The European Jesuits’ mission to China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is considered a world-historical event that played an important role in the transmission of knowledge between the West and the East. In spite of its historical significance, it was long assumed that the Jesuit mission to China and its scientific scholarship had never reached the mountainous regions of Tibet. As I have described elsewhere, this was not the case. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tibetans not only translated a large number of the Jesuits’ works into Tibetan, they also reformed the Tibetan calendar in accordance with the Jesuit-influenced calendar of the Qing. How did it happen and in which way? It was a twofold process achieved partially with Qing imperial sponsorship and partially on the Tibetans’ own initiative, sometimes even in a low-key, indirect and secretive way. In this article, I shall look at how a Tibetan Buddhist astronomer at the imperial court in Beijing wrote a manual for predicting solar and lunar eclipses. I will also look at how some Tibetan astronomers brought this imperial knowledge, apparently without explicit imperial approval, to the monasteries in Amdo, the North-East of Tibet, which mostly lies today in the Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, as well as how Tibetan astronomers in this region reformed their calendars according to the Jesuits’ astronomical system. Finally, I will describe how this tradition, in spite of recent political upheaval and tragedies, is still alive and practiced in Tibet.
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Book
Saraiva, Luís;
Jami, Catherine;
(2008)
History of Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia III: The Jesuits, the Padroado and East Asian Science (1552--1773)
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Golvers, Noēl;
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A Note on the “Machine of Roemer” