SERICA

What to call this blog entry was solved by an article in last week’s Independent (Tuesday 9 July 2013, 28-29) by David McNeill. Presumably the author found the image on the internet – I think I’ve found the one he used, which appears in numerous locations, and is rather good.

The article concerns the Senkaku Gunto 尖閣群島, the uninhabited group of rocky islands situated in the East China Sea between Taiwan and Okinawa. I give the islands their Japanese name because the Japanese are currently their internationally accepted owners, backed by American interests in the area. They are however claimed by the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, who know them as the Diaoyu islands 釣魚島 or Diaoyutai 釣魚臺.

The positions of all the claimants, together with their arguments, are set out comprehensively in the Wikipedia account of the dispute. And an interesting piece by Daniel Dzurek, written some while ago but rich in detail, is to be found here.

For sure, Diaoyutai is the earliest recorded name of the islands, and the reason the matter finds itself in this blog is because by an extraordinary coincidence, the first textual references to them appear in two documents of entirely different provenance in the Bodleian Library.

Both texts were discovered by Xiang Da (Hsiang Ta 向達) during his stay in Oxford from November 1935 until December 1936, which had been arranged by Yuan Tongli (Deputy Director of the National Library of Peiping), E.R. Hughes (recently appointed Reader in Chinese Philosophy and Religion at Oxford University), and Edmund Craster (Bodley’s Librarian) to enable him to catalogue the Library’s Chinese collections. Xiang Da’s stay in Oxford has been documented by Frances Wood in a recently published memorial volume for him (敦煌文獻‧考古‧藝術綜合研究 : 紀念向達先生誕辰110周年國際學術研討會論文集 / 樊錦詩, 榮新江, 林世田主編. – 北京 : 中華書局, 2011. – ISBN 978-7-101-08337-8). The original English text of her account can be seen here.

Xiang Da’s work in the Bodleian is particularly important for at least two reasons.

Firstly, he set up the first Chinese card catalogue in the Bodleian, and as described by Frances Wood, it was constructed along very sound lines which other libraries at the time would have done well to follow. I was still adding to this catalogue until it was closed in 1991, when automated Chinese cataloguing began.

And secondly, he wrote a lengthy article on the Bodleian’s historic Chinese collections, albeit with a few errors, in the journal of Peiping Library (as the National Library of China was then called) which introduced them to a wide audience in the Far East, and is still used to this day (瀛涯瑣誌 – 記牛津所藏的中文書, in 北平圖書館館刊 10:5, 1936, 9-44).

It is here (pp.30-33), I think, that the two rutters were introduced to sinology (and to politics) for the first time, although at the time the article was written, the ownership of the Diaoyu islands was not much of an issue, so there was no reason to mention to them, any more than to mention the numerous other locations referred to in the texts.

Twenty-five years later, Xiang Da published an account of the texts, with full transcriptions of them:

兩種海道針經 / 向達校注
北京 : 中華書局, 1961
平裝1冊(277頁) : 圖, 地圖 ; 18公分
(中外交通史籍叢刊)
附地名索引
統一書號 11018.142

As a result, the rutters became widely known in the Far East, and in recent years, they have become available on the internet in various locations.

Less freely available are original images of the texts, which have only just been made. It is planned to make them available in their entirety from the Serica interface in the near future, but for the convenience of those who might be interested in this matter right now, in a moment I will show scans of the four places (two in each text) where the mentions of Diaoyutai occur. But first, a few notes on the texts themselves.

The first is the so-called Laud rutter, described as follows in my catalogue:

順風相送 : 不分卷 / (明)佚名撰
明抄本
洋裝(原線裝)1冊 ; 26公分
MS.Laud Or.145

The title by which this book is known, Shunfeng xiangsong, appears only on its cover. It is undated, but Xiang Da strongly suspects that it was produced in the 16th century (p.4).

The ultimate Chinese provenance of the book is not known, and strange as it may sound, it hasn’t even been established how Laud got his hands on it. Xiang Da suggests that it came from “a European Jesuit university” (歐洲一所耶穌會大學), and indeed most of Laud’s manuscripts were of continental origin.

