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Silence, Script, and “New Understandings”

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The Chinese Language in European Texts

Part of the book series: Chinese Literature and Culture in the World ((CLCW))

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on rhetorical continuities in the European perception of China and its earlier avatars—Serica and Cathay. After tracing the perpetuation of the “silent trade” association with regard to the Seres in classical, medieval, and early modern times, Luca identifies tropes of language and vision in texts by Carpini, Rubruck, Hayton, Boemus, and Marco Polo, and comments on the fate of this rhetoric during manuscript dissemination. The chapter draws attention to the tropological harmony between early European attitudes to Chinese writing and speech and earlier Cathay and Serica rhetorical configurations. “Silence, Script, and ‘New Understandings’” concludes by emphasizing the rhetorical coherence of the image of linguistic China in widely different texts—occasional accounts, missionary letters like Francis Xavier’s, and scholarly speculations like Francesco Patrizi’s.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jean-Michel Poinsotte, “Les Romains et la Chine: réalités et mythes,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Antiquité 91.1 (1979): 432. Much of the information reviewed below comes from Georges Coedès, Textes d’auteurs grecs et latins relatifs à l’Extrême-Orient depuis le IVe siècle av. J.-C. jusqu’au XIVe siècle (Paris: E. Leroux, 1910). See also E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans from the Earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1879), 2:167–68; 2:285–86; 2:364–66; 2:413–23; 2:476–77; 2:485–86; 2:529–36; 2:598–600; 2:658–59; 2:677–78; 2:682; Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 1, bk. 1, The Century of Discovery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), 15–19; John Ferguson, “China and Rome,” Politische Geschichte (Provinzen und Randvölker: Mesopotamien, Armenien, Iran, Südarabien, Rom und der Ferne Osten), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, pt. 2, vol. 9.2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), esp. 582–85; D. D. Leslie and K. H. J. Gardiner, The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources (Rome: Bardi, 1996), 121–27; Folker E. Reichert, Incontri con la Cina: La scoperta dell’Asia orientale nel Medioevo, trans. Annamaria Sberveglieri (Milan: Biblioteca francescana, 1997), esp. 39–75.

    For matters related to the identity of the Seres, see Wilfred H. Schoff, ed. and trans., The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), 266–67; J. Oliver Thomson, History of Ancient Geography (1948; repr., New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965), 306–8; William Woodthorpe Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, 2nd ed. (1951; repr., New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 110–11; Samuel Lieberman, “Contact between Rome and China” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1953), esp. 96–160, and “Who Were Pliny’s Blue-Eyed Chinese?,” Classical Philology 52, no. 3 (1957): 174–77; Yves Janvier, “Rome et l’Orient lointain: le problème des Sères. Réexamen d’une question de géographie antique,” Ktema 9 (1984): 261–303; Jacques Schwartz, “De quelques mentions antiques des Sères,” Ktema 11 (1986): 289–90; Michael P. McHugh, “Observations on the Seres in Latin Literature,” Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 4 (1986): 341–44; Bernard Sergent, “Les Sères sont les soi-disant ‘Tokhariens,’ c’est-à-dire les authentiques Arśi-Kuči,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 24, no. 1 (1998): 7–40; Leslie and Gardiner, Roman Empire, 13–15; Rosa Conte, “‘Seri’ e ‘Sini’: fonti pagane e cristiane,” Linguistica Zero 2 (2010): 55–93.

    For etymological considerations, see A. K. Narain, The Indo-Greeks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 170–71; E. G. Pulleyblank, “The Consonantal System of Old Chinese: Part II,” Asia Major, n.s., 9 (1962): 229–30; Manfred G. Raschke, “New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East,” Politische Geschichte (Provinzen und Randvölker: Mesopotamien, Armenien, Iran, Südarabien, Rom und der Ferne Osten), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, pt. 2, vol. 9.2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), 694n89.

  2. 2.

    For Góis’s exploits, see Ricci–Trigault, Histoire, 592–615; Matteo Ricci, Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina, ed. Maddalena Del Gatto and Piero Corradini (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2001), 510–35 (hereafter cited as DE); China in the Sixteenth Century, 499–521; Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Henri Cordier, 4 vols. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1913–1916) 4:169–259; C. H. Payne, Jahangir and the Jesuits (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1930), 119–82. See also Eduardo Brazão, Em demanda do Cataio: A viagem de Bento de Goes à China (1603–1607), 2nd ed. (Macao: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1989); Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 3, bk. 1, A Century of Advance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 183; Hugues Didier, Fantômes d’Islam & de Chine: Le voyage de Bento de Góis s.j. (1603–1607) (Paris: Chandeigne, 2003); Francisco Roque de Oliveira, “A construção do conhecimento europeu sobre a China, c. 1500–c. 1630. Impressos e manuscritos que revelaram o mundo chinês à Europa culta” (PhD diss., Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2003), 1091–96; Philippe Lécrivain, “‘Cherchant le Cathay, il trouva le ciel…’ Bento de Góis S.J. en Asie centrale (1602–1607),” Transversalités 122 (2012): 13–27.

    The identity of medieval Cathay with China was suggested indirectly by the Florentine merchant Giovanni da Empoli (1483–1517) in two letters written as early as 1514–1515; it may also be inferred from the Suma Oriental, the opus of the unfortunate apothecary-cum-ambassador Tomé Pires (ca. 1468–ca. 1524), as well as a number of other early sixteenth-century documents; it was expressed by the Augustinian friar Martín de Rada (1533–1578) as well as the Spanish soldier Miguel de Loarca (ca. 1540–1591), Rada’s companion in a 1575 journey to Southern China; it was formulated again several times at the turn of the seventeenth century, for instance in texts by Ricci, his younger colleague Diego de Pantoja (1571–1618), the Florentine traveler and merchant Francesco Carletti (ca. 1573–1636), as well as the Jesuit writer João de Lucena (1549–1600); last but not least, Richard Hakluyt (ca. 1552–1616) equated the Seres with “the people of Cathay, or China” in his 1589 “Epistle dedicatorie” to Sir Francis Walsingham; see The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, 12 vols. (1598–1600; repr., Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1904), 1:xx. For da Empoli, see Marco Spallanzani, Giovanni da Empoli: Un mercante fiorentino nell’Asia portoghese (Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1999), 203; 232; cf. Giuseppe M. Toscano, La Prima missione cattolica nel Tibet (Parma: Istituto Missioni Estere, 1951), 25. For Pires, see The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, ed. and trans. Armando Cortesão, 2 vols. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944), 1:117; see also Rui Manuel Loureiro, “Informações italianas sobre a China nos primeiros anos do século XVI,” in Nas partes da China: Colectânea de estudos dispersos (Lisbon: Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, 2009), 42; Roque de Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 396. For Rada, see C. R. Boxer, ed. and trans., South China in the Sixteenth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1953), lxxvi; 260; see also Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 2, 752; Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971), 207; Manel Ollé, La invención de China: Percepciones y estrategias filipinas respecto a China durante el siglo XVI (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), 77–78; José Antonio Cervera Jiménez, “Martín de Rada (1533–1578) y su trabajo como científico en Filipinas,” Huarte de San Juan. Geografía e Historia 15 (2008): 73. For Loarca, see the first chapter of the second part of his manuscript Relacion del viaje que hezimos a la China desde la ciudad de Manila en las del poniente año de 1575 años… (on this text, see Chap. 3, note 17). For Ricci, see, for instance, his Letter 32, to the Jesuit general Claudio Acquaviva, of 13 October 1596 (339–40), Letter 44, to the same, of 26 July 1605 (415), Letter 47, again to Acquaviva, of 18 October 1607 (452), Letter 48, to Girolamo Costa, of 6 March 1608 (461–63), and Letter 49, to Acquaviva, of 6 March 1608 (473–80); letter number and bracketed page references are to Matteo Ricci, Lettere: 1580–1609, ed. Francesco D’Arelli and Piero Corradini (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2001); see also Ricci–Trigault, Histoire, 71 (where Ricci also identifies the Chinese with the Seres and Ptolemy’s Hippophagoi); 174; 392–94. For Pantoja, see his Relación de la entrada de algunos padres de la Compañía de Jesús en la China… (Seville: Alonso Rodriguez Gamarra, 1605), 57r–59r; Samuel Purchas, ed., Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, 20 vols. (1625; repr., Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905–1907), 12:362–63 (hereafter cited as HP). For Carletti, see his Ragionamenti del mio viaggio intorno al mondo, ed. Adele Dei (Milan: Ugo Mursia, 1987), 140; My Voyage around the World by Francesco Carletti, trans. Herbert Weinstock (New York: Random House, 1964), 156–57. For João de Lucena, see his Historia da vida do Padre Francisco de Xavier (Lisbon: Pedro Crasbeeck, 1600), 867.

    Alternate visions continued to be put forth in Jesuit circles, specifically in India; see António de Andrade, Histoire de ce qui s’est passé au royaume du Tibet…, trans. Jean Darde (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1629), 6–7; cf. Lach and Van Kley, Asia, vol. 3, bk. 4, 1575–77; vol. 3, bk. 1, 339; Toscano, La Prima missione, esp. 25–40; see also Diogo de Couto, Da Ásia, 15 vols. (Lisbon: Régia Officina Typografica, 1788), 14:492–505 (Década 12, bk. 5, Chap. 7). By the 1620s, however, Góis and his discovery already occupied a significant place in Jesuit hagiographies; see Pierre d’Outreman, Tableaux des personnages signalés de la compagnie de Jésus… (Douai: Balthazar Bellère, 1623), 262–66; for a later account, see Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Firmamento religioso de lucidos astros en algunos claros varones de la Compañía de Jesús (Madrid: María de Quiñones, 1644), 341–61. Nevertheless, as late as 1654 the identity of Cathay with China could still be a “burning question” for a scholar like Golius (Jacob van Gool, 1596–1667); see J. J. L. Duyvendak, “Early Chinese Studies in Holland,” T’oung Pao 32, nos. 1–2 (1936): 298–305; doubts and outward rejection also appear in English sources; see Y. Z. Chang, “Why Did Milton Err on Two Chinas?,” The Modern Language Review 65, no. 3 (1970): 493–98. Similar concerns with regard to the ancient Seres–modern Chinese connection were expressed in the next centuries as well; see Ferdinand Wilhelm Beer, “An Essay towards Clearing Up and Explaining the Account Given by Herodotus and Pliny of the Ancient Scythians, and Some Scythian Words and Customs Mentioned by Those Authors,” in A Supplement to the English Universal History…, trans. Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten, 2 vols. (London: Edward Dilly, 1760), 2:143–44; John Barrow, Travels in China, 2 vols. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), 2:435–36.

  3. 3.

    Lieberman, “Contact,” 161–88; Poinsotte, “Romains,” 464.

  4. 4.

