Tianwenlüe 天问略

Spiritual Sinology featuring Manuel Dias

2011-11-10T00:52:00.001-08:00

A recent publication by the Jesuit Michele Ferrero, entitled Sinologia spirituale. Lettere (Immaginarie) dal medioveo ai tempi nostri di 50 missionari che amarono la Cina, Chapter 5 "Cambio di dinastia" contains a fictive letter by Manuel Dias, in which he provides his interpretation of China. This could be good material for the introduction. For details, see:

http://las.unisal.it/index.php?method=ecom&action=zoom&id=930

Manuel Dias and his Chinese Translation of Contemptus Mundi

2011-08-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

From: XIAO Qinghe, Thomas <qinghexiao@gmail.com>
Date: 2011/8/10
Subject: [ChineseCS] 李奭學：<瘳心之藥，靈病之神劑--陽瑪諾譯《輕世金書》初探>(2011)
To: ChineseCS <ChineseCS@googlegroups.com>

瘳心之藥，靈病之神劑--陽瑪諾譯《輕世金書》初探

Spiritual Exercises: Emmanuel Diaz's Chinese Translation of the Contemptus mundi in Ming China

李奭學編譯論叢 4:1 2011.03頁1-38

本文所論為明末耶穌會士陽瑪諾中譯的《輕世金書》。此書譯於一六四○年，原作為德國奧斯定會士耿稗思的《遵主聖範》，乃歐洲中世紀晚期的散文偉構，亦是時靈修文學的代表作：耿氏娓娓細談在聖體的領受中，靈魂如何可與天主結合為一。本文分由四方面深入陽瑪諾的中譯，首先從譯本的版本問題下手，討論陽瑪諾在翻譯上的著作權。其次探討陽譯的底本問題。《輕世金書》一題，出自文藝復興時代格蘭那達的路易士的西班牙文譯本的書題，而此一書題再加上章數問題，使得歷來的研究者多認為陽譯所據即為格蘭那達的本子。本文則透過文本比對，認為縱然如此，陽瑪諾應該也參考過耿俾思的拉丁原文。本文第三部分研究陽瑪諾和耿俾思兩人的閱讀理論，指出明末以來盛行的「實學」一詞中的「實」字，在耶穌會方面，多指天主的「真實」或「真理」（Truth）而言。陽瑪諾為反映《遵主聖範》的經典與真理性，在譯體上選擇《尚書》中的謨誥體，而如此做的結果反倒讓《輕世金書》的文字變得晦澀不已。因此，從明清之際迄清末，為《輕世金書》作注者不少，我們迄今所知至少有四種。就天主教在華的譯史而言，這種情形相當罕見。本文最後所論，即為今天尚存的注本的特色。

This paper looks at the translation of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ into Chinese by Emmanuel Diaz, a late Ming Jesuit. The Imitation of Christ is a medieval European tour-de-force of prose that illuminates the spiritual path of union with Christ through the Eucharist. I approach the translated text of the work, titled Qingshi jinshu, from four perspectives. First I explore the textual history of the translated text and the decisive role Diaz played as the translator. Second, I investigate the source text of Diaz’s translation, which has long been identified as Luis de Granada’s Spanish rendition of the Imitation of Christ, entitled Contemptus mundi. My research shows that even if Diaz based his translation on Granada’s version, he also consulted the Latin original of à Kempis. The third section of the paper addresses both à Kempis’s and Diaz’s theories of reading expressed in the Chinese translation; both authors emphasize the textual search for divine Truth. Matching the terse style of à Kempis’s Latin original, Diaz's Chinese translation employs an archaic style similar to that of the Shangshu or the Book of Documents. The fourth and final section of this paper examines several annotated editions of the Qingshi jinshu, which circulated prior to the Republican era, in order to showcase the significance of Diaz’s efforts.

全文fulltext pdf http://ej.nict.gov.tw/CTR/v04.1/ctr040111.pdf

Shandong Province Library copy

2011-07-07T05:36:00.001-07:00

Information on Tianwenlue copy at Shandong Provincial Library is as follows:

天問略一卷［葡萄牙陽瑪諾撰　明萬歷刻本　十行二十二字白口左右雙邊有刻工］

Tianwenlue. 1 volume. [written by Manuel Dias from Portugal; Ming block print from the Wanli era; page layout: 10 lines, 22 characters per line]

It is not clear if this copy is identical with the one mentioned by Albert Chan in his ARSI catalogue.

This copy needs to be checked.

