[
    {
        "id": 212412,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 354,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "331\n\nConfucian-Christian synthesis through an overview of the publications of Fathers Ricci, Semedo, and Magalhaes (Chapters 2 and 3). However, the flow of the presentation is marred by the author's frequent interruptions to correct, with the benefit of nearly four centuries of sinological research and hindsight (p. 72), factual and interpretive errors of these pioneers of Sinology. Consequently, the reader has to struggle to piece together and get a grasp of their views.\n\nBeginning with the geographical and historical treatises of Martini in Chapter 4, the focus of the book shifts to the impact of the Jesuits on European scholarship, particularly through expanding geographical knowledge, stimulating revision of accepted biblical chronology to take into account the Chinese chronology, and fueling the search for a universal language. In reviewing the influential works of proto-Sinologist Fr. Athanasius Kircher (Chapter 5), the author contrasts the Hermetic orientation of Kircher with the accommodative approach of his fellow Jesuits who were missionaries in China, setting the stage for both the growing tension around the theological implications of the latter that was to culminate in the Rites Controversy and a major change in the content of Jesuit accommodation under the influence of Hermetism in the closing decades of the 17th century. The author's critiques of Fr. Kircher's views are somehow less obtrusive than is the case where the views of the early Jesuit missionaries in China are concerned.\n\nSeveral of the best parts of the book follow the author's discussion of the search for a universal language (Chapter 6) and a key to the Chinese language (Clavis Sinica) (Chapter 7), focusing on the writings and correspondence of proto-Sinologists Fr. Kircher, Müller, Mentzel, and Leibniz, and China missionary Fr. Bouvet, the last great proponent of Jesuit accommodation in the century. However, the author's penchant in this section for taking pokes at others for using 20th-century attitudes to judge the shortcomings of some of his subjects (pp. 215, 227-28, 231, and 236) is rather annoying, especially in view of the fact that he indulges in the same type of thing (p. 220).\n\nIn Chapter 8, the focus shifts back to the Jesuits in China. Here the author discusses the culmination of Ricci's version of accommodation in the 1687 publication of Confucius Sinarum philosophus and the European reactions to it. This work is a Latin translation of a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212413,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 355,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "332\n\nbiography of Confucius and three of the Four Books of early Confucianism; namely, Ta-hsüeh, Chung-yung, and Lun-yü. While the discussion (based on the author's private correspondence with T. Korai Kitao) of the European influences in the portrait of Confucius standing with a temple of learning in the background is very interesting, the suggestion that Confucius is holding his own spirit tablet (pp. 271, 274, and 276) may be worth further investigation. The author's running criticism of the translations of the Ta-hsüeh and Chung-yung gets in the way of his presentation of Jesuit views and interpretation. One wonders why he did not include the Lun-yü in his discussion, particularly since Leibniz was particularly fond of this work (pp. 287-88).\n\nChapter 9 is devoted to the writings of Fr. Bouvet who arrived in China in 1688 and significantly revised the content of accommodation by discarding Ricci's Confucian-Christian synthesis in favor of a 'Chinese-Christian synthesis' focusing on the pre-Confucius portions of the I-ching. The author gives a clear picture of the different social and political circumstances under which Ricci and Bouvet laboured and how this influenced their approaches to accommodation. He shows the impact of Hermetism on Bouvet's fascination with and interpretation of the hexagrams of the I-ching as hieroglyphs which encoded the ancient and pristine religion of man. The discussion of the dissemination of Bouvet's views to Europe through his correspondence with Leibniz is most interesting, though the reading is somewhat tedious.\n\nChapter 10 brings down the curtain on the 17th century and the Jesuits with an examination of the extremist views found in the new accommodative compositions of Le Comte and Le Gobien which brought the Rites Controversy to a head and provoked the impeachment of their works in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1700. Finally, a four-page conclusion provides a succinct and adequate summary of the author's main points.\n\nMELVIN P THATCHER\n\nCecil Beaton: Chinese Diary and Album New edition, O.U.P., Oxford, 1991 also, same author: India Diary and Album New edition, O.U.P., 1991\n\nCecil Beaton (1904-1980) was well-known, particularly in the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]