不得已

Bùdé yǐ 不得已

I Could Do No Other by 楊光先 (撰)

About the work

The Bùdé yǐ is the polemical compendium in five juǎn by 楊光先 Yáng Guāngxiān (1597–1669) that bundles together his successive memorials, essays and counter-arguments mounted between 1659 and 1665 against the Jesuit-led Imperial Astronomical Bureau under 湯若望 Adam Schall, with the chief polemical title — the Mèngzǐ quotation “I cannot help it” (Yú bùdé yǐ yě 予不得已也, Téng Wén Gōng 下) — serving both as title and as repeated rhetorical refrain. The work is the principal documentary source for the great 1664–65 Lìyù 曆獄 (“Calendar Case”) in which Yáng prosecuted Schall before the Manchu regent Áobài 鰲拜, secured Schall’s condemnation to death by slow-slicing (commuted to house arrest, under which Schall died in 1666), saw the four Chinese Bureau astronomers actually executed, and briefly assumed Schall’s position as Bureau Director (1665–69).

Abstract

The work is presented as an unwilling-but-necessary defence of the Tàizǔ (Hóngwǔ) and Shùnzhì dynastic calendars and of Chinese cosmology against three principal charges Yáng laid against the Jesuit reform: (a) that Schall’s Xīyáng xīnfǎ lìshū (Chóngzhēn lìshū re-issued under the Qīng) introduced foreign foreign-policy-loaded propaganda into an imperial document — specifically the “yī Pínɡ-yē Sū 一耶蘇” reference to Jesus as a sovereign-and-prophet, treason in Yáng’s reading; (b) that the Jesuit calendar predicted an incorrect length for the Shùnzhì 8 (1660) reign-year, which Yáng pressed as evidence of incompetent astronomy; (c) that the entire Western-introduced cosmology — spherical earth, geo-heliocentric Tychonic system, antipodes — was contrary to common sense and to Confucian tradition.

The work contains: (1) the major memorial Pì xié lùn 闢邪論 (“Discourse on Repelling Heterodoxy”); (2) the Qǐ yú lùn 啟憂論 (“Discourse on Opening Concerns”); (3) the Zhāi yáo lùn 摘謬論 (“Discourse on Excerpting Errors”) — a point-by-point counter-argument to Schall’s astronomical claims; (4) appended documents from the Lìyù proceedings; (5) the Bùdé yǐ biànshuō 不得已辯說 supplementary defence. The work was published in 1665 under Yáng’s brief Bureau directorship.

After Kāngxī’s restoration of Verbiest in 1669, the Bùdé yǐ was retrieved and counter-attacked by Verbiest’s own Bùdé yǐ biàn 不得已辯 and by subsequent Jesuit refutations through the 18th century. The work circulated in restricted circles thereafter but was reprinted in the 19th-century anti-Western xīxué polemics (notably by Wèi Yuán 魏源 and others sympathetic to Yáng’s nativist position). The Sìkù compilers suppressed it. It is preserved in the Sìkù jìnhuǐ shūmù / Sìkù wèishōu shū jíkān and is reprinted in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì (refid KX03-07-024).

Translations and research

• Standaert, Nicolas. 2008. The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe. Seattle: U Washington Press. — uses the Bùdé yǐ materials for the Schall-Yáng confrontation as a case study.
• Standaert, Nicolas (ed.). 2001. Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One: 635–1800. Leiden: Brill. — extended treatment of the Lì-yù with full bibliography.
• Chu Pingyi 祝平一. 1997. “Scientific Dispute in the Imperial Court: The 1664 Calendar Case.” Chinese Science 14: 7–34. — the principal English-language analytic treatment of the calendar case; uses the Bùdé yǐ extensively.
• Han Qi 韓琦 and Wu Min 吳旻 (eds.). 2006. Yáng Guāngxiān “Bù-dé-yǐ” jí qí xiāngguān wénxiàn xuǎn-jí 楊光先“不得已”及其相關文獻選輯. Shanghai: Fùdàn dàxué chūbǎnshè. — the standard modern annotated edition with comprehensive secondary materials.
• Huang Yi-long 黃一農. 1991. “Yáng Guāngxiān jiā-shǔ jí qí shì” 楊光先家屬及其事. Hàn xué yánjiū 9.2: 165–193.

Other points of interest

The Bùdé yǐ is the locus classicus of Chinese-Confucian resistance to the Jesuit transmission of European astronomy. Yáng’s famous slogan — “Better that China lack a good calendar than that China have Westerners” (Nìng kě shǐ Zhōngguó wú hǎo lì, bù kě shǐ Zhōngguó yǒu Xīyáng rén 寧可使中國無好曆, 不可使中國有西洋人) — became the iconic statement of the position. The work was studied during the late-19th-century anti-Christian campaigns and again, with revisionist sympathy, in 1950s–60s historiography that read Yáng as a proto-anti-imperialist (cf. the long preface to the Zhōnghuá shūjú 1929 reprint).

Links

• Antagonists: 湯若望 Adam Schall; 南懷仁 Verbiest. See KR3fa021 Línɡtái yíxiàng zhì for Verbiest’s positive astronomy.
• Person: 楊光先 (CBDB 65958, 1597–1669).
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Guangxian