Benjamin Elman on circulation of Jesuit knowledge in China

2010-04-13T00:47:00.001-07:00

Fresh from EU China again: This might be paradigmatically important for our preface to the TWL translation, also because Elman is a prominent figure in the field (see his On their own terms - an almost entire version of this book is available on Google books).

Benjamin A. Elman,

“Who is Responsible for the Limits of Jesuit Scientific and Technical Transmission from Europe to China in the Eighteenth Century?”

pp. 45-66 of: Ho, Wing-chung, Clara (ed.), Windows on the Chinese world: reflections by five historians,
Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009 (135 p., ISBN 9780739127698).

This article contains the text of a lecture Elman gave at Hong Kong Baptist Universty in November 2006.

For a summary of a talk with the same title, but with slighty different contents (the titles of the sections 3-7 are the same), given at Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island, USA) in March 2008, see pp. 55-56 of:
http://www.ccha-assoc.org/journal/2009%20Fall/WebBack%20(3).pdf .
For an abstract of his talk (“Who is Responsible for the Limits of Jesuit Scientific and Technical Transmission from Europe to China in the Eighteenth Century?”) at the Folger Institute, Washington DC, September 2009, see http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=3239&CFID=2655504&CFTOKEN=63213632 . This talk was followed by: Mordechai Feingold, “Why blame the Jesuits: Some Revisionist Reflections on the Transmission and Reception of Western Learning in Late Imperial China”; for an abstract see: http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=3240&CFID=2655504&CFTOKEN=63213632 .
Last month (March 2010) Elman’s talk at Rowan University (NJ) was entitled: "Why Blame China? Who Was Responsible for the Limits of Jesuit Science and Technical Transmission to China in the 18th Century?" (see http://www.rowan.edu/colleges/las//events/event.cfm?id=19 ) .

New Book Mentioning "Tianwenlüe"

2010-04-12T04:58:00.000-07:00

This just came in through EUCHINA, see below for Tianwenlue (the whole book might be interesting for the preface to our traduction):

Ian Inkster (ed.), History of technology, volume 29 (Dec. 2009).

London / New York: Continuum International Publishing Group
215 pp. (covering two special issues), ISBN 9781441136114

Special Issue: Kent Deng and Jerry Liu (eds.), Chinese Technological History: The Great Divergence., pp. 1-101

Abstract: The common question from the western point of view is of the sort; why did China lose its early leadership of productive technologies to Europe during the early modern period? Answers to this seemingly clear enquiry vary from general cultural inwardness to the interferences of imperial governance. This collection surveys such theories but alters the issue by raising the notion that Chinese technologies did not so much fail as move along a path different from that of Europe.

Table of contents:

pp. 1-2: Deng and Liu, “Editorial Introduction”

pp. 7-28: Patrick K. O'Brien, “The Needham Question Updated: a Historiographical Survey and Elaboration”

pp. 29-55: Jerry C.Y. Liu, “Cultural Logics for the Regime of Useful Knowledge during the Ming and early Qing China c. 1400-1700”

(p. 44: Ricci; p. 46; Kong Zhenshi, preface to Dias’ Tianwen lüe; p. 46/47: Wu Weizhong, postscript to Schreck’s Qiqi tushuo;
p. 50: “it is probably an understatment that there was never a pure transfer of useful knowledge from Europe to China during
the Ming and early-Qing times. The Jesuit activities in China may serve as an important indicator here ...”).

pp. 57-79: Kent G. Deng, “Movers and Shakers of Knowledge in China during the Ming-Qing Period”

Abstract: The period of 1600-1910 is commonly viewed as one of decline in Chinese science and technology in world history. This article examines the movers and shakers of knowledge to show how the Chinese tried to catch up with the advancing West. They were not as stubbornly conservative as one might think. However, a degree of openness did not guarantee China’s ability to modernize.

pp. 57-62: The Jesuit period, c. 1600-1840;
1) pp. 57-59: How did it all begin?;
2) pp. 59-62: Why did Western knowledge not take China by storm before 1800?;
pp. 63-74: The Westernization period, 1840-1910; pp. 74-79, notes and references

pp. 81-101: Harriet T. Zurndorfer, “China and Science on the Eve of the 'Great Divergence' 1600-1800: A review of recent revisionist scholarship in Western languages”

