Xuejin taoyuan 學津討原

Xuejin taoyuan 學津討原 "A plain frequented to quench the thirst for learning" is a series of collectanea (congshu 叢書) compiled by the Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) scholar Zhang Haipeng 張海鵬 (1755-1816). It includes 173 books with a total length of 1,048 juan, arranged in 20 collections (ji 集). The name of the series is derived from a sentence in Liu Zhou's 劉晝 (6th cent.) book Liuzi xinlun 劉子新論 from the Northern Qi period 北齊 (550-577).

Zhang Haipeng, courtesy name Ruoyun 若雲, style Ziyu 子瑜, came from Zhaowen 昭文 (modern Changshu 常熟, Jiangsu) and was the publisher of the three series Xuejin taoyuan, Mohai jinhu 墨海金壺 and Jieyue shanfang huichao 借月山房彙鈔.

The Xuejin taoyuan is a kind of reorganisation of the Jindai mishu 津逮秘書, a series published during the Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by Mao Jin 毛晉 (1599-1659. Zhang Haipeng eliminated books on poetry, painting and calligraphy and books with dubious authenticity and retained texts of the corpus of Confucian Classics, historiography and the "hundred masters and philosophers" (baijia 百家), as well as books on administrative statutes and unofficial histories.

The Xuejin taoyuan is an excellent selection of high-quality texts that have been carefully revised. Each book is accompanied by a short bibliographic description (tiyao 提要). In includes the most important writings from the Han 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) to the Yuan period 元 (1279-1368) and in that respect constitutes a valuable small library of classics.

The most common version is the original print from 1805 that had been published as a facsimile in 1922 by the Shangwu Yinshuguan Press 商務印書館 in Shanghai.