| The time between late Ming and early Qing dynasties was one of the most important periods to the history of the mutual exchange of culture between China and the West. During the time, Matteo Ricci, Giulio Aleni and other missionaries come to China.The missionaries had written a huge number of books about Christianity and Western science in Chinese. These books reflect part of the Chinese history and missionary history; they are quite valuable texts not only to the research on the history of cultural exchange between China and the West, but the Chinese history. One could not even underestimate the close relationship between Chinese learning and western thoughts.As the missionaries had widely acquaintance with Chinese scholars and officials, they introduce them with Western science, philosophy, geography and Christianity. Many of the scholars are attracted by the new knowledge and wrote prefaces for the missionaries’ books to help the Christian missions. Therefore these texts which were written by the Chinese scholars are also of great importance on academic value.Tianxue jijie appears to be a collection of284texts, mainly prefaces to books dealing with Christianity and Western Science, but also including some other types of texts, like inscriptions, short essays, etc. Most of the texts are well known, while there are some texts of great importance which are hitherto unknown to Chinese scholars. Tianxue jijie is mostly the only source of these rare texts. The article is basic on the texts in Tianxue jijie, presents a list of30rare and possibly unique texts and explore the value of the rare texts.First, the article verifies the rare texts. As Adrian Dudink said in The rediscovery of a seventeenth-century collection of Chinese Christian texts:the manuscript Tianxue jijie, there are33hitherto unknown texts in the books. I have make process by consulting published books like Tianzhujiao dongchuanwenxian, Tianxue chuhan, Dongchuan fuyin,Juejiaotongwenji,etc. Then define30rare texts which are really valuable by taking the method of philology.There are mainly four parts of the article. The first part contains a short description of the manuscript and a brief introduction of the compiler Liu Ning. The second part shows the reason why I define the30rare texts. The information of reprints, translations, library copies, ancient lists, modern lists and relevant notes renders me evidence and clues to define the rare texts. The third part is talk about the authors of the rare texts. Descriptions are given not only of western authors, but the Chinese scholars who wrote the texts. The last part is focus on the value of the30rare texts. The texts give some information about the authors, the date and the contents of the books which are written by the missionaries. The information would help to promote the progress of the research about Chinese history, Chinese scholars and the missionaries’ books.As the manuscript of Tianxue jijie lies in St.Petersburg, it is difficult for Chinese scholars to read the texts. In order to show the original texts, an appendix has attached to the article that consist the30rare texts which had been punctuated. |
