Matteo Ricci (37 page)

Having relived the events of the mission through Isaac’s words and every surviving shred of writing from the journal, Ricci wrote a detailed report reconstructing his fellow Jesuit’s travels from the beginning to the tragic end and sent it in two copies to Superior General Acquaviva. One was addressed to the superiors in India to be forwarded “by way of the West Indies” to Portugal and then Rome, and the other to the Jesuits in Japan for forwarding to Italy “by way of the East Indies,” through the Philippines and Mexico. While the original document in Portuguese has been lost, a second version written in Italian has survived. The three chapters of the history of the mission that Ricci then devoted to his Portuguese brother’s mission provide a unique account of a daring and dramatic endeavor. Despite its hagiographic overtones and some inevitable omissions and inaccuracies in the names of localities traveled through, the sequence of stages, the calculation of distances, and the documentation of dates, Ricci’s painstaking account has prevented De Góis and his expedition from falling into oblivion.

Despite the definitive proof provided by this expedition, the myth of the existence of a country other than China called Cathay still lingered on. In 1624, less than twenty years after Brother Benedict’s death, the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Andrade, superior of the mission in Agra, decided to set off again in search of the Christians of Cathay, crossing the Himalayas and entering Tibet from the south. The record of his journey was published in Rome in 1627 with a title that once again contradicted Ricci’s thesis: “The Discovery of Great Cathay, the Kingdom of Tibet, by Father Andrade of Portugal.”
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Mathematics at the Service of the Empire

Meanwhile, Paul Xu continued his assiduous collaboration with Ricci in Beijing. Like Li Zhizao and many other intellectuals of the day, he was dissatisfied with the state of scientific studies in China and realized that the almost exclusive focus of the imperial examinations on the mastery of literary style and the knowledge of history and Confucian philosophy was far too narrow.

Xu Guangqi understood that Li Madou’s learning was the product of an ancient and developed culture that it would be useful to share. When Ricci illustrated his knowledge and displayed the European books he had brought with him, he never failed to refer appreciatively to the great thinkers of Western antiquity, whose works had been translated into Latin and the vernacular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after the oblivion of the Middle Ages, and were becoming the foundation and heritage of European culture. In China, the most ancient books of science and mathematics had instead been lost, and those still available proved almost incomprehensible because they were based on knowledge that was now all but forgotten. It was a fate similar to the one that had befallen the astronomical instruments constructed by Guo Shoujing in the thirteenth century, which Ricci had found lying abandoned on the terrace of the astronomical observatory in Nanjing, far too advanced for the imperial astronomers of the Ming era to use.

In the absence of continuity with the achievements of the past, it was difficult for Chinese intellectuals to link up constructively with the scientific tradition and take significant steps forward. Mathematics and its applications were, however, more necessary now than ever before. On the one hand, more advanced mathematics would make it possible to describe the movement of the celestial bodies with greater precision and create a more accurate calendar. On the other, progress in arithmetic and algebra was indispensable to meet the needs of commerce, cartography, engineering, and every other sector of human activity.

Xu Guangqi wanted to understand how Ricci’s knowledge could help him revitalize Chinese mathematics and above all use it in the fields in which he had taken an interest for many years now, namely the technical and scientific disciplines that were referred to as “practical” or “concrete” studies in Chinese and would be called “applied” today. These included military sciences, agriculture, hydraulics, and geography, but also the techniques of surveying and calendrical calculation. A large number of intellectuals took an interest in these practical studies in the late Ming era and considered them important to the empire’s development and prosperity.

Before his conversion and contact with Ricci, Paul Xu wrote a number of works identifying the problems to be addressed and solved by the imperial administration. The first was the inadequacy of the army, equipped with obsolete weapons and led by generals with no technical training. Even though the Chinese had invented gunpowder at least three hundred years before the Europeans and had developed rockets and grenades as well as land and underwater mines much earlier, they had never been interested in wars of conquest and had failed to develop either their military skills or the associated technologies. The defense of the empire was an absolute priority, however, and Xu Guangqi knew that it was essential to be ready to repel any possible new invasion from the north, like the Mongol conquest of China in the thirteenth century. The danger was real, and the Great Wall, a barrier of more symbolic than effective character, would not be enough to avert it.

The second unresolved problem was control over the always precarious waterways. The two greatest Chinese rivers, the Huang He and the Yangtze, and the system of smaller watercourses connected by the Imperial Canal were arteries connecting the remote provinces of the vast empire and served as precious reservoirs for irrigation, but they were also the cause of catastrophic floods. After studying the problem for a long time, Xu Guangqi submitted a plan for reorganization of the waterways to the authorities in Shanghai, and he wrote a treatise on the Great Canal suggesting possible improvements to China’s main artery.
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The ideas put forward were those of a truly innovative thinker. He urged government officials to put an end to the superstitious view of floods as the vengeance of Heaven on human or imperial wrongdoing and to take a pragmatic approach, explaining that floods could only be prevented by addressing the problem in methodical and global terms, which meant measuring the width, depth, and capacity of rivers and canals, studying the lay of the land, carrying out precise surveys, and drawing good maps.

Xu Guangqi took the same systematic approach to the study of agricultural technologies, using his in-depth knowledge to write an encyclopedia in which, among other things, he analyzed methods to improve the yield of land and ensure better harvests. His suggestions were invaluable in a vast country like China with a huge population that was constantly threatened by starvation through recurrent famines.

Contact with Li Madou was a unique and unrepeatable opportunity for an intellectual with an interest in technical matters like Paul Xu, not least because he was convinced that learning science and embracing the missionaries’ moral doctrine were two complementary aspects of the self-improvement that it was the duty of every Confucian official to pursue.

