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奇器圖說

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Text ID
KR3i0001
Date
1627–1627
Dynasty
明

Qíqì túshuō 奇器圖說

Illustrated Explanations of Marvellous Devices (from the Far West) by 鄧玉函 (Dèng Yùhán / Johann Schreck S.J., 撰) and 王徵 (Wáng Zhēng, 譯)

About the work

The first systematic Chinese exposition of European Renaissance mechanical engineering — gears, levers, pulleys, screws, inclined planes, hydraulic machinery, lifting and pumping and milling devices — produced in 1627 by the Jesuit Johann Schreck (Terrentius) with his Chinese convert collaborator Wáng Zhēng 王徵. The Sìkù version is in three juàn, plus a one-juàn appendix of Wáng Zhēng’s own Zhūqì túshuō 諸器圖說 (eleven machines of his own invention or modification). The full original title is Yuǎnxī qíqì túshuō lùzuì 遠西奇器圖說錄最 (“Best Selections from the Illustrated Explanations of the Marvellous Devices of the Far West”). It is the standard companion volume — on the mechanical-engineering side — to the Jesuit-Chinese collaborations on astronomy (Xú Guāngqǐ–Ricci Jǐhé yuánběn 1607; Schreck’s astronomy contributions to the Chóngzhēn calendar reform of 1629–1635).

Tiyao

The 提要 states: We submit that the Qíqì túshuō is in three juàn by the Míng-period Westerner Dèng Yùhán; and the Zhūqì túshuō in one juàn by the Míng-period Wáng Zhēng. Wáng was a man of Jīngyáng; in the rénxū year of Tiānqǐ (1622) he became jìnshì and served as judicial officer of Yángzhōu prefecture. He had inquired of Yùhán about the method of the marvellous devices of the Far West, and Yùhán accordingly transmitted to him orally the writings handed down in his country; Wáng translated these and made them this book. The art is one of using small force to move large weights, hence the name “Weight”; the device is also called “the Art of Force” (lìyì 力藝). Its general purport is that, among the things heaven-and-earth generate, all have number, measure, and weight: number is the matter of arithmetic; measure is the matter of surveying; weight is precisely the matter of this Art-of-Force. All three are mutually resourced and complete each other. Therefore the work first discusses the fundamental nature of weight in order to clarify the rationale for establishing methods — in all sixty-one items. It next discusses the methods of various sorts of apparatus — in all ninety-two items. It next gives eleven illustrations of weight-lifting, four of weight-drawing, two of weight-turning, nine of water-raising, fifteen of mill-turning, four of wood-sawing, one each of stone-sawing and rotary-pestle-driving, one each of bookcase, water-clock-sundial, and substitute-plowing, and four of water-cannon. Each illustration has its explanation. The work is especially detailed concerning agricultural implements and water-management. The first juàn opens with two essays — “Explanation of the Nature of Capacities” (Biǎo xìng yán jiě 表性言解) and “Explanation of the Virtue of Capacities” (Biǎo dé yán jiě 表德言解) — which extravagantly extol the marvellousness of the method. In broad outline these are boastful-extravagant matter not worth detailed scrutiny; but the cleverness of the device-construction is genuinely without peer ancient or modern. Where an inch has a strength, one ought to take it; and the matters here recorded all concern instruments beneficial to the people’s livelihood — their methods extremely convenient, their utility extremely broad — and to record-and-preserve them is in no way unfit-to-be a school-of-its-own. The Zhūqì túshuō has eleven illustrations, each with its explanation and an appended encomium-or-eulogy. These are Wáng Zhēng’s own compositions and also show considerable thought. Submitted for collation in the eleventh month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief Compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Sìkù 提要 dates the work from internal evidence to “before the fall of the Míng”; the precise date is 1627 (Tiānqǐ 7), known from Wáng Zhēng’s own preface. The work was composed in Beijing during Wáng Zhēng’s brief residence there after his 1622 jìnshì; Wáng would leave Beijing in 1625 for the Yángzhōu post and the work itself was edited and printed only after his return to the capital in 1626–1627.