Abstract: The first part of this study considers both general and specific publications that have re-framed the way China specialist and others have conceived Chinese science and attempts to relate these representations to diverging patterns of economic development between China and Europe before the 19th century. In the second part, this essay focuses on the Jesuit transmission of European science to China, and its consequences. It argues that the Ming and Qing governments’ efforts to control the Jesuit-transmitted knowledge in these fields stimulated ever more interest among local scholars in Chinese traditions of mathematics and astronomy, which culminated in the 18th-century ‘evidential research’ movement. But because the scientific knowledge the Jesuits conveyed was already out of date, before their arrival in China, local scholars never had the possibility to make a complete reassessment of their own mathematical and astronomical practices. As the primary and – at times, the only – translators of Western scientific thought to China, the Jesuits had an enormous historical impact on how Chinese scholars became trapped in a pre-Copernican universe in which Chinese natural philosophy, with its focus on metaphysical interpretations of the natural world, remained entrenched until the 19th century.
pp. 81-86, Introduction to the histiory of Chinese science in a global perspectives: Old and new debates
pp. 86-91, Jesuit scientific mission in China: Flattery as strategy
pp. 91-93, Helping to make the earth stand still: The Jesuit agenda and Chinese priorities
pp. 93-96, The significance of the first encounter: Intellectual dead end?
pp. 97-98, Some further observations; pp. 98-101, Notes and references.

Other texts by Manuel Dias

2009-12-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

Today I had a look at the last seven volumes of the recently published collection Chinese Christian Texts from the Library of France (Taipei: Ricci Institute, 2009), edited by Nicolas Standaert, Ad Dudink and Nathalie Monnet, and included in volume 23 there are two texts by Manuel Dias.

The first text, entitled Tang jingjiao beisong zhengquan, is an annotated presentation of the Nestorian monument found near Xian - this is an interesting (yet fragmentary) text because it has some information about the publishing procedure of Jesuit Chinese writings.

The second text carries the title Tianxue juyao (Crucial summary of Heavenly Studies) and is extremely interesting because it is a manuscript rather than a printed text. In fact, the manuscript looks like a preparatory version for a printed edition of the text. I also wonder to what extent this religious text contains references to astrononomy.

More on the original copy II

2009-10-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

Talked with Zhang Baichun from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He has been commissioned (together with a host of other scholars) to inventorize, organize and eventually publish a huge collection of original writings from the China mission Jesuits that are stored at the Vatican. During this editorial work, he has been on the lookout for something that might look like an original copy of the Tianwenlüe - also because he believes that there must be such an original text. Let's hope he is right.

More on the original copy

2009-09-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

There was certainly an original copy due to the simple reason that I don't think it possible that Dias wrote directly in Chinese. Not only because of linguistic considerations. It is deeper than that. Scientific modes of expression are very codified and in a trained person they become a "second skin". When thinking about science the mind tends to work with words, expressions and linguistic patterns of the language one learned that science.
So I think it is safe to say this: Dias first wrote a text, most likely in Latin (Portuguese is also a possibility, but less probable in my opinion). I think the question about the original text is more about what happened to it and how it was actually used. These are two very interesting questions....

The dialogue form

2009-09-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

The backbone of the TWL is an explanation of the "Sphere" -- that is the basic notions of cosmography and astronomy along (more or less) the sequence defined by Sacrobosco's Tractatus de sphaera . Imposed on this structure there are many deviations, additions, changes of emphasis, of order, etc., that make the TWL an original composition. But the most interesting aspect is that it is written in a dialogue form, or, to be more precise, as a series of questions and answers. Dialogue was used in Europe to explain the Sphere, but not frequently. There is in Portugal a well known sixteenth century manuscript, «Tratado da esfera em perguntas e respostas», with such a dialogue, but it is an exception. Printed editions of the Sphere in dialogue form are very rare (one or two in Italy and one in Poland, I think -- in a universe of more than 250 editions of Sacobosco's Sphere that have already been traced). Also, as far as I can see, dialogue form was not very common in Jesuit texts or Jesuit pedagogy. So, I am inclined to suggest that the dialogue format is more a trace of the "chinese" content of the text (i.e. influence of and adaptation to Chinese intellectual background) than of its European heritage.

The original copy

2009-09-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

Still doing the glossary, i.e., being excessively attentive to each and every word of TWL, I sense somehow the presence of a Latin text behind the Chinese version - what the Chinese like to call the 'original copy' (diben 底本). If (a) there was one, and (b) we could find it, this would, of course, be a little sensation. Both Zhang Baichun and Tian Miao, who have been working with Jesuit texts for a whole while, believe that there must be a Latin original that served as working and guiding text for Dias' translation project.

In order to establish if there was one in the first place, we should read the paratexts carefully, since they may contain some hints about the composition process. I have been reluctant about this task because these texts are hard to read and also extremely hard to decipher since they are written in a beautiful yet extremely cursive calligraphy (see picture!)