    Remoteness, peacefulness, and a sense of justice are said to be frequently associated tropes in classical sources; see Detlev Fehling, “The Art of Herodotus and the Margins of the World,” in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction, ed. Zweder von Martels (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 13–14. In later times, the “Cathayans” will also be commended for their sense of justice. See, for instance, the “Cataini”-related points made by the Venetian merchant and diplomat Giosafat Barbaro (1413–1494) in his Viaggio del magnifico messer Iosaphat Barbaro ambasciatore della illustrissima republica di Venetia alla Tana. Viaggio del istesso Messer Iosphat Barbaro in Persia, in Viaggi fatti da Vinetia, alla Tana, in Persia, in India, et in Costantinopoli… (Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1543), 48v; Travels of Josafa Barbaro, in Travels to Tana and Persia, by Josafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, trans. William Thomas, ed. Henry Edward John Stanley (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1873), 77; cf. Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors and the Practice of Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1250–1450,” in The “Book” of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700, ed. Palmira Brummett (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 50; Giampiero Bellingeri, “Iosaphath Barbaro fra Tartaria e Persia: ipotesi sulle solite ‘cose aldite’,” in Il viaggio nelle letterature romanze e orientali, ed. Giovanna Carbonaro et al. (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006), 102–3. China also appears in many early sources as a land of peace or justice. See, for example, Francis Xavier, Letter 96, to his companions in Europe, 29 January 1552; letter number references are to Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii aliaque eius scripta, Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu 67–68, ed. Georg Schurhammer and Joseph Wicki, 2 vols. (Rome, 1944–1945), 2:277 (hereafter cited as EX); The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 342.

  5. 5.

    P. J. Hamilton Grierson, The Silent Trade: A Contribution to the Early History of Human Intercourse (Edinburgh: William Green and Sons, 1903); P. F. de Moraes Farias, “Silent Trade: Myth and Historical Evidence,” History in Africa 1 (1974): 9–24; John A. Price, “On Silent Trade,” in Research in Economic Anthropology 3, ed. George Dalton (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1980), 75–96; Wilson Trajano Filho, A troca silenciosa e o silêncio dos conceitos (Brasilia: Universidade de Brasília, 1990); Wilfred Dolfsma and Antoon Spithoven, “‘Silent Trade’ and the Supposed Continuum between OIE and NIE,” Journal of Economic Issues 42, no. 2 (2008): 517–26; Michael Bonner, “The Arabian Silent Trade: Profit and Nobility in the ‘Markets of the Arabs’,” in Histories of the Middle East: Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A. L. Udovitch, ed. Roxani Eleni Margariti, Adam Sabra, and Petra M. Sijpesteijn (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 23–51.

  6. 6.

    Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World, trans. F. E. Romer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 118; Pomponii Melae De Chorographia libri tres, ed. Piergiorgio Parroni (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1984), 165. Here and below, I reproduce the original passages only insofar as the quoted or paraphrased fragments regard linguistic matters or other tropologically relevant aspects.

  7. 7.

    Herodotus, The History, trans. David Grene (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 352–53. Transferring tropes of the exotic among various Others was common in classical times; see John Howland Rowe, “The Renaissance Foundations of Anthropology,” American Anthropologist 67 (1965): 5–6. In both classical and medieval times, “silent trade” is mentioned in quite a few sources, including Chinese (with reference to Byzantium): see, for instance, Zhang Yichun 張一純, ed., Jingxing ji jianzhu 經行記箋注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 17–18; cf. Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, eds. and trans., Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï (St. Petersburg: The Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911), 104; 110. See also Giuliano Bertuccioli and Federico Masini, Italia e Cina (Rome: Laterza, 1996), 14–15. On the other hand, as this chapter shows, the connection with the Seres remained mostly stable.

  8. 8.

    Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham, 10 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938–1963), 2:379; 2:378. Peacefulness and remoteness are also attributes of Herodotus’s Hyperboreans, prompting their tentative association with the Chinese. See James David Pennington Bolton, Aristeas, of Proconnesus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 100–1; see also Reichert, Incontri con la Cina, 18; E. D. Phillips, “The Legend of Aristeas: Fact and Fancy in Early Greek Notions of East Russia, Siberia, and Inner Asia,” Artibus Asiae 18, no. 2 (1955): 173; Duncan B. Campbell, “A Chinese Puzzle for the Romans,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 38, no. 3 (1989): 373.

  9. 9.

    Pliny, Natural History, 2:405; 2:404. This particular passage has produced much discussion. See Raoul McLaughlin, “Silk Ties: The Links between Ancient Rome and China,” History Today 58, no. 1 (2008): 34–41.

  10. 10.

    To the degree silent trade existed as an actual practice, such expulsion must have been common: as Price states in his remarks on the multi-faceted otherness necessary for this type of barter to take place, “each party would consider the other as ugly and perhaps not fully human.” John A. Price, “Conditions in the Development of Silent Trade,” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 36 (1967): 75. See also Price, “On Silent Trade,” 92.

  11. 11.

    Arwen Apps, “Gaius Iulius Solinus and his Polyhistor,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., Macquarie University, 2011), 2:175; C. Ivlii Solini Collectanea rervm memorabilivm, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), 182. An older English rendition is The Excellent and Pleasant Worke of Iulius Solinus Polyhistor…, trans. Arthur Golding (London: Thomas Hackett, 1587).

  12. 12.

    Thomas A. Sebeok, Signs. An Introduction to Semiotics, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 22; see also David A. Harper, “Trade, Language and Communication,” second draft, 2004, 53–60, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.93.4633&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

  13. 13.

    Ammianus Marcellinus, trans. John C. Rolfe, 3 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1935–1939), 2:387; Ammiani Marcellini Rerum gestarum libri qui supersunt, ed. Wolfgang Seyfarth, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1999), 2:320. For a discussion of the whole passage in relation to similar contexts, see J. den Boeft et al., Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXIII (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), 208–9.

  14. 14.

    The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, in Martianus Capella and The Seven Liberal Arts, trans. William Harris Stahl, Richard Johnson, and E. L. Burge, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 259; Martianus Capella, ed. James Willis (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1983), 245–46.

  15. 15.

    Annie Angremy, “La Mappemonde de Pierre de Beauvais,” Romania 104 (1983): 467, lines 304–15.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 326.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 331–35.

  18. 18.

    Perot de Garbelei, Divisiones Mundi, ed. O. H. Prior, in Cambridge Anglo-Norman Texts, ed. J. P. Strachey, H. J. Chaytor, and O. H. Prior (1924; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 45. © Cambridge University Press, 1924, reproduced with permission.

  19. 19.

    The Book of the Treasure, trans. Paul Barrette and Spurgeon Baldwin (New York: Garland Pub., 1993), 89; Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. Spurgeon Baldwin and Paul Barrette (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), 94. Cf. Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Precursors (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1943), 4–5. It is interesting to note that Latini’s sixteenth-century Italian translator feels the need to disambiguate the text’s somewhat unusual “Seirs” by further identifying them with the familiar “Seres”; see Il tesoro di M. Brunetto Latino firentino... (Venice: Melchiorre Sessa, 1533), 58v.

  20. 20.

    Gemma Frisius, De principiis astronomiae et cosmographiae (Antwerp: Jan Steels, 1553), 168. Cf. Petrus Apianus (Peter Bienewitz, 1495–1552) and Gemma Frisius, Cosmographie, ou description des quatre parties du monde…, trans. Jean Bellère (Antwerp: Jean Bellère, 1581), 128: “Il ya en outre les Aspacares, Thoranes, Ottocores, et Bates, tous lesquelz sont quasi en lieu incertain, fuyans la conversation des autres, et les marchandises quilz veullent vendre, ilz les mettent sur le chemin, et les changent avecques autres.”

  21. 21.

    Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise noted, translations are mine; for the original, see Eneas Silvio Piccolomini (Papa Pío II), Descripción de Asia, ed. and trans. Domingo F. Sanz (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2010), 120. On Piccolomini’s ballet between contradictory references with regard to the Seres and Cathay, see Margaret Meserve, “From Samarkand to Scythia: Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance Geography and Political Thought,” in Pius II, ‘El Più Expeditivo Pontificé’: Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), ed. Zweder von Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 2003), esp. 19–22; also, Descripción de Asia, 38–39 (Sanz’s introduction).

  22. 22.

    Scritti di Cristoforo Colombo, ed. Cesare de Lollis, 2 vols. (Rome: Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, 1892–1894), 2:298.

  23. 23.

    Francesca Lardicci, ed., A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus’s First Voyage, trans. Cynthia L. Chamberlin and Blair Sullivan (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 197; Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951), 1:202–3. The familiar Seres-related tropes are reviewed at some length as a means to discuss the newly discovered Lucayans, the original inhabitants of the Bahamas. See Juan Gil, ed. and trans, La India y el Catay (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1995), 135.

  24. 24.

    Cf. Stephen of Byzantium’s (6th c.) similar formulation in his Ethnica; Coedès, Textes, 131.

  25. 25.

    Coedès, Textes, 158; for the original, see Karl Müller, ed., Geographi Graeci Minores, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Firmin Didot, 1855–1861), 2:348: Ὅτι δὲ ἀπροσμιγεῖς ἀνθρώποις εἰσὶ καὶ ἀνομίλητοι οἱ Σῆρες, δῆλον ἐκεῖθεν· τῶν πΩλουμένΩν τὸ τίμημα σακκίοις ἐπιγράψαντες ὑποχΩροῦσιν· εἶτα ἐλθόντες οἱ ἔμποροι καὶ θέντες τὴν τιμὴν ἀναχΩροῦσιν, ἐφ’ οἷς ἔρχονται οἱ Σῆρες, καὶ εἰ μὲν ἀρέσκονται, λαμβάνουσι τὴν τιμὴν, εἰ δὲ μή (γε), τὰ ἴδια. The learned bishop also notices similarities with the Carthaginians mentioned by Herodotus.

  26. 26.

    Colin Renfrew, “Trade as Action at a Distance,” in Approaches to Social Archaeology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 123; see also 88–89; cf. Trajano Filho, A troca silenciosa, 12.

  27. 27.

    Studies discussing, fully or partially, the texts referred to below are legion. Apart from the works mentioned in the notes, see also Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), esp. 47–161, and Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).

  28. 28.

    Some of these tropes partially match those associated with the Seres. See Olschki, Marco Polo’s Precursors, 36.

  29. 29.

    History of the Mongols, in Mission to Asia, ed. Christopher Dawson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955), 21–22; Storia dei Mongoli, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1989), 257; 258. See also Félicitas Schmieder, “Tartarus valde sapiens et eruditus in philosophia. La langue des missionnaires en Asie,” in L’étranger au Moyen Âge, ed. Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000), 271–81; John Tolan, “Porter la bonne parole auprès de Babel: Les problèmes linguistiques chez les missionnaires mendiants, XIIIe–XIVe siècles”, in Zwischen Babel und Pfingsten: Sprachdifferenzen und Gesprächsverständigung in der Vormoderne (8.–16. Jahrhundert), ed. Peter von Moos (Zürich: Lit, 2008), 533–47; María Carreras and Raffaele Pinto, “La conciencia lingüística en la Edad Media en libros de viajes latinos e italianos,” in Martinell Gifre and Cruz Piñol, Conciencia lingüística en Europa, 144–45.

  30. 30.

    Giuseppe Billanovich, “Le tre strade: trovatori, classici, enciclopedie,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 19 (1976): 96; Monique Paulmier-Foucart and Marie-Christine Duchenne, Vincent de Beauvais et le grand miroir du monde (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 107. For Vincent’s passage, see Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum historiale (Augsburg: SS. Ulrich and Afra, 1474), 337v (XXXI.ix). See also Gregory G. Guzman, “The Encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais and His Mongol Extracts from John of Plano Carpini and Simon of Saint-Quentin,” Speculum 49, no. 2 (1974): 287–307; Claude Kappler, “L’image des Mongols dans le Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais,” in Vincent de Beauvais: Intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Âge, ed. Monique Paulmier-Foucart, Serge Lusignan, and Alain Nadeau (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1990): 219–40. Vincent also makes reference to well-known passages from Solinus and various sections of the (probably third century) pseudo-Clementine Recognitions with regard to the Seres in his Speculum naturale (Venice: Hermann Liechtenstein, 1494), 408v (XXXI.cxxix). See Reichert, Incontri con la Cina, 72–73.

  31. 31.

    Hakluyt, Navigations, 1:145.

  32. 32.

    Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Navigazioni e viaggi, ed. Marica Milanesi, 6 vols. (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1978–1988), 4:218. The 1537 translation was published as Opera dilettevole da intendere, nella qual si contiene doi Itinerarij in Tartaria … (Venice: Giovanni Antonio de Nicolini da Sabio, 1537). See also Milanesi’s note in Ramusio, Navigazioni, 4:208; Oskar Nachod, “Die ersten Kenntnisse chinesischer Schriftzeichen im Abendlande,” Asia Major 1, Hirth Anniversary Volume (1923): 237. A somewhat similar statement also appears in a short 1559 document (“The instruction of another Tartarian merchant dwelling in the citie of Boghar, as he hath learned by other his countreymen which have bene there”) included by Hakluyt in his Navigations (2:482): “[In Cathay,] their language [is] peculiar, differing from the Tartarian tongue.”

  33. 33.

    In another account of Carpini’s expedition, the Hystoria tartarorum, associated with a friar known only as C. de Bridia, the corresponding paragraph contains a statement on the “special idiom” rather than the “special language” of Kitai: “Predicti autem Kitai… habent idioma speciale.” C. de Bridia, The Tartar Relation, ed. and trans. George D. Painter, in The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, ed. R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 62–63. See also Gregory G. Guzman, “The Vinland Map Controversy and the Discovery of a Second Version of the Tartar Relation: The Authenticity of the 1339 Text,” Terrae Incognitae 38 (2006): 19–25.

  34. 34.

    Carreras and Pinto, “Conciencia lingüística en la Edad Media,” in Martinell Gifre and Cruz Piñol, Conciencia lingüística en Europa, 145–51; Shirin Khanmohamadi, “The Look of Medieval Ethnography: William of Rubruck’s Mission to Mongolia,” New Medieval Literatures 10 (2008): 87–114. On medieval encounters (including Rubruck’s) with Asian languages, see Claude Kappler, “Les voyageurs et les langues orientales: interprètes, traducteurs et connaisseurs,” in Routes d’Asie. Marchands et voyageurs, XVe–XVIIIe siècle, ed. Marion Debout, Denise Eeckaute-Bardery, and Vincent Fourniau (Istanbul: Isis, 1988): 25–36; Christine Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient au XIVe siècle: Les Mirabilia descripta de Jordan Catala de Sévérac (Paris: École nationale des chartes, 2005), 28–32; Jean-Claude Faucon, “Voyager et communiquer: les problèmes d’intercompréhension chez les voyageurs occidentaux dans l’Orient medieval,” Revue des Langues Romanes 111 (2007): 1–30. See also Sangkeun Kim, Strange Names of God (New York: P. Lang, 2004), 136–41.

  35. 35.

    The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, ed. and trans. Peter Jackson (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1990), 161; 203; Viaggio in Mongolia, ed. and trans. Paolo Chiesa (Milan: Mondadori, 2011), 130; 200.

  36. 36.

    This association between writing and paper money appears in other texts of the time, like the late 1320s or early 1330s anonymous Livre de l’estat du grant Caan featuring among the Other-related works translated by Jan de Langhe (Jean le Long d’Ypres, d. 1383). See M. Jacquet, ed., “Le livre du Grant Caan, extrait d’un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque du Roi,” Journal asiatique 6 (1830): 66; on this text, see Christine Gadrat, “De statu, conditione ac regimine magni Canis. L’original latin du ‘Livre de l’estat du grant Caan’ et la question de l’auteur,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 165 (2007): 355–71. See also the relevant observations made by Nicolò de’ Conti (1395–1469), as included in Poggio Bracciolini, The Indies Rediscovered, in Travelers in Disguise: Narratives of Eastern Travel by Poggio Bracciolini and Ludovico de Varthema, trans. John Winter Jones, ed. Lincoln Davis Hammond (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 35–36.

  37. 37.

    On Bacon’s use of Rubruck’s account, see Guéret-Laferté, “Voyageur et géographe,” esp. 92–96.

  38. 38.

    Chiesa, Viaggio, 130; The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, trans. Robert Belle Burke, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), 1:387; The ‘Opus Majus’ of Roger Bacon, ed. John Henry Bridges, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), 1:372. See also Jarl Charpentier, “William of Rubruck and Roger Bacon,” in “Hyllningsskrift tillägnad Sven Hedin på hans 70-årsdag den 19 febr. 1935,” supplement, Geografiska Annaler 17 (1935): 255–267; Sumithra J. David, “Looking East and West: The Reception and Dissemination of the Topographia Hibernica and the Itinerarium Ad Partes Orientales in England [1185–C.1500]” (PhD diss., University of St. Andrews, 2009), esp. 202–9; Benoît Grevin, “De la rhétorique des nations à la théorie des races. L’influence des théories scientifiques sur la pensée des stéréotypes nationaux à partir du XIIIe siècle,” 14–15, http://gas.ehess.fr/docannexe/fichier/107/grevin.pdf.

  39. 39.

    Bacon replaces Rubruck’s reference to his own extended comment made on the Uyghur script in the spoken language context (“…as I have said previously”; Rubruck, Mission of Friar William, 204) with the comment proper. Bacon, Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, 1:387; for the typology of scripts, see 1:388–89.

  40. 40.

    Randall Rosenfeld, “Early Comparative Codicology: Late-Medieval Western Perceptions of Non-Western Script and Book Materials,” in Classica et Beneventana. Essays Presented to Virginia Brown on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday, ed. F. T. Coulson and A. A. Grotans (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 179; see also Bacon, Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, 1:389; ‘Opus Majus’ of Roger Bacon, 1:374.

  41. 41.

    Benoît Grévin, “Systèmes d’écriture, sémiotique et langage chez Roger Bacon,” Histoire Épistémologie Langage 24, no. 2 (2002): 86–88; Benoît Grévin, “Entre magie et sémiotique: Roger Bacon et les caractères chinois,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 70, no. 1 (2003): 118–38; Benoît Grévin and Julien Véronèse, “Les ‘caractères’ magiques au Moyen Âge (XIIe–XIVe siècle),” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 162 (2004): 353–54. All these texts quote a passage from Bacon’s Opus tertium in which characters are defined as “figures of letters gathered together in one figure, according to which certain Oriental nations write”; see, for instance, “Systèmes d’écriture,” 86. See also Pascale Bourgain, “Le sens de la langue et des langues chez Roger Bacon,” in Contamine, Traduction et traducteurs, 317–31.

  42. 42.

    This includes the alphabet, as “The Thebet write as we do, and their figures are very like our own”; Rubruck, Mission of Friar William, 203–4. See, however, Paul Pelliot, Recherches sur les chrétiens d’Asie centrale et d’Extrême-Orient (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1973), 176.

  43. 43.

    In his marginal notes on Rubruck’s text included in the Hakluytus Posthumus (11:62), Purchas treats the Uyghur script (whose mechanics the Franciscan friar analyzes at length) as the writing of the “people of China,” and then fails to perceive any specificity in the writing of the Cathayans, commenting (11:97): “The manner of writing in Cataia like that of China.” On the other hand, what is, with Bacon, “veri characteres et physici” (‘Opus Majus’ of Roger Bacon, 1:374) becomes for Purchas (11:168) “veri caracteres et philosophici”; the formulation acquires further prominence through inclusion in a marginal note and highlights the very different intellectual contexts in which the two men were writing.

  44. 44.

    A Lytell Cronycle. Richard Pynson’s Translation (c 1520) of La Fleur des Histoires de la Terre D’Orient (c 1307), ed. Glenn Burger (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), x–xiii; Claude Mutafian, “Héthoum de Korykos historien arménien. Un prince cosmopolite à l’aube du XIVe siècle,” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 1 (1996): 157–76.

  45. 45.

    [Charles Kohler, ed.,] Recueil des historiens des croisades. Documents arméniens, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1906), 121. Rosenfeld (“Early Comparative Codicology,” 197) discusses the possibility that Hayton refers here to the Uyghur script.

  46. 46.

    Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors,” 43; Kohler, Historiens des croisades, 121.

  47. 47.

    Iain Macleod Higgins, ed. and trans., The Book of John Mandeville, with Related Texts (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011), 132; 217; see Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors,” 44; Iain Macleod Higgins, Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 165–66; 175; Shirin A. Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 138–39. Bracciolini, The Indies Rediscovered, 36; Yule-Cordier, Cathay, 1:175; see Le Goff, “Medieval West,” 199. Ruy González de Clavijo, Historia del gran Tamorlan… (Seville: Andrea Pescioni, 1582), 58r; Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403–1406, trans. Guy Le Strange (1928; repr., Abingdon: Routledge-Curzon, 2005), 151. João de Barros, Da Ásia, 8 vols. (Lisbon: Régia Officina Typografica, 1777–1778), 5:193–194 (Década 3, bk. 2, Chap. 7); see John M. Headley, “The Universalizing Principle and Process: On the West’s Intrinsic Commitment to a Global Context,” Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (2002): 309; C. R. Boxer, João de Barros: Portuguese Humanist and Historian of Asia (New Delhi: Concept, 1981), 107. Barbaro, Viaggio del magnifico messer Iosaphat Barbaro, fol. 37; Travels of Josafa Barbaro, 58; see Guillaume Postel, Des merveilles du monde… (Paris, 1553), 55r. Jean Macer, Les trois livres de l’histoire des Indes…(Paris: Guillaume Guillard, 1555), fol. 62. Johannes Boemus, The Manners, Lawes, and Customes of All Nations, trans. Edward Aston (London: G. Eld, 1611), 104; cf. the Boemus-based compilation put together by the French cosmographer François de Belleforest (1530–1583) and entitled L’Histoire universelle du monde… (Paris: Gervais Mallot, 1572), 51r. Sebastian Münster, La cosmographie universelle… (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1556), 1351. Münster’s formulation becomes, in Belleforest’s reworking of Münster’s text published in two volumes under the same title (Paris: Michel Sonnuis, 1575), a statement regarding “the Indians” (2:1715), just like Conti’s words in Bracciolini’s account mentioned above; it continues, however, to regard the people of Cathay in Richard Eden’s 1553 partial translation of Münster’s cosmography entitled A Treatyse of the Newe India…; see The First Three English Books on America: [?1511]–1555 A.D, ed. Edward Arber (Birmingham, 1885), 24.

    Versions of the same ocular trope also feature in earlier eleventh- and twelfth-century Arabic sources; see Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, eds., Mechanical Engineering, vol. 4, pt. 2, of Science and Civilisation in China, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 602; also, Joseph Needham et al., eds., Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic, vol. 5, pt. 7, of Science and Civilisation in China, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 94. The trope is also present in a 1573 manuscript Relacion de las Islas del Poniente y del camino que á ella se hizo desde la N a España (also entitled Relación de las Islas del poniente a q. llamam filipinas) associated with Diego de Artieda, a Spanish soldier in the Philippines; Colección de documentos inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, 2nd ser., vol. 3, pt. 2, Document 40, ed. Francisco Javier de Salas y Rodríguez (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1887), 240; Relation of the Western Islands, called Filipinas, trans. Alfonso de Salvio, in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 3:205; Bernardino de Escalante, Discurso de la navegacion… (Seville: Viuda de Alonso Escribano, 1577), 88r; 96v.

    Relevant discussions include: Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 113–16; Headley, “Universalizing Principle and Process,” 307–9; Bellingeri, “Iosaphath Barbaro,” esp. 99–100; Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors,” esp. 40–55. In this last text (41), Rubiés mentions two other sixteenth-century texts, Jerónimo Román’s Republicas del mundo (Salamanca: Juan Fernandez, 1595), pt. 3, fol. 231, and Giovanni Botero’s Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms…, trans. Robert Johnson (London: John Havilland, 1630), 597. Other printed references from about the same period are: Giovanni Lorenzo d’Anania, L’Universale fabbrica del Mondo, ovvero Cosmografia (Venice: Aniello Sanvito, 1576), 248; Louis Le Roy, De la vicissitude ou varieté des choses en l’univers… (Paris: Pierre L’Huillier, 1579), 93r; Juan González de Mendoza, Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres, del gran Reyno de la China... (Rome: Bartolomeo Grassi, 1585), 38; Luis Barahona de Soto, Primera parte de la Angélica (Granada: Hugo de Mena, 1586), 215v; Giovanni Pietro Maffei, Le historie delle Indie Orientali…, trans. Francesco Serdonati (Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1589), 106r; George Abbot, A Briefe Description of the Whole World… (1599; London: Margaret Sheares and John Playfere, 1664), 94; Bartolomeo Dionigi, Delle historie del mondo, parte quinta (Venice: Giorgio Varisco, 1606), 175; and Robert Stafford, A Geographicall and Anthologicall Description of All the Empires and Kingdomes… (1607; London: Nicholas Okes, 1618), 56–57.

    This rhetorical configuration remained vivacious in later times as well, and I have traced it in quite a few other texts. Michel Baudier, Histoire de la cour du roy de la Chine (Paris: Claude Cramoisy, 1626), 41; 48–49. Purchas, HP, 12:469. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford: Henry Cripps, 1638), 40; see Ch’ien Chung-shu, “China in the English Literature of the 17th Century,” Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography 1, no. 4 (1940): 362. Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in Four Books… (1652; repr., London: Henry Seile, 1657), 865. Samuel Clarke, A Geographical Description of All the Countries in the Known World… (1657; London: Thomas Milbourn, 1671), 40. George Dalgarno, “Omnibus omnino hominibus” (1660), in George Dalgarno on Universal Language: ‘The Art of Signs’ (1661), ‘The Deaf and Dumb Man’s Tutor’ (1680), and the Unpublished Papers, ed. David Cram and Jaap Maat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 121; see Bruce Rusk, “Old Scripts, New Actors: European Encounters with Chinese Writing, 1550–1700,” EASTM 26 (2007), 105–6. Samuel von Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium libri octo (Lund: Vitus Haberegger, 1672), 168; see Walter Demel, “The Images of the Japanese and the Chinese in Early Modern Europe: Physical Characteristics, Customs and Skills. A Comparison of Different Approaches to the Cultures of the Far East,” Itinerario 25, nos. 3–4 (2001): 44. Philippe Couplet (and Prospero Intorcetta), “Proëmialis Declaratio,” in Confucius Sinarum philosophus…, ed. Philippe Couplet (Paris: Daniel Horthemels, 1687), xii. Christian Wolff, Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica (Frankfurt: Johann Benjamin Andrea and Heinrich Hort, 1726), 2; Julia Ching and Willard G. Oxtoby, eds. and trans., Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff on China (Nettetal: Steyler, 1992), 149. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, preface to the Novissima Sinica, in Writings on China, trans. Daniel J. Cook and Henry Rosemont Jr. (Chicago: Open Court, 1994), 50. John Mawer, The Progress of Language. An Essay Wherein Is Prov’d the First Language… (London: John Clarke, 1726), 24. Denis Diderot, “État de la Chine, selon ses détracteurs,” in Histoire philosophique et politique du commerce et des établissements des Européens dans les deux Indes, ed. Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, 3 vols. (Geneva: Jean-Léonard Pellet, 1781), 1:156; Letter XLI, to Sophie Volland, 30 September 1769, in Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, ed. J. Assézat and Maurice Tourneux, 20 vols. (Paris: Garnier frères, 1875–1877), 18:479; see Wu Liwei 吳莉葦, “Zhongguo ren de liangzhi yen: Cong Ouzhou ren jiang Bosi yanyu zhuanhua wei Zhongguo chuanshuo kan wenhua wudu” 中國人的兩只眼——從歐洲人將波斯諺語轉化為中國傳說看文化誤讀, Shijie lishi 5 (2011): 58. In many of these late texts, the reference is to the Chinese.

  48. 48.

    “… And from this it can be understood that they see the other peoples as thick-witted”; Kohler, Historiens des croisades, 121; Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors,” 43. Purchas (HP, 11:310) notes marginally on the vision passage: “Their arrogant presumption.” On the ideological significance of such marginalia, see Adele Lee, “‘Counterfeiting Mandarins’: Early Modern English Marginality/ia in Western Encounters with China,” Early Modern Literary Studies 15, no. 2 (2010–2011): 1–32, http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/15-2/leemand2.htm.

  49. 49.

    Rubiés, “Late Medieval Ambassadors,” 43.

  50. 50.

    Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Le Moyen Âge fantastique: Antiquités et exotismes dans l’art gothique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1955), 220. Tropes of (in)visibility associate with those of (im)penetrability or (un)veiling in articulating many Cathay/China-related travel texts; on this, see, for instance, my “China as the Other in Odoric’s Itinerarium,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14, no. 5 (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2136.

  51. 51.

    A Lytell Cronycle, 8; Kohler, Historiens des croisades, 121.

  52. 52.

    Kohler, Historiens des croisades, lx–lxvii; cxxxi–cxlii.

  53. 53.

    Yule-Cordier, Cathay, 1:258; Kohler, Historiens des croisades, 261.

  54. 54.

    Yule-Cordier, Cathay, 1:259; Kohler, Historiens des croisades, 261. Cf. Jean le Long d’Ypres’ version: “Ces Cathay ont tresbelles lettres et belle manere d’escripre et leurs lettres ressamblent assez en beaute a lettres latines”; Sven Dörper, ed., Die Geschichte der Mongolen des Hethum von Korykos (1307) in der Rückübersetzung durch Jean le Long, Traitiez des estas et des conditions de quatorze royaumes de Aise (1351) (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 189. Cf. the Latin epitome in Ms. Ayer 744 in Newberry Library (“De partibus Asye…,” fol. 234) according to which the letters of the people of Cathay “almost resemble Latin letters” (“…littere eorum Latinis litteris fere assimilantur”); see Juan Gil, “Una version latina epitomada de Haiton de Armenia,” Habis 29 (1998): 304. See also Rosenfeld, “Early Comparative Codicology,” 197, for a comparison between the French and Latin versions of Hayton’s text.

  55. 55.

    Kohler, Historiens des croisades, cxxii–cxxx.

  56. 56.

    A Lytell Cronycle, 7; in his introduction (xxxi), Glenn Burger dates this text between 1517 and 1520, with the earlier year more probable; Timothy Billings opts for the latter date; see his “Caterwauling Cataians: The Genealogy of a Gloss,” Shakespeare Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2003): 4.

  57. 57.

    Johannes Boemus, Mores, leges, et ritus omnium gentium… (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, Guillaume Gazeau, 1561), 112. On Boemus, see Margaret T. Hodgen, “Johann Boemus (fl. 1500): An Early Anthropologist,” American Anthropologist 55 (1953): 284–94, and Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 131–43; 232–35; Klaus A. Vogel, “Cultural Variety in a Renaissance Perspective: Johannes Boemus on ‘The Manners, Laws and Customs of all People’ (1520),” in Shifting Cultures: Interaction and Discourse in the Expansion of Europe, ed. Henriette Bugge and Joan-Pau Rubiés (Münster: Lit, 1995), 17–34; Andreas Motsch, “La collection des mœurs de Johannes Boemus ou la mise en scène du savoir ethnographique,” in Le Théâtre de la curiosité (XVI–XVIIe siècle), ed. Centre V.-L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008), 51–66; Richard Raiswell, “Medieval Geography in the Age of Exploration: The Fardle of Facions in Its English Context,” Renaissance Medievalisms, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009), 249–85; Diego Pirillo, “Relativismo culturale e ‘armonia del mondo’: l’enciclopedia etnografica di Johannes Boemus,” in L’Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi. Per Adriano Prosperi, ed. Massimo Donattini, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Stefania Pastore, 2 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2011), 2:67–77; Giuseppe Marcocci, “L’ordine cristiano e il mondo. Francisco de Támara traduttore di Hans Böhm,” in Donattini, Marcocci, and Pastore, L’Europa divisa, 2:79–92.

