1736, seven days after the Yongzheng Emperor's death, and was issued before the Qianlong Emperor's official enthronement on the third day of the ninth month. This indicates that the young Qianlong Emperor had already begun to fulfill his duties as emperor even before his official accession. The volume also includes three additional documents from December 1736, all reviewed after the mourning period ended and written in vermilion ink.
There are many calligraphy works of the Qianlong Emperor in circulation, but during the compilation of this book, we discovered that the number of characters in his imperial reviews is significantly less than that of his father, the Yongzheng Emperor. Most of the reviews with a large number of characters and high calligraphic quality are concentrated in the early period. In the later years, the emperor often wrote directly on the documents, resulting in fewer characters. Therefore, we focused on selecting more reviews from the early period, but to allow readers to fully appreciate the Qianlong Emperor's calligraphy, we have included examples from each period of his reign, enabling readers to compare and appreciate them.