A sine qua non clue for finding the 'original copy' would also be to retrieve the original first edition of the Vatican Library. As mentioned in a previous post, the TWL has been digitized at USF, but the text they are using is not the text of the first edition, but rather a reprint that was published many decades later. This is philologically not quite kosher.:-)

If there was an 'original copy' and if this original copy is still extant, where would it be?

These are important questions for our introduction.

Henderson on Ch'ing scholars

2009-09-11T01:02:00.000-07:00

I don't know what more competent sinologists think about it, but I still find John B. Henderson's paper, «Ch'ing Scholars views of Western Astronomy», Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46 (1986) 121-148, quite good and most of all, quite useful. I read it recently while preparing some notes for the TWL and it was a very rewarding read. OK, here and there it needs updating, but it seems to me a very good summary. Am I missing something ? (very brief mention of TWL on p. 126. )

Glossary & Enlightenment

2009-09-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

The translation has come to a hold for the moment because of the glossary of terms that is being compiled for those parts of the text we have already translated.

Compiling the glossary is kind of a drag for impatient people because one moves on very slowly. Each page contains important terms - which include not only nouns, but also verbs, which obviously were used in a fairly precise and consistent manner.

Besides providing linguistic consistency, the most important thing about the process of highlighting specific terms is that mistakes become visible. I have already found two rather heavy ones in the first pages of our translation.

This glossary will be a very important tool for approaching Ricci's Qiankun tiyi as well as the Chinese astronomical tradition before the publication of Tianwenlüe.

Technical appendix

2009-08-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

It would be nice to have a brief appendix on the basic astronomy needed to understand the tianwenlüe. Something clear, short and self-contained. I thought I would easily find a good text in the literature but to my surprise I didn't. We should write one ourselves, I think. Besides, it will have to explain both Western and Chinese topics... maybe not a trivial text after all...

The mistery of Dias (I)

2009-08-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

Besides all the textual problems there is also a different set of questions I think we need to clarify along the way: why did Manuel Dias write this text? where did he learn (Western) astronomy and cosmology? what was his knowledge of Chinese astronomy? We already discussed these issues a bit but I am expecting (hoping, actually) that new documents from B. Ajuda or ARSI will shed new light on this.

Uranographie Chinoise

2009-08-27T08:01:00.001-07:00

Gustaaf Schlegel's Uranographie Chinoise (1875) is an excellent book for understanding the nomenclatura of traditional Chinese astronomy. Despite some polemical tendencies (don't forget that he was out to prove that "l'astronomie primitive est originaire de la Chine"), it serves as a very solid introduction into the system of traditional Chinese astronomy. We should read it carefully after the first draft is done.

D'Elia is a must!

2009-08-27T07:55:00.001-07:00

I have been reading D'Elia's Galileo in China during the translation work, and I think this book needs to be read cover to cover after we finish the first draft of our translation. It is an excellent introduction to traditional Chinese astronomy and provides good translation of some terms.

TWL online!

2009-08-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

The full text of the TWL in its First Collectanea of Heavenly Studies-version is available online through the Ricci Institute at University of San Francisco. We should keep this in mind if we want to digitize our translation. The actual web address is kind of long and complex, the simplest way to retrieve this ressource is by google for images of 天问略 (the Chinese title of TWL).

Images of TWL - Wooden Block vs. Movable Type

2009-08-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

The Images of the TWL version included in the Imperial Encyclopaedia are definitely different from the ones in other editions, especially the First Collectanea of Heavenly Studies. They also carry legends! I think this is related to the fact that the Imperial Encyclopaedia was printed with movable type (one of the very few works in traditional China to use that technology).

Does the Qiankun tiyi have any images at all? We should check that.

Qiankun tiyi and its relation with TWL

2009-08-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Qiankun tiyi was the first work introducing Western astronomy to China. It was compiled by Ricci and Li Zhizao and much more ambitious in scope than the TWL. Its main model seems to have been Sacrobosco's Sphaera. How did this work fail? And is its failure related to the composition of the TWL?

In the introduction we have to provide one extensive section on this book.

Disposition of Space in Scientific Texts China vs. Europe

2009-08-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Compared to traditional Chinese texts, the TWL has a lot of headers (some of which are not questions per se). This could be influenced by the European tradition. In order to establish that, we need to look carefully at both traditions and go from there.

Related to that is also the question of interpunctuation - some editions are, some editions are not interpunctuated. Why? Who did the interpunctuation? Marie-Theres discovered btw already one interpunctuation mistake.