We know from western inscriptions on the book that it came into the Library in 1639:

and also that it was examined by Shen Fuzong and Thomas Hyde in 1687:

The second text is appended to a small collectaneum of military works, which as indicated by its shelfmark, is part of the famous Backhouse Collection which came to the Library in stages between 1913 and 1922:

兵鈐 : 內書八卷外書八卷 / (清)呂磻, (清)盧承恩編
附 指南正法 : 不分卷 / 佚名撰
清康熙乙卯[1675]序鈔本
線裝7冊 : 圖 ; 30公分
有「曾存定府行有恒堂」印記
Backhouse 578

This collectaneum never seems to have been printed, and although several manuscript copies of it are in existence (there is one complete copy and two incomplete copies in Peking University Library, another in Nankai University Library, and an incomplete copy in Princeton), only the Backhouse copy contains the vital appendix.

This seems to confirm Xiang Da’s view that although the preface to the book is dated 1675, our copy was actually written out rather later at the end of the Kangxi period, when the appendix was added.

I have only recently transcribed the single seal impression on the Backhouse copy, which informs us that it was formerly in the ownership of Zaiquan 載銓 (1794-1854), the fifth Prince Ding 定郡王, a great-great-grandson of Gaozong, the Qianlong Emperor. This I learned from a discovery on the internet, which even led me to the very bronze seal from which the impression was made, together with the help of Zheng Cheng 郑诚. If only identifying seals and their owners were always so easy! In view of the evanescence of things on the internet (to which I have referred before), for the sake of posterity, I have preserved the web-page in question here.

And here are the images of the passages concerning the Diaoyu islands. The leaves were originally unpaginated – my references are to the pencilled foliation done locally some decades ago.

順風相送, 13a:

順風相送, 62a-63a:

指南正法, 7b:

指南正法, 33b-34a:

Inevitably, I learned about these texts at a very early stage of my career, when my interest in our historic collections was developing in the late 1970s. But I did not know about the Senkaku Islands, nor the fact that their ownership was in dispute, until I received a letter from Kazuyoshi Umemoto, Second Secretary in the Japanese Embassy in London, dated 18 August 1981. The letter asked us to show Shunfeng xiangsong and any other related documents to Professor Toshio Okuhara, a specialist in international law and an authority on this matter. In the event, I don’t think Professor Okuhara ever came; I think it was Mr Umemoto himself, and he must have come at the approach of winter, because he had a pair of elegant leather gloves which he laid carefully on the desk before examining the manuscript. It is odd how irrelevant little details like this stick in one’s mind while one forgets more important things.

It may not be a coincidence that at the end of 1982, a year after Mr Umemoto’s visit, a second printing of Xiang Da’s book was produced. What had not been an issue in 1961 had clearly become one since, as evidenced in some small but significant changes to the text.

In glossing the island Huangweiyu 黃尾嶼 (p.168,n.1), the changes are as follows:

1961: 黃尾嶼為今尖閣群島之久場島. (“Huangweiyu is the present Kubashima in the Senkaku Islands.”)
1982: 黃尾嶼為我國臺灣省所屬島嶼. (“Huangweiyu is an island which belongs to our country’s Taiwan Province.”)

And in the place-name index (p.253) the entries for the alternative names of the islands have also been modified:

1961: 釣魚嶼 — 釣魚嶼為自臺灣基隆至琉球途中尖閣群島中之一島, 今名魚釣島, 亦名釣魚島. (“Daioyuyu — Diaoyuyu is one of the Senkaku Islands which lies on the way from Jilong in Taiwan to the Ryukus; its present name is Yudiaodao, and it is also called Diaoyudao.”)
1982: 釣魚嶼 — 釣魚嶼在臺灣基隆東北海中, 為我國台灣省附屬島嶼, 今名魚釣島, 亦名釣魚島. (“Diaoyuyu — Diaoyuyu is in the sea to the northeast of Chilong in Taiwan, and is an island belonging to our country’s Taiwan Province; its present name is Yudiaodao, and it is also called Diaoyudao.”)

1961: 釣魚臺 — 此指琉球群島中尖閣群島之魚釣島, 一般作釣魚嶼, 亦作釣魚臺. (“Diaoyutai — This refers to Yudiaodao in the Senkaku Islands in the Ryukus, and it is commonly called Diaoyuyu or Diaoyutai.”)
1982: 釣魚臺 — 此指臺灣基隆東北海上之釣魚島, 一般作釣魚嶼, 亦作釣魚臺. (“Diaoyutai — This refers to Diaoyudao in the sea to the northeast of Chilong in Taiwan, and it is commonly called Diaoyuyu or Diaoyutai.”)

