Ministry of Rites
At the same time, the new emperor was also anxious to advertise the cultural superiority of the Ming to the rest of the known world and to this end, he distributed 10,000 copies of the "Biographies of Exemplary Women" (烈女傳) to various non-Chinese polities for their moral instruction. Whether any motifs from this Chinese text have appeared in Southeast Asian literature, has not yet, it appears, been studied. Court calendars were also distributed to Southeast Asian polities by the Ministry of Rites.