Schreck did not himself write Chinese well enough to compose the work. Instead, he dictated orally — translating freely from the Latin / Italian / French printed mechanical-engineering tradition in his head — and Wáng wrote down what he heard, rendered it into elegant Chinese, and supplied the illustrations himself (he was a skilled draughtsman). The principal European sources from which Schreck drew, identified by twentieth-century scholarship through systematic image-comparison, are Vitruvius’s De architectura (book X on machines); Simon Stevin’s De Beghinselen der Weeghconst (Leiden 1586) for the theoretical foundations of mechanics; Guidobaldo del Monte’s Mechanicorum liber (Pesaro 1577); Agostino Ramelli’s Le diverse et artificiose machine (Paris 1588); Jacques Besson’s Théâtre des instrumens mathématiques et mécaniques (Lyon 1578); and Faustus Verantius’s Machinae novae (Venice c. 1616). Schreck himself had personally known Galileo (a fellow Lincean) and Kepler; he had brought a substantial European scientific library to China in 1619 and was the best-equipped European in the China mission to undertake this transfer.

The Zhūqì túshuō appendix (also 1627) is Wáng Zhēng’s own work, presenting eleven machines that he claimed to have invented or modified — including a zìzhuǎn mò 自轉磨 (self-turning mill), yùnshuǐ chē 運水車 (water-conveying cart), yǐfēng huóbù 以風活步 (wind-actuated walking gear), and others — together with explanatory text and verse encomia. How much is genuinely Wáng’s invention versus borrowed-from-Schreck cannot now be securely determined, but the eleven devices certainly testify to Wáng’s serious mechanical interest.

The work circulated only modestly in the Míng — the Manchu conquest interrupted any wider transmission — but was revived in the late Kāngxī and Qiánlóng periods through the Sìkù quánshū recension and through the antiquarian-and-collector interest in Western matters that the Mǎgěrní (Macartney) embassy of 1793 would later stimulate. It is the single most influential transfer of European mechanical-engineering knowledge into Chinese before the late-nineteenth-century yángwù movement. The Yánshì 嚴氏 Liánghǎi gǔlǐ edition of 1830 was the standard nineteenth-century reprint.

Translations and research

  • Bertuccioli, Giuliano. 1973. “L’opera di Sebastiano Resta nella Bibliotheca antiquissima del Padre Boym, S.J.” Estremo Oriente Cina-Giappone (background on the Italian-language sources).
  • Engelfriet, Peter M. 1998. Euclid in China: The Genesis of the First Chinese Translation of Euclid’s Elements. Leiden: Brill (the companion case-study to the Schreck-Wáng case).
  • Golvers, Noël. 2020. Johann Schreck Terrentius, S.J.: His European network and the origins of the Jesuit library in Peking. Turnhout: Brepols. The standard scholarly biography of Schreck.
  • Jiāng Xiǎoyuán 江曉原. 1991. “Yuǎn-xī qí-qì tú-shuō lù-zuì yánjiū 遠西奇器圖說錄最研究”. Zhōngguó kē-jì shǐ liào 12.3.
  • Standaert, Nicolas (ed.). 2001. Handbook of Christianity in China, vol. 1: 635–1800. Leiden: Brill. Schreck entry, pp. 539–541, 794–795.
  • Tián Miǎo 田淼 / Zhāng Bǎichūn 張柏春. 2008. Yuǎn-xī qí-qì tú-shuō lù-zuì yánjiū 遠西奇器圖說錄最研究. Nánjīng: Jiāngsū kē-xué jì-shù chū-bǎn-shè. The standard book-length monograph on the work, with full systematic identification of Schreck’s European sources.
  • Wáng Bǎohóng 王保宏 et al. 2004. “Yuǎnxī qíqì túshuō lùzuì zhōng de xī-fāng mò-fán chuán-tǒng 遠西奇器圖說錄最中的西方模範傳統”. Zì-rán kē-xué shǐ yán-jiū 23.4.
  • Zhāng Bǎichūn 張柏春. 2006. “Johann Schreck (Terrentius) and the introduction of European mechanics to China”. East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine 25.

Other points of interest

The work occupies a unique position as the only systematic Chinese mechanical-engineering transfer from Renaissance Europe before the nineteenth century — neither Ricci nor Schall von Bell, neither Verbiest nor any of the eighteenth-century Beijing missionaries, ever produced a comparable mechanical-engineering compendium. Its delayed reception in China (the Manchu conquest of 1644 interrupted any active mechanical-engineering tradition that might have grown from it) is one of the standard test cases for late-twentieth-century debates on why early-modern China did not undergo a scientific-and-industrial revolution.

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