Most recently, in September 2012, in a further attempt to cement their claim to the islands the Chinese published a large and detailed map of “The Peoples Republic of China’s Diaoyudao and associated islands” (ISBN 978-7-5031-7131-4); I remember buying a comparable map of the Falkland Islands in 1982 – how else was one to know where they were?

Apart from Mr Umemoto, to my knowledge the only other diplomat to examine the Laud and Backhouse manuscripts is Dr. Shen Lyushun, the Taipei Representative in London, who visited us on 30 November 2012.

I don’t know if any representative of the Chinese government has ever examined the manuscripts in the flesh, but some years ago a student told me he had been asked to look at them on their behalf.

By way of a postscript: it is ironic that Xiang Da, who discovered the documents which are now being seen by some as favouring his country’s claim to the Senkaku Islands, should have perished as a class enemy during the Cultural Revolution – and in that I suppose his visit to Oxford didn’t help. He was sent to labour in the countryside, and having a weak heart, died there almost immediately in 1966.

Descending into cliché, I think the time has come for me to say which book I would rescue if the Library were on fire and I could only save one.

Without doubt, it would be Sinica 41, described as follows in my catalogue:

新刊二十四孝故事 卷一 ; 新鍥重訂補遺音釋大字日記故事大成 卷二至八 / (明)佚名撰
明萬曆中鄭氏聚垣書舍刊本
線裝2冊 : 圖 ; 28公分
本書為海內外孤本
Sinica 41

The note 「本書為海內外孤本」 indicates that the work is a unique surviving printed edition, and that alone would be sufficient reason for saving it if it were not in the company of so many other unique surviving editions in the Bodleian Library, and if it were entirely true. In fact, there is another extant copy, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Chinois 1392, and this copy has been digitised. Comparison shows that the impression has been taken from the same blocks.

However, the Paris copy is rather defective, lacking the first juan in its entirety except for the last half-leaf, and also two more leaves and the last leaves of juan 8; this is the extent of the copy:

[1:1-6a missing] 1:6b-2:13a [2:13b missing] 3:1a-7:8b
[7:9 missing] 7:10a-8:7b [8:8-12 missing]

By contrast, the Bodleian copy is complete apart from a single leaf, 6:10, and the final leaf enables the work to be identified. It seems that the Oxford and Paris copies are not only unique surviving copies of the work, but also the unique surviving work of the publishing house that printed it:  鄭氏聚垣書舍. In fact, a Google search for the term 「聚垣書舍」will point only to the entry for this edition in my list of Chinese books in Europe in the 17th century (the Paris colleagues could produce a second hit by updating their catalogue entry on the basis of this information).

As for its content, the work is a typical product of the late Ming commercial press, centred mainly in Jianyang 建陽 (in Fujian Province), but also in Jinling 金陵 (modern Nanking). The first juan is the well-known Tales of the twenty-four filial exemplars 二十四孝, but juan 2-8 are a series of more general historical morality tales.

But the reason why I would rescue this book from the flames has nothing to do with either its content or its rarity. It is because of the inscription on its front cover, which is not only one of the very earliest western inscriptions on a Chinese book, but tells the story of how the first significant quantities of Chinese books came to Europe.

The inscription is in Dutch, and neither I nor even Piet van der Loon could read it. So Piet sent it to Professor P.G. Hoftijzer at the Sir Thomas Browne Institute in the University of Leiden, and he transcribed it as follows – I reproduce his transcription exactly as he sent it to Piet on 7 November 1992:

Transcriptie

Historia Sinarum una |
cum figuris. |

Een gedruckte historie |
wt het groot Coninckrijck van CHINA |
Dewelcke gelesen werdt [doorgestreept: (more hebraico)] |
vande boven neerwaerts gaende ende more |
hebraico, vande rechter handt naer de |
slincke [doorgestreept: sijde] Handt waerts [woord onleesbaar] ende vereert aen |

Edlen ende seer Eerweerdighen [woord doorsgestreept] |
Nicolaes [woord onleesbaar:  .oeck.o..] |
anno 1603. |

Met een Chinesche doosken ende ettelike verscheyden |
schelpen ende 2 bladen wit Chinesche pampier |

Door uwen |

Dienstwillighen A. [onduidelijke letter of combinatie van letters]. |

So we have quite a well-informed description of the book (few people at that time would know that Chinese was read top to bottom, right to left more hebraico), but what are we to make of the two lines that tell us that the book is accompanied by “a little Chinese box, various sea-shells, and two sheets of white Chinese paper”?

In fact this is the most vivid evidence we have of what can only be inferred from other sources: that this book, and others like it, was obtained by members of the Dutch East India Company from overseas Chinese traders in Southeast Asia (on whose tropical shores the sea-shells were gathered), and that it was sold as part of a job lot of curiosities at an auction in Amsterdam. That Chinese books were considered to be curiosities at that time is evidenced, for example, by the inclusion of two of them in the cabinet of curiosities of John Bargrave (1610‑1680), a canon of Canterbury Cathedral. Although this cabinet is still extant, the Chinese books have, alas, gone missing. [1]

The Dutch bibliographer Bert van Selm [2] has suggested that an important consignment arrived as a result of one specific trading expedition, in which two fleets of ships from Amsterdam companies set sail for the Indonesian archipelago on 23rd April 1601. Some of the ships returned to Holland with their goods in 1602, and it is quite possible that Sinica 41 was among them.

Other parts of the expedition returned in in the summer of 1604, the second in the spring of 1605. There followed an extraordinary sale of the cargo in Amsterdam in September 1605, which according to van Selm may be related to the publication in the same year and in the same city of a stock catalogue of Chinese books by Cornelis Claesz, the city’s leading bookseller.

The Parisian bibliographer Philippe Labbé (1607‑1670) gives the title of this catalogue as Chinensium variorum librorum Bibliotheca, siue libri, qui nunc primùm ex China seu regno Sinarum cum ipsorum atramento & charta admirandae magnitudinis aduecti sunt. Although there is sufficient evidence to show that the work actually existed [3], no copy has yet been discovered; this is unfortunate, as the catalogue is the earliest known printed list of Chinese books in Europe, and if found would represent a bibliographical source of the first importance. From time to time I search for the title on the internet – it is the Holy Grail of this subject, which has interested me for decades.

One final point – and it is an imortant one. Sinica 41 was in a grievous condition when I first encountered it. It was glued into a hard western binding that probably dated from the time when it was in the collection of William Laud, who used to own it, and whose elegant inscription is on the front endpaper:

(One can’t help noticing that just as John Bargrave, a canon of Canterbury Cathedral, had Chinese books in his cabinet of curiosities, so the Archbishop himself possessed not only this one, but several more which are also in the Bodleian.)

The hard binding was pulling the thin paper of the book apart, and it suffered more damage whenever it was opened.

To enable our conservators to repair books like this, I conceived the idea of translating a little manual that I acquired shortly after its publication in 1980 [4], which had been written by the chief conservator in what we then called Peking Library. I worked on this intermittently during the 1980s and 1990s, and it was eventually published in 1998 – long after its completion – in Princeton’s East Asian library journal. [5]

From an earlier draft of this work, Robert Minte learned the techniques of the Chinese book conservator if not quite first-hand, certainly more authoritatively than in any English or even Chinese source than had existed hitherto. And I’m flattered that the illustrations which Chris Clarkson drew for me to illustrate some of the more unfamiliar procedures were lifted directly from my publication by Zhu Saihong without a word of acknowledgement; indeed, in her own work on Chinese book repair [6], my publication is the only one that she doesn’t include in the bibliography.

In particular, from my translation of Xiao Zhentang’s work Robert learned the technique of producing the “jade set in gold” 金鑲玉 binding, a sophisticated structure which enables the fabric of the original book to be preserved in its entirety whilst at the same time allowing it to be presented and handled as if it were new. He applied the technique to Sinica 41, and when the book had been pulled apart and the pages stabilised prior to binding, the work was photographed in its entirety, and it is from these photographs that the images in this blog entry have been produced – in 1992, when this work was done, digital imaging was still quite some way off.

Robert’s repair of this item must be considered a masterpiece by any standard, and he even went to the trouble of acquiring silk brocade from a friend in Hong Kong to cover the protective tao 套 with.

This, too, is why the book should be plucked from the flames.