The recently found Map of the World (Kunyutu 坤輿圖): a philological survey

Abstract

Abstract This paper is a first presentation of a Chinese Map of the World or Kunyutu 坤輿圖 discovered in a Federal library in Berne in 2017. It focusses on the rendering of the 7000 characters contained within the map. The translation of the complete 112 text blocks on the map will be provided in a second paper, whilst Indices I and II of this paper render the 1025 toponyms. The text blocks contain information on the customs and products of a given place, as well as describing other curiosities associated with it. These texts are compared with other maps and texts, in particular with The Complete World Map (Kunyu quantu 坤輿全圖) and The Explanations to the World Map (Kunyutu shuo 坤輿圖說) of 1674 by Verbiest. The re-translation of the text blocks helps to identify certain anachronisms and inaccuracies although the map purports to reflect the political situation in the years 1700–1729. This reveals the extent to which the text blocks draw on previous sources. Moreover, the rendering of the toponyms detects some inconsistencies in orthography and these interferences offer valuable pointers to the source and target languages. These various pieces of evidence suggest that the map was made much later by a copyist and is not only a cartographic composite of earlier maps, but also a fusion of Northern and Southern Mandarin. The translations presumably from French, Portuguese and Spanish sources in Southern Mandarin – the language of the officials (guanhua 官話) of the late Ming – as well as a variety of Southern Chinese dialects point to the underlying influence of a Jesuit tradition.