Sāncái shíyì tiānjí 三才實義天集
The Heaven Collection of the True Meaning of the Three Powers by 周於漆 (撰)
About the work
The Sāncái shíyì tiānjí is the tiān (Heaven) sub-collection of a Qīng-period synthetic work in three parts under the umbrella title Sāncái shíyì 三才實義 (“The True Meaning of the Three Powers”). The classical Chinese sāncái 三才 triad (Heaven, Earth, Man) is here taken as the organising principle for a three-volume gézhì synthesis of natural philosophy, geography and human-affairs ethics, with the present twenty-two juǎn covering the astronomical / cosmological tiān portion alone. The work is attributed to Zhōu Yúqī 周於漆 of the Qīng; further biographical details are unrecoverable.
Abstract
The work belongs to the post-Jesuit “xīxué zhōngyuán 西學中源” synthetic tradition: it absorbs the Schall-Verbiest astronomy as the most precise available observational framework while presenting it as a refinement of, rather than a departure from, the classical Chinese cosmological tradition rooted in the Yìjīng. The twenty-two-juǎn extent is unusual for the genre and suggests an ambitious encyclopaedic compilation rather than a single-author monograph; the textual surface is, however, consistent with sole authorship by Zhōu Yúqī.
Composition window: Qīng dynasty, but presumably between the consolidation of the Verbiest reform (1680s) and the early-19th-century revival of native astronomical scholarship around 阮元’s Chóurén zhuàn. No internal evidence narrows the bracket further; the Sìkù tíyào does not list the work, suggesting that it post-dates the 1782 Sìkù presentation or was not noted by the compilers. The bracket adopted is 1644–1850, with the late-17th-to-mid-18th century as most probable.
The text is preserved in the Sìkù wèishōu shū jíkān and reprinted in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì (refid KX03-07-023).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Henderson, John B. 1984. The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology. New York: Columbia UP. — the principal English-language treatment of the late-imperial Chinese cosmological synthesis-tradition to which Zhōu’s work belongs.
- Elman, Benjamin A. 2005. On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. — sets out the Qīng xī-xué zhōng-yuán framework.
- Standaert, Nicolas (ed.). 2001. Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One: 635–1800. Leiden: Brill.