    Boemus is also significant for the present discussion as an aggregator of the classical tropes on the Seres (see, for instance, Manners, Lawes, and Customes, 112). His points are much developed by Belleforest, who traces the Seres information back to its sources and adds marginally “à present tout changé” (Histoire universelle, 60v); this is put even stronger in Belleforest’s 1575 reworking of the short Seres-related passage in Münster’s Cosmographie (1304–1305): “Mais à present tout y est au contraire” (Cosmographie universelle, 2:1529); later (1613), the French historian and geographer Pierre d’Avity (1573–1635) dedicates two different sections of his chapter on “The Great Cham of Tartaria” to the “Manners of the ancients” (including here “They of Catay, whom they called the Seres”) and to “The Manners of the Tartarians at this day”; see his The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World…, trans. Edward Grimeston (London: Mathew Lownes and John Bill, 1615), 702–7. Such updating certainly should not be taken for granted: a 1539 text could still be reprinted in 1590 with information claiming the Seres are a “small land” in Asia (just like Sparta) housing an eponymous castle; see Jacques Signot, La division du monde (1539; repr., Lyon: Benoist Rigaud and Jean Saugrain, 1555), 28.

  58. 58.

    The Fardle of Facions..., trans. William Watreman (London: Jhon Kingstone and Henry Sutton, 1555), n. pag. Cf. Le Recueil des pais selon leur situation... (Paris: Jean Caveiller, 1558), 170: “… usent de lettres semblables quand à la quadrature aux lettres Romaines”; Gli costumi, le leggi, et lusanze di tutte le genti… (Venice: Francesco Lorenzini, 1560), trans. Lucio Fauno [Giovanni Tarcagnota], 56r: “[L]e lor lettere son come le Latine, ma quadre”; El libro de las costumbres de todas las gentes del mundo, y de las Indias, ed. and trans. Francisco de Támara (Antwerp: Martin Nuyts, 1556), 193v: “Usan de letras semejantes a las nuestras en quadra y caracter”; Historia de cosas del Oriente, ed. and trans. Amaro Centeno (Cordoba: Diego Galvan, 1595), 1v: “…tienen estos Cataynos muchas, y muy hermosas letras las quales en el aparencia en alguna manera son semejantes à las latinas.” This perceived resemblance prompts Belleforest (in whose Histoire universelle, 51r, this becomes: “…ils usent de caracteres latins en escrivant semblables en quadrature à la lettre Romaine”) to have Cathayans originate from Europe.

  59. 59.

    Manners, Lawes, and Customes, 104.

  60. 60.

    Such is the case with Ramusio, who translates from the Novus orbis (Navigazioni, 3:301) or perhaps a Latin manuscript (Kohler, Historiens des croisades, cxviii). Interestingly, at the beginning of the last chapter that Ramusio includes in his long selection, he paraphrases, with no further explanation, the very first paragraph of the Flos Historiarum; this contains the statement: “Hanno lettere bellissime, quasi simile alle latine” (Navigazioni, 3:354). Cf. Bellingeri, “Iosaphath Barbaro,” 118n32. Purchas (HP, 11:309–10) also translates from Latin, but supresses any mention of speech or writing. Finally, the translation included in the second volume of Pieter van der Aa’s (1659–1733) compilation entitled Voyages faits principalement en Asie dans les XII, XIII, XIV et XV siècles (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1735, separate numeration, col. 6) embellishes the Latin original, as edited by Andreas Müller (1630–1694) in his 1671 Marci Pauli Veneti… De regionibus orientalibus libri III… Accedit… Haithoni Armeni Historia orientalis… (Berlin: Georg Schulz, 1671), to sound like: “Ces Cathayens ont leurs lettres d’un beau Caractere, & en quelque façon semblables à celles des Latins.” See also d’Anania, Universale fabbrica, 248: “…hanno proprie lettere molto simili ne i caratteri alle nostre, & proprio idioma.”

  61. 61.

    Simon Gaunt, Marco Polo’s “Le Devisement Du Monde”: Narrative Voice, Language and Diversity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), 111; see also 107–12 for the larger context; Alvaro Barbieri, ed., Marco Polo Milione: Redazione latina del manoscritto Z (Milan: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1998), 250 (Chap. 90). See also Igor de Rachewiltz, “Marco Polo Went to China,” Zentralasiatische Studien 27 (1997): 58–60.

  62. 62.

    The scholarly literature on Marco Polo’s text is very extensive. See, inter alia, J. Homer Herriott, “The ‘Lost’ Toledo Manuscript of Marco Polo,” Speculum 12, no. 4 (1937): 456–63; Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, La tradizione manoscritta del “Milione” di Marco Polo(Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962); John Critchley, Marco Polo’s Book (Aldershot: Variorum, 1992); Consuelo Wager Dutschke, “Francesco Pipino and the Manuscripts of Marco Polo’s ‘Travels’” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1993); Reichert, Incontri con la Cina, 169–81; Marianne O’Doherty, “Eyewitness Accounts of ‘the Indies’ in the Later Medieval West: Reading, Reception, and Re-use (c. 1300–1500)” (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2006), 80–97; 110–11; 262–65; 276–310 passim; Barbieri, Marco Polo Milione, esp. 565–80, and “Marco, Rustichello, il “patto,” il libro: genesi e statuto testuale del Devisement dou monde alla luce degli studi recenti,” in Carbonaro et al., Viaggio nelle letterature, 23–42; Alvaro Barbieri and Alvise Andreose, Il “Milione” veneto: Ms. CM 211 della Biblioteca civica di Padova (Venice: Marsilio, 1999), esp. 28–65; Jacques Monfrin, “La tradition du texte de Marco Polo,” in Études de philologie romane (Geneva: Droz, 2001), 513–33; Philippe Ménard, general editor’s introduction to Le Devisement du monde, in Tome I, Départ des voyageurs et traversée de la Perse, ed. Marie-Luce Chênerie, Michèle Guéret-Laferté, and Philippe Ménard (Geneva: Droz, 2001), esp. 9–89, “Le problème de la version originale du ‘Devisement du monde’ de Marco Polo,” in De Marco Polo à Savinio. Écrivains italiens en langue française, ed. François Livi (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2003), 7–19, and “L’édition du Devisement du Monde de Marco Polo,” Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 149, no. 1 (2005): 407–35; Eugenio Burgio and Giuseppe Mascherpa, “‘Milione’ latino. Note linguistiche e appunti di storia della tradizione sulle redazioni Z e L,” in Plurilinguismo Letterario, ed. Renato Oniga and Sergio Vatteroni (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007), 117–56; Eugenio Burgio and Mario Eusebi, “Per una nuova edizione del Milione,” in I viaggi del Milione: itinerari testuali, vettori di trasmissione e metamorfosi del Devisement du monde di Marco Polo e Rustichello da Pisa nella pluralità delle attestazioni, ed. Silvia Conte (Rome: Tiellemedia, 2008), 17–48; Christine Gadrat, “Le rôle de Venise dans la diffusion du livre de Marco Polo (XIVe-début XVIe siècle),” Médiévales 58 (2010): 63–78; Eugenio Burgio, ed., Giovanni Battista Ramusio “editor” del Milione: Trattamento del testo e manipolazione dei modelli (Rome: Antenore, 2011); Eugenio Burgio, Marina Buzzoni, and Antonella Ghersetti, “A Digital Edition of Dei Viaggi di Messer Marco Polo, Gentilhuomo Venetiano (Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Navigationi et Viaggi, II, 1559): The Project and Its Recent Updates,” Quaderni Veneti 1, no. 2 (2012): 227–33; Gaunt, Marco Polo’s Le Devisement, esp. 1–35; Alvise Andreose, “Marco Polo’s Devisement dou Monde and Franco-Italian Tradition,” Francigena 1 (2015): 261–91; Samuela Simion and Eugenio Burgio, eds., G. B. Ramusio: Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari—Digital Publishing, 2015), http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/col/exp/36/61/FilologieMedievali/5.

  63. 63.

    Rosenfeld, “Early Comparative Codicology,” 180; Ramusio, Navigazioni, 3:249. With Purchas (HP, 11:290) this becomes: “…Mangi (in all which is one speech used, with varietie of Dialect, and one sort of writing).” See also Simion and Burgio, G. B. Ramusio: Dei viaggi, http://virgo.unive.it/ecf-workflow/books/Ramusio/commenti/R_II_77-main.html, note 15 (on how Ramusio “updates” geographical references).

  64. 64.

    For an inspiring discussion about unique languages and the circulation of paper money, see Gaunt, Marco Polo’s Le Devisement, 153–61.

  65. 65.

    Justin V. Prášek, ed., Marka Pavlova z Benátek Milion: dle jediného rukopisu spolu s příslušným základem latinským (Prague: Česká akademie císaře Františka Josefa pro vědy, slovesnost a umění, 1902), 150. In the Novus orbis, this becomes: “The province also has its own language” (“Habet quoque ipsa provincia linguam propriam”); see [Johann Huttich, Sebastian Münster, and] Simon Grynaeus, eds., Novus orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum (Basel: Johann Herwagen, 1532), 396.

  66. 66.

    Benedetto, Tradizione manoscritta del “Milione,” cxxxiii–clvii; Critchley, Marco Polo’s Book, 138; Barbara Wehr, “À propos de la genèse du ‘Devisement dou Monde’ de Marco Polo,” in Le passage à l’écrit des langues romanes, ed. Maria Selig, Barbara Frank, and Jörg Hartmann (Tübingen: G. Narr, 1993), 320; Dutschke, “Francesco Pipino and the Manuscripts,” 1; 227; Reichert, Incontri con la Cina, 177.

  67. 67.

    This is well worth contrasting with contemporary non-European accounts produced by such authorities as Rashīd al-Dīn (1247–1318). See Karl Jahn, “Some Ideas of Rashid al-Din on Chinese Culture,” Central Asiatic Journal 28, nos. 3–4 (1984): 161–75.

  68. 68.

    The same effect of familiarity is perhaps achieved when other sources tell us that the language of Mangi is Persian. See Boemus, Libro de las costumbres, 337v and fol. 339; A Discoverie of the Countries of Tartaria, Scithia, & Cataya, by the North-East…, ed. and trans. John Frampton (London: Thomas Dawson, 1580), fol. 25; 27v. Támara, the editor and translator of Boemus’ text, seems to rely here on Rodrigo Fernández de Santaella’s systematic mistranslation (in his 1503 Cosmographia breve introductoria en el libro d’Marco Paulo…) of Polo’s “hanno lingua da per sì” by “tienen lengua de persianos” and the like. See Angelica Valentinetti Mendi, “La traducción de Santaella del Libro de las maravillas,” Philologia hispalensis 9 (1994): 227; N. M. Penzer, ed., The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo, Together with the Travels of Nicolò de’ Conti (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1937), xiv; 164. On Marco Polo as a linguist, see, inter alia, Stephen G. Haw, Marco Polo’s China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan (London: Routledge, 2006), 59–63, and “The Persian Language in Yuan-Dynasty China: A Reappraisal,” East Asian History 39 (2014): 5–32; Sharon Kinoshita, “Reorientations: The Worlding of Marco Polo,” in Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages, ed. John M. Ganim and Shayne Aaron Legassie (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 41–43.

