Abstract
IT IS A GENERALLY accepted fact that the Jesuits won their way into the confidence of Emperor K'ang Hsi through their scholarship, especially in the realm of science. The Jesuits were of value to the emperor as instructors in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, botany, medicine and surgery, anatomy, plane and geodetic surveying, cartography, and flood control. They served him as personal physicians. They dispensed charity for him. They acted for him as ambassadors to Europe and as negotiators of a treaty with Russia. They interpreted for him from the Latin, French, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Chinese into his native Tartar. One of them translated into Tartar a European textbook on anatomy. Eight Jesuits and one Augustinian spent ten years in mapping the entire kingdom of China. K'ang Hsi had become acquainted with the usefulness of the Jesuits through the varied services rendered him by Father Ferdinand Verbiest. All Jesuits who entered China after the death of Verbiest in 1688 were looked upon as possible servants for the emperor. Their role as pros-
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