Finding a convert of such intelligence and dynamism ready and willing to study with him was also an extraordinary opportunity for Ricci and one that he thought would prove very conducive to the progress of the mission. The Jesuit was right. Having formed an idea of the content of the scientific books shown to him, Xu Guangqi suggested with support from Li Zhizao that they should be translated into Chinese and published. He was well aware not only of the intrinsic value of the works presented to him by Ricci but also of the fact that their publication was the best way to enhance the Jesuits’ prestige and facilitate the spread of the moral and religious doctrine they taught.

The Translation of Euclid’s
Elements

Ricci took up his friend’s suggestion and set to work despite the immense labors with which he was burdened in the capital, being weighed down by visits in addition to his other tasks. He and his Chinese friends were to translate Clavius’s works in order to explain the concepts and methods of European mathematics to the intellectuals of the Middle Kingdom. His only problem was the impossibility of obtaining the imprimatur from the inquisitors in Goa and his superiors in Rome for publications of a nonreligious character. With the exception of the
True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven
and
Christian Doctrine
, all of his books had so far been published by the Chinese on their own initiative with no authorization from the ecclesiastical authorities. This impediment did not, however, deter him from going ahead with his plans to spread the knowledge of Western science.

The Jesuit had no hesitation as regarded the choice of the first work to be presented to the Chinese public, namely the Clavius edition of Euclid’s
Elements
. Unquestionably influenced by his former master, Ricci was convinced that arithmetic and geometry as addressed in accordance with the Euclidean hypothetical-deductive method constituted the ideal basis for studying every other sector of mathematics and science, as well as the problems of astronomy.

Preparing a Chinese version of the
Elements
promised to be a labor of herculean proportions. It would be necessary to translate concepts and methods of proof developed in the context of Greek culture—something quite alien to the Chinese—from Latin into Mandarin and to find the words most suitable for conveying their precise meaning. Ricci had already shown that this was possible some years earlier in Shaozhou by translating the first of the fifteen books together with his friend Qu Taisu. On that occasion, however, the results were not intended for publication. Now it was necessary to carry the project through to completion so as to reach a vast public with a work that would last through time.

As such a demanding task required a large number of hours during the day, Xu Guangqi advised Ricci to engage the services of a scholar he knew who was seeking employment. The man was engaged and was given accommodation in the Jesuits’ house to work full time on the project, but he proved unsuitable after just a few days. Ricci then asked Xu Guangqi to take his place, being well aware that only an “intellect like his” would be able to complete the work.

Paul Xu set about the task with great commitment and devoted three or four hours a day to the translation for at least six months from the summer of 1606. The procedure was as follows. Using the Latin text, Ricci explained the concepts, clarified their meaning, translated orally, and discussed the possible alternatives in the choice of words with Xu, who advised him on the most appropriate expressions and wrote the results down in perfect literary Chinese with a “clear, sober, and elegant” style. The difficulties were obvious, as described by the Jesuit in the preface:

The grammars of East and West vastly differ, and the meaning of words corresponds in a vague and incomplete manner. As long as one gives oral explanations, it is still possible to do one’s best to find solutions, but when wielding the writing brush in order to produce a text, it becomes hard to realize. . . . We turned the meanings of the original upside down, and investigated them from all angles, in order to find the best equivalent in the Chinese language.
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Their efforts were rewarded, and many of the expressions coined by Ricci and Xu on that occasion have become an integral part of Chinese mathematical terminology and are still in use today. The first six books of Euclid’s work, devoted to the geometry of plane figures and the theory of proportions between magnitudes, were translated entirely by the beginning of 1607. Every bit as determined and untiring as Ricci, Xu Paolo wanted to continue with the other nine.
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The Jesuit decided to stop, however, partly in order not to divert too much time from the mission’s other activities and partly to see how the Chinese public would respond to the first part of the work.

Described as a milestone in the history of translation,
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the work was entitled
Jihe yuanben
, which literally means “the origin of quantity.” Since then, however, the word
jihe
, meaning quantity, has been considered a synonym of geometry in China, and the text is commonly known as the “Elementary Treatise of Geometry.”

Euclid’s work was written in Greek in the third century
bc
, was translated into Arabic in the eighth century
ad
, and into Latin in the twelfth century. Published for the first time in the original Greek version in 1533, it appeared fifty years later, probably in May 1607, in Mandarin Chinese, with prefaces by Ricci and Xu Guangqi. The Jesuit sent copies to his superiors, including two for Clavius,
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who must have been pleased to see the work that he himself had helped to make known now printed in Chinese characters.

The complete Chinese edition of the
Elements
did not appear until 1856, two and a half centuries later, after the translation of the other nine books by the English missionary Alexander Wylie and Li Shanlan. The part already translated by Ricci and Xu Guangqi was preserved unchanged, together with their Chinese title
Jihe yuanben
, a great tribute to the two pioneers who first introduced Euclid to the Chinese.

The Perfection of Geometry

“Li Madou from the Great West,” the name Ricci used to sign the preface, was aware that the presentation of such an innovative work to the Chinese public would require a very convincing introduction constituting an authentic manifesto in defense of mathematics.
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He decided to take Clavius’s preface to the Latin edition as his model, adding Confucian concepts in keeping with the culture of his readers and adopting the richly metaphorical literary style typical of Chinese writings, things that he was now able to do very well indeed. He started by pointing out that the moral duty to extend one’s knowledge and to study nature was felt by both Chinese and Christian scholars and that mathematics was the indispensable starting point of the path to knowledge: “For depth and solidity, nothing surpasses the knowledge that springs forth from the study of mathematics.”