  69. 69.

    Von der erfarün[g] des strengen Ritter[s] johannes von montauille (Strasbourg, 1499); Klaus Ridder, ed., Jean de Mandeville, Reisen: Reprint der Erstdrucke der deutschen Übersetzungen des Michael Velser (Augsburg, bei Anton Sorg, 1480) und des Otto von Diemeringen (Basel, bei Bernhard Richel, 1480/81) (New York: G. Olms, 1991), 339–40. See also Mandeville’s Travels: Texts and Translations, ed. and trans. Malcolm Letts, 2 vols. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1953), 1:xxxix–xli; Josephine Waters Bennett, The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1954), 65–66; Higgins, Writing East, 71, and The Book of John Mandeville, 266–69; Elmar Seebold, “Mandevilles alphabete und die mittelalterlichen Alphabetsammlungen,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 120, no. 3 (1998): 435–49; Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 248–49; 289–91; Marcia Kupfer, “‘… Lectres … plus vrayes’: Hebrew Script and Jewish Witness in the Mandeville Manuscript of Charles V,” Speculum 83, no. 1 (2008): 59–60.

  70. 70.

    The Seres become the “Seretines” in The Fardle of Facions… (“Of Asie,” II.9, n. pag.).

  71. 71.

    Louis Le Roy, Aristotles Politiques, or Discourses of Government…, trans. John Dee (London: Adam Islip, 1598), 266; Le Roy mentions the contemporary sources for his statements in a later chapter (358–59), where he notices again the ban against foreign access to China. Cf. Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 2:1707, where we learn, however, that the Chinese come easily into agreement with the foreigners. One can trace such connections to much later times. See John Adams, The Flowers of Celebrated Travellers…, 2nd American ed. (Baltimore: Mordecai Stewart, 1834), 106–7; the relevant passages are excerpted by Adams from the preface to the anonymous compilation entitled The Chinese Traveller, 2 vols. (London: E. and C. Dilly, 1772), 1:v; cf. Millar, “China Trade,” 210. See also the aggressive points in Aaron Arrowsmith, A Compendium of Ancient and Modern Geography, for the Use of Eton School (London: published for the author, 1831), 665; cf. Timothy James Billings, “Illustrating China: Emblematic Autopsy and the Catachresis of Cathay” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1997), 30.

  72. 72.

    Eco, Serendipities, 54–55.

  73. 73.

    For the “harvest of souls” formula, see Odoric’s Itinerarium in Yule-Cordier, Cathay, 2:97; the merchant emphasizing the safety of Asian roads is the Florentine Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (fl. 1310–1347); see Yule-Cordier, Cathay, 3:152.

  74. 74.

    For 1534 as the date of the letter, see Rui Manuel Loureiro, “A visão da China nas cartas dos cativos de Cantão (1534–1536),” Estudos Orientais 3 (1992): 279–95, and Fidalgos, missionários e mandarins. Portugal e a China no século XVI (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2000), 338–41; Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 438; see also Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, 1:xlv-xlviii. For arguments revisiting 1524 as a more likely date of composition, see Pascale Girard and João Viegas, eds., Prisonniers de l’Empire céleste: Le désastre de la première ambassade portugaise en Chine, 1517–1524 (Paris: Chandeigne, 2013), 280–81; 66–69; 103–4. The failure of Pires’s embassy is discussed in many sources, some of which are mentioned in this and the next two notes; see also Jin Guoping and Wu Zhiliang, “Uma embaixada com dois embaixadores. Novos dados orientais sobre Tomé Pires e Hoja Yasan,” Administração 16, no. 60 (2003): 685–716. See also Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 2, 734–37.

  75. 75.

    On this, see, for instance, Serge Gruzinski, The Eagle and the Dragon: Globalization and European Dreams of Conquest in China and America in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 136–38.

  76. 76.

    Donald Ferguson, ed. and trans., Letters from Portuguese Captives in Canton, Written in 1534 & 1536 (Bombay: Education Society, 1902), 118; Rui Manuel Loureiro, Cartas dos cativos de Cantão: Cristóvão Vieira e Vasco Calvo (1524?) (Macao: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1992), 39–40. Cf. Barros, Da Ásia, 6:1–14 (Década 3, pt. 2, bk. 6, Chap. 1). See also Jin Guoping 金國平, Zhong Pu guanxi shidi kaozheng 中葡關係史地考證(Macao: Aomen jijinhui, 2000), 160; Losada Soler, “Tres océanos,” 219–21. For a different reading of some of the names and nicknames in this paragraph, see Paul Pelliot, “Le Ḫōǰa et le Sayyid Ḥusain de l’Histoire des Ming,” T’oung Pao 38, no. 2/5 (1948), 111n46.

  77. 77.

    On practices of naming and writing, as well as related aspects, see Girard and Viegas, Prisonniers, 27–28; 44–45; 293–94.

  78. 78.

    See, for instance, John S. Major et al., ed. and trans., The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 274. See also Boltz, Chinese Writing System, esp. 129–38; Harbsmeier, Language and Logic, 31–34; Mark Edward Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); Saussy, Great Walls, esp. 35–74. Nuance is of course necessary: see, for example, the studies by Anne Cheng (“Paroles des sages et écritures sacrées en Chine ancienne”) and Jean Levi (“Langue, rite et écriture”) in Alleton, Paroles à dire, 139–55; 157–82; see also Viviane Alleton, “Traduction et conceptions chinoises du texte écrit,” Études chinoises 23 (2004): 10–12 and passim. It is interesting to note that Vieira’s fellow prisoner, Vasco Calvo, states that he can read Chinese and also write it (using for this purpose a Chinese instrument); Ferguson, Letters from Portuguese Captives, 159; 166; Loureiro, Cartas dos cativos, 96; 102. See also Liam Matthew Brockey, “The First China Hands: Iberian Visitors to the Ming Empire and the Forgotten Origins of Sinology,” in Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age (1522–1671), ed. Christina Lee (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 73–74.

  79. 79.

    The statement—for which see A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Henry E. J. Stanley (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1866), 205—appears in a number of manuscripts and also in the earliest printed edition, Ramusio’s Italian version (Navigazioni, 2:694); it is not, however, found in the first printed Portuguese edition, published in the early nineteenth century. See O livro de Duarte Barbosa (edição crítica e anotada), ed. Maria Augusta da Veiga e Sousa, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Ministério da Ciência e da Tecnologia, 1996), 1:413; 1:18–41; Description of the Coasts of East Africa, i–xi; The Book of Duarte Barbosa: An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and Their Inhabitants, ed. and trans. Mansel Longworth Dames, 2 vols. (1918–1921; repr., New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1989), 1:li–liii; 1:lxvii–lxxii; 1:lxxvii–lxxxv.

  80. 80.

    Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia pelos portugueses, 8 vols. (Lisbon: Rollandiana, 1833), 4–5:57; D’Anania, Universale fabbrica, 225. See also Loureiro, Fidalgos, missionários e mandarins, 462, and “Informações italianas,” 38.

  81. 81.

    André Thevet, La cosmographie universelle, 2 vols. (Paris: Guillaume Chaudière, 1575), 1:415v; Belleforest, Cosmographie, 2:1708–9.

  82. 82.

    For the German association made in relation to the Japanese language, see García de Escalante Alvarado, Relación del viaje..., in Colección de documentos inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, ed. Joaquin F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza, vol. 5 (Madrid: Frias y compañía, 1866), 203; Juan López de Velasco, Geografia y descripción universal de las Indias, ed. Justo Zaragoza (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1894), 598. See also E. W. Dahlgren, “A Contribution to the History of the Discovery of Japan,” Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society 11 (1912–1913): 245; C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 31; Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 2, 656. The inhabitants of the “Ilhas dos Lequeos” (Ryukyu) are also compared to Germans in a 1518 letter of the notorious Portuguese fidalgo Simão de Andrade; Loureiro, Fidalgos, missionários e mandarins, 207–8; Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 395–96.

    The many sixteenth-century writers who find cultural connections between China and “Almayne” (or “Alemanha,” as Purchas renders it) include Barbosa, Tomé Pires, Maximilianus Transylvanus, Giovanni da Empoli, Jean Fonteneau, Damião de Góis (1502–1574), and Jerónimo Osório (1506–1580). See Gaspar da Cruz, Tratado das coisas da China (Évora 1569–1570), ed. Rui Manuel Loureiro (Lisbon: Cotovia, 1997), 28 (Loureiro’s introduction); Boxer, South China, 39; 71; Loureiro, Fidalgos, missionários e mandarins, 476; Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, 1:116; Ramusio, Navigazioni, 2:846; Spallanzani, Giovanni da Empoli, 182; 231; Georges Musset, ed., La cosmographie avec l’espère et régime du soleil du nord par Jean Fonteneau dit Alfonse de Saintonge, capitaine-pilote de François Ier (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904), 394–95; Damião de Góis, Chronica do Serenissimo Senhor Rei D. Manoel (Lisbon: Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1749), 498; Jerónimo Osório, De rebus Emmanuelis… (Lisbon: António Gonçalves, 1571), 410; Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 1, 172; Walter Demel, Come i cinesi divennero gialli: Alle origini delle teorie razziali, trans. Michele Fiorillo (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1997), 7–8; Michael Keevak, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 27.

    Similar visions also appear in Jesuit documents; see, for instance, Gaspar Barzaeus’s letters of 16 December 1551 and 12 January 1553 to Ignatius of Loyola or the report on the missionary work of the Jesuits in the East put together by Francisco Henriques and André de Carvalho in September 1561. Joseph Wicki, ed., Documenta indica, 18 vols. (Rome: Institutum historicum Societatis Iesu, 1948–1988), 2:257; 2:586; 5:176 (hereafter cited as DI); Boxer, South China, 71.

  83. 83.

    Barros, Da Ásia, 5:198 (Década 3, bk. 2, Chap. 7).

  84. 84.

    Le voyage et navigation, faict par les Espaignolz es Isles de Mollucques… (Paris: Simon de Colines, 1525), 50v; Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 1, 173–76.

  85. 85.

    Adelino de Almeida Calado, ed., Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, Chap. 19, Boletim da Biblioteca da Universidade de Coimbra 24 (1960): 114; cf. Raffaella D’Intino, ed., Enformação das cousas da China: Textos do século XVI (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional—Casa da Moeda, 1989), 59. Incidentally, the same text also asserts (117; D’Intino, Enformação, 61) that people possessed by the devil in China continue to speak only Chinese. See also Loureiro, Fidalgos, missionários e mandarins, 406–19; Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 456–63. For a more extended narrative connecting demons, Chinese speech, and Chinese writing, see Agustín de Tordesillas, Relacion del viaje que hizimos en a China… in Anastasius van den Wyngaert, ed., Sinica Franciscana, vol. 2 (Florence: Quaracchi, 1933), 158–60.

  86. 86.

    Cf. the 1546/7 account written by Jorge Alvarez for Francis Xavier, in Juan Ruiz-de-Medina, ed., Documentos del Japón 1547–1557, Monumenta Historica Japoniae II (Rome: Instituto Histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, 1990), 22 (hereafter cited as MHJ 2): “…they read and write Chinese and do not know how to speak it. They and the Chinese understand one another through writings. The Chinese do not know how to speak Japanese.” (“… lém e screvem chim e não no sabem fallar. Entenden-se com hos chins por scritos. Os chins não sabem fallar japão.”) Cf. the almost identical formulations in Almeida Calado, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, 111: “…lem chyna e não a sabem fallar, emtemdem•se com os chyns por escrytos; os chyns não sabem falar japão…” See also Clive Willis, “Captain Jorge Álvares and Father Luís Fróis S.J.: Two Early Portuguese Descriptions of Japan and the Japanese,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 22, no. 2 (2012): 400.

  87. 87.

    DeFrancis, Chinese Language, 149.

  88. 88.

    Letter 97, to Ignatius of Loyola, 29 January 1552; Costelloe, Letters, 347– 48; EX, 2:292.

  89. 89.

    Diversi avisi particolari dall’Indie di Portogallo… (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1559), 147r; Diversi avisi particolari dall’Indie di Portogallo… (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1565), 147r.; Epistolae Iapanicae… (Louvain: Rutger Velpen, 1570), 67; Cartas que os Padres e Irmãos da Companhia de Iesus escreverão dos Reynos de Iapão & China…, 2 vols. (Evora: Manoel de Lyra, 1598), 1:22v-23r. See also EX, 2:286; Robert Streit, Bibliotheca Missionum, vol. 4 (Aachen: Aachener Missionsdruckerei, 1928), 376.

    On such Jesuit letterbooks, see Zoe Swecker, “The Early Iberian Accounts of the Far East, 1550–1600” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1960), 234–68; John Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters and Indian History, 1542–1773, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1969); Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 1, 314–31; 427–31; vol. 1, bk. 2, 674–76; Lach and Van Kley, Asia, vol. 3, bk. 4, 1983–99; João Pedro Ferro, “A epistolografia no quotidiano dos missionários jesuítas nos séculos XVI e XVII,” Lusitania Sacra, 2nd ser., 5 (1993): 137–58; Jean Balsamo, “Les premières relations des missions de la Chine et leur réception française (1556–1608),” Nouvelle Revue du XVIe Siècle 16, no. 1 (1998): 155–84; Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 579–99; Federico Palomo, “Corregir letras para unir espíritus. Los jesuítas y las cartas edificantes en el Portugal del siglo XVI,” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna. Anejos 4 (2005): 57–81; João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, “Japan and the Japanese in Printed Works in Europe in the Sixteenth Century,” Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 14 (2007): 43–107; Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 195–202; Florence C. Hsia, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 14–21; Vincent Masse, “Nouveaux Mondes (Mexique, Inde) et premières lettres missionnaires imprimées en langue française, 1532–1545,” in De l’Orient à la Huronie: Du récit de pèlerinage au texte missionnaire, ed. Guy Poirier, Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud, and François Paré (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011), 229–49; Guy Poirier and Hanna Wells, “Le groupe de recherche sur les lettres du Japon,” in Poirier, Gomez-Géraud, and Paré, De l’Orient à la Huronie, 293–306.

  90. 90.

    This includes the edition I quote from here, namely, Henry James Coleridge, The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2 vols. (London: Burns and Oates, 1872); see 2:373–74.

  91. 91.

    DeFrancis, Chinese Language, 133.

  92. 92.

    Pierre Poussines, ed., S. Francisci Xaverii e societate Iesu Indiarum apostoli epistolae novae XVIII (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1661), 124–25, and S. Francisci Xaverii e Societate Iesu Indiarum apostoli novarum epistolarum libri septem (Rome: Varese, 1667), 458–60. This continues: “…but when they come to read aloud what is before them, they utter the Japanese words which signify the thing. The Chinese hear them, and do not know in the least what they mean. And so in turn, if a Chinese reads to a Japanese the same writing, the latter will not understand a word of what he says.” (“…sed dum voce quod legunt efferunt, vocabula Iaponica res illas denotantia pronuncient: quae Sinae audientes, quid sibi velint prorsus nesciunt: uti nec vicissim si coram Iapone Sina eamdem scripturam voce adhibita legens exprimat, Iapon haud intelliget quid verba sonent.”) On Poussines as an editor and translator, see Léonard-Joseph-Marie Cros, Saint François de Xavier: Sa vie et ses lettres, 2 vols. (Toulouse: Edouard Privat, 1900), 1:xviii–xxii.

  93. 93.

    Letter 71, to Ignatius of Loyola, 14 January 1549; EX, 2:27; Costelloe, Letters, 227; Letter 72, to Ignatius of Loyola, 14 January 1549; EX, 2:30–31; Costelloe, Letters, 228–29; Letter 73, to Simão Rodrigues, 20 January 1549; EX, 2:39; Costelloe, Letters, 231. In Letters 71 and 72, Xavier also receives a good lesson in cultural relativism from a Japanese convert: “The Japanese have a way of writing that is much different from that of others, since they begin at the top of the page and go straight to the bottom. When I asked the Japanese Paul why they did not write as we do, he replied: ‘But why do you not write in the way we do?’” Costelloe, Letters, 228. The rationale offered next by Paul—that “the head of a man is at the top and his feet at the bottom, so it is fair that men, when they write, should go from the top straight down to the bottom” (Costelloe, Letters, 229)—will prove quite enduring, being repeated as a significant anecdote in many later sources. See, inter alia, Thevet, Cosmographie universelle, 1:453r, who finds the argument rather weak; d’Anania, Universale fabbrica, 235; Le Roy, Vicissitude ou varieté, 18r.

  94. 94.

    Letter 96; EX, 2:274; Costelloe, Letters, 340.

  95. 95.

    For the “mute statues” image, see Xavier’s Letter 90, 15 November 1549, to his companions living in Goa; EX, 2:201; Costelloe, Letters, 306. Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), the Jesuit visitor to the missions, also uses the figure; see Carmelo Lisón Tolosana, La fascinación de la diferencia (Madrid: Akal, 2005), 56; 84. The “little children” formula—used negatively, as a figure of linguistic incompetence—appears in another Valignano text, the 1583 Sumario de las cosas de Japón; see Sumario de las cosas de Japón (1583). Adiciones del Sumario de Japón (1592), ed. José Luis Alvarez-Taladriz (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1954), 183. Cf. Diego de Pantoja’s comments, in the preface to his Seven Victories (Qi ke 七克) (1604; repr., Shanghai: Tushanwan, 1931, 13), on returning to the state of an ignorant child in order to painfully acquire the significantly ‘other’ Chinese language; Ann Waltner, “Jesuit Moral Tracts in Late Ming China,” in Implicit Understandings, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 428; 433. Also in a Jesuit context, see Antonio d’Almeida’s (1556–1591) letter to Duarte de Sande (1547–1599) dated 10 February 1586 in which he says he has “become Chinese,” or rather “a Chinese child,” in need to learn everything; Avvisi della Cina et Giapone del fine dell’anno 1586… (Milan: Pacifico da Ponte, 1588), 6; also, the unpublished letter sent by Pedro Gómez (1533/35–1600) to the Jesuit general on 5 June 1582 (ARSI, Jap.-Sin. 91, fol. 85), with quite similar observations; Joseph S. Sebes, “Ricci et ses prédécesseurs. Quelle accommodation culturelle?,” in Matteo Ricci, un jésuite en Chine: Les savoirs en partage au XVIIe siècle, ed. Michel Masson (Paris: Éditions Facultés jésuites de Paris, 2010), 57n71.

    As for the difficulty (or rather lack thereof) of the Japanese language, a comment is present in Xavier’s Letter 96; EX, 2:254; Costelloe, Letters, 327. Similar remarks appear quite often in later texts, like Baltasar Gago’s (1515–1583) epistle to Loyola and other Jesuits dated 23 September 1555 (MHJ 2, 549) or Gaspar Vilela’s (ca. 1525–1572) letter to Antonio de Quadros and his companions in India dated 17 August 1561; see Juan Ruiz-de-Medina, Documentos del Japón 1558–1562, Monumenta Historica Japoniae III (Rome: Instituto Histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, 1995), 360 (hereafter cited as MHJ 3); William McOmie, Foreign Images and Experiences of Japan: First Century AD to 1841 (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005), 410. The same Vilela also makes, however, a statement to the contrary; see his letter to his companions in India dated 27 April 1563 in Copia de las cartas que los Padres y Hermanos de la Compañia de Jesús que andan en el Japon escriveron a los de la misma Compañia de la India, y Europa, desde el año de M.D.XLVIII… (Coimbra: João de Barrera and João Alvares, 1565), 603. In 1576, Francisco Cabral (ca. 1533–1609) still judged Japanese to be difficult (and, according to Valignano, actively resisted learning it); the same is true about Lourenço Mexia (1539–1599) in 1582; even as late as 1604, no less an authority than the exceptionally gifted linguist João Rodrigues (ca. 1561–1633), the famous “Interpreter,” declares Japanese to be “strange and peregrine”; see Pedro Lage Reis Correia, “Francisco Cabral and Lourenço Mexia in Macao (1582–1584): Two Different Perspectives of Evangelisation in Japan,” Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 15 (2007), 60; 67; Josef Franz Schütte, Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan, trans. John J. Coyne, 2 vols. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980–1985), 1:232–33; 1:250–51; 1:257; João Rodrigues, “Advertencias” to Arte da lingoa de Iapam… (Nagasaki: Collegio de Iapão da Companhia de Iesu, 1604), n.p.; see Michael J. Cooper, Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York: Weatherhill, 1994), 233. A few years earlier, Valignano mentions the “quasi innumerable multitude of letters and Chinese characters, and the difficulty and multiplication of words” in Japanese, which the missionaries master, however, with much ease; see Sumario de las cosas de Japón, 289 (reproducing a passage from the 1601–1603 manuscript Libro Primero del principio y progresso de la Religion christiana en Jappon...); this is worth comparing with the paragraph on language difficulties in the (earlier) Sumario proper; see 199–200.

  96. 96.

    Michael J. Cooper, They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 171–86; João Paulo Rodrigues Balula, “Um exemplo da relação do português com outras línguas no séc. XVI,” Millenium 2, no. 8 (1997): 97–102; J. F. Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits. Alessandro Valignano in Sixteenth-Century Japan (London: Routledge, 1993), 178–88; Rui Manuel Loureiro, “Jesuit Textual Strategies in Japan between 1549 and 1582,” Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 8 (2004): 39–63; Osami Takizawa, “La visión de los europeos sobre la lengua japonesa en los siglos XVI y XVII,” Cauriensia 6 (2011): 345–54; Willy F. Vande Walle, “The Language Barrier in the History of Japanese-European Relations,” in Kyoto Conference on Japanese Studies, 1994, ed. International Research Center for Japanese Studies, vol. 3 (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 1996), 345–56.

  97. 97.

    Luis de Almeida, letter to his companions in India, 14 October 1564, in Cartas que os Padres e Irmãos da Companhia de Jesus, que andão nos Reynos de Japão escreverão aos da mesma Companhia… (Coimbra: Antonio de Maris, 1570), 407v; Baltasar Gago, letter to his companions in Portugal, 10 December 1562, in Cartas… (1570), 266r. It is interesting to note that the point on the difficulty of Chinese characters is absent from the manuscript (ARSI, Goa 31 1, 160–171v) used by Ruiz-de-Medina as basis for the edition of Gago’s letter included in MHJ 3, 607.

  98. 98.

    Xavier’s glossolalia/xenoglossia, lack thereof, or general linguistic skills have been affirmed or disputed—often solemnly or passionately—in many texts. Early examples include: Letter of Luis de Almeida to the Jesuits in Europe, 25 October 1562, MHJ 2, 551; Orazio Torsellino, The Admirable Life of S. Francis Xavier, trans. Thomas Fitzherbert (Paris [St. Omer: English College Press], 1632), 291–93; 295–96; Lucena, Historia da vida, 198; 505; 676–81; Sebastião Gonçalves, Primeira parte da Historia dos religiosos da Companhia de Jesus…, ed. Joseph Wicki, 3 vols. (Coimbra: Atlântida, 1957–1962), 1:194; 1:202; 1:342–44; [Mariano Lecina and Daniel Restrepo, eds.,] Monumenta Xaveriana, vol. 2 (Madrid: Gabriel López del Horno, 1912), 710 (Bull of canonization, “Rationi congruit,” 6 August 1623); see also 176; 418; 546–47; Daniello Bartoli, Dell’historia della Compagnia di Giesu. L’Asia, pt. 1 (Rome: Ignatio de’ Lazzeri, 1653), 202–5; Dominique Bouhours, The Life of St. Francis Xavier…, trans. John Dryden (London: Jacob Tonson, 1688), 84–85; 110; 143; 216; 414–16; 460; Jean Crasset, Histoire de l’Église du Japon, 2 vols. (Paris: Estienne Michallet, 1689), 1:103; António Vieira, Xavier dormindo, e Xavier acordado… (Lisbon: Miguel Deslandes, 1694), 426–64; Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, vol. 5 of The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version, trans. William F. Fleming (New York: E. R. DuMont, 1901), 107–8 (entry “Francis Xavier”). See also Adriano Prosperi, “‘Comme des enfants’: Problèmes de communication dans les missions au XVIe siècle,” in Moos, Zwischen Babel und Pfingsten, esp. 562–63; Massimo Leone, Saints and Signs: A Semiotic Reading of Conversion in Early Modern Catholicism (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), esp. 325–94.

  99. 99.

    They are preserved in a British Library manuscript (Lansdowne Ms. 720). See Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2, bk. 3, A Century of Wonder (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 511–14; Takata Tokio, “A Note on a 16th Century Manuscript of the ‘Chinese Alphabet’,” in Forte and Masini, A Life, 165–83.

  100. 100.

    Emformação da China que ouve de hum portuguêz por nome Amaro Pereira, que está preso há 14 anos em Cantão, a qual vai no certo, MHJ 3, 614; John W. Witek and Joseph S. Sebes, eds., Monumenta Sinica. Vol. I (1546–1562) (Rome: Institutum historicum Societatis Iesu, 2002), 444; D’Intino, Enformação, 92; my understanding of the passage is informed by the notes of these editors. This account was included in the letter sent by Father Gago to the Portuguese Jesuits on 10 December 1562, but is absent from the printed versions of Gago’s letter; these include: Copia… (1565), 380–98; Cartas… (1570), 252v–267r; Iesús. Cartas que los padres y hermanos de la Compañía de Jesúus, que andan en los reynos de Japón escrivieron a los de la misma Compañía (Alcalá: Juan Iniguez de Lequerica, 1575), 115–21; Cartas... (1598), 1:95–100v. The same account is also absent from Maffei’s selection in the Rerum a Societate Jesu in Oriente gestarum... (Dillingen: Sebald Mayer, 1571), 194v–202v, and his 1588 Selectarum epistolarum ex India libri quatuor (Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1588), 55v–59v. See Streit, Bibliotheca Missionum, 390. Losada Soler reads this paragraph differently; see “Tres océanos,” 223; 243. See also Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 647–63.

  101. 101.

    Cf. the comment in the 1554 anonymous Report on Certain Things about the Customs and Laws of the Kingdom of China (Enformação de alguas cousas acerca dos custumes e leys do reino da China)—a text which was disseminated widely in Europe—to the effect that the Chinese sovereign, feared beyond description by his people, “is called God and King and in their language A. F.” (“Hé tão temido El-Rey dos seus que não se pode dizer, e hé de maneira que lhe chamão Deos e Rei e en sua lingoa A. F.”) Witek and Sebes, Monumenta Sinica, 191. See also Oliveira, “Construção do conhecimento,” 616–29. In the Italian version—Avisi particolari delle Indie di Portogallo… (Rome: Antonio Blado, 1556, n. pag.)—and its French rendition—L’institution des loix, coustumes et autres choses merveilleuses & memorables, tant du Royaume de la Chine que des Indes… (Paris: Sébastien Nivelle, 1556, 104v)—the two letters become A. E.; in other printed editions—Copia de unas Cartas de algunos padres y hermanos dela compañia de Iesus que escrivieron dela India, Iapon, y Brasil… (Coimbra: João Alvares, 1555, n. pag.) and Copia de diversas Cartas de Algunos padres y hermanos de la compañia de Jesus…, printed together with Historia de las cosas de Ethiopia… (Zaragoza: Agustín Millán, 1561, 76v)—the connection with Latin letters is absent. Witek and Sebes (Monumenta Sinica, 191), Loureiro (Fidalgos, missionários e mandarins, 523–24; 528), as well as Oliveira (“Construção do conhecimento,” 623), take the two capitals as visual approximations for tianzi 天子 (“Son of Heaven”) or maybe huangdi 皇帝 (“emperor”) and the like; similarly, Wang Suoying 王鎖英—Putaoya ren zai Hua jianwen lu 葡萄牙人在華見聞錄 (Macao: Aomen wenhua sishu, 1998), 16—suggests wansui 萬歲 (“Your Majesty”). While such explanations are no doubt appropriate, it still seems somewhat puzzling that, in similar contexts in the text, we always have phonetic approximations of Chinese words. However, a letter sent by Ricci on 13 February 1583 illustrates the same mechanism: “Thus, this letter ag which represents the heavens, we can call heavens, the Japanese ten, the Siamese yet something else, the Roman calls it coelum, the Greek oὐρανóς, the Portuguese ceo and others something else; the same goes for all the letters.” Schreyer, European Discovery of Chinese, 25; Ricci, Lettere: 1580–1609, Letter 7, to Martino de Fornari, 13 February 1583, 45. This epistle is discussed more fully below.

  102. 102.

    MHJ 2, 552–72. The text was published in the 1565 Copia… (111–23, missing the passage under discussion here) and the 1570 (99v–107r), 1575 (69v–73v) and 1598 (38r–41v) Cartas…, as well as in Maffei’s selection included in the Rerum… (103r–107v, also without the relevant passage). In some of these editions (the 1570 and 1598 Cartas…), the first character in Gago’s list is rotated 90 degrees clockwise (see Fig. 2.2, left). The letter was very much truncated in other versions; see Avisi particolari del aumento che Iddio da alla sua chiesa catholica nell Indie… (Rome: Casa della Compagnia di Jesu, 1558), 13r–16r; Diversi avisi… (1559), 260r–263r; Epistolae Iapanicae… (Louvain: Rutger Velpen, 1569), 73–82; Epistolae Iapanicae… (1570), 121–28. See also Streit, Bibliotheca Missionum, 381.

    Fig. 2.2
    figure 2

    Pages (106v–107r) with kanji and hiragana from the 1570 Coimbra Cartas… edition of Baltasar Gago’s 23 September 1555 letter. Source: Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database

    Full size image
  103. 103.

    MHJ 2, 563.

  104. 104.

    Gago finds no such problems in the case of the hiragana syllabary he employs for the second set of transcriptions; on his important mission-related “language reform” in Japan, see, for instance, Lach, Asia, vol. 1, bk. 2, 679–80.

  105. 105.

    On the document attached to Vilela’s letter, see Urs App, “St. Francis Xavier’s Discovery of Japanese Buddhism: A Chapter in the European Discovery of Buddhism,” The Eastern Buddhist, n.s., 30, no. 2 (1997): 232–43. See also Ernest Satow, “Vicissitudes of the Church at Yamaguchi from 1550 to 1586,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 7 (1879): 139–42; Nachod, “Die ersten Kenntnisse,” 243–56; J. R. Firth, “The English School of Phonetics,” in Papers in Linguistics, 1934–1951 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 104n3; J.-F. Maillard, “Aspects de l’encyclopédisme au XVIe siècle dans le Traicté des chiffres, annoté par Blaise de Vigenère,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 44, no. 2 (1982): 246–50.

  106. 106.

    On this text, see Mignolo, Darker Side, 165–67; Marie-Dominique Couzinet, “Mythe, fureur et mélancolie: L’inspiration historique dans les Dialoghi della istoria (1560) de Francesco Patrizi,” Nouvelle Revue du XVIe Siècle 19, no. 1 (2001): 21–35; Anthony Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 125–41 and passim.

  107. 107.

    Francesco Patrizi, Della historia diece dialoghi (Venice: Andrea Arrivabene, 1560), 12v.

  108. 108.

    Indirectly at least, Patrizi also makes d’Anania’s “Egyptian connection” (see below); Michael Friedrich,“Kanji im Piatonismus der Renaissance. Eine Glosse zum dritten der Della historia dieci dialoghi des Francesco Patrizi,” in Wasser-Spuren: Festschrift für Wolfram Naumann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Stanca Scholz-Cionca and Wolfram Naumann (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1997), 105–9.

  109. 109.

    On the relationship between humanist “high” genres and popular travel accounts, see Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Travel Writing and Humanistic Culture: A Blunted Impact?,” Journal of Early Modern History 10, nos. 1–2 (2006): 131–68.

  110. 110.

    Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, ed. Haun Saussy, Jonathan Stalling, and Lucas Klein (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 80; 59.

  111. 111.

    Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (New York: New Directions, 1960), 21.

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    Dinu Luca

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Luca, D. (2016). Silence, Script, and “New Understandings”. In: The Chinese Language in European Texts. Chinese Literature and Culture in the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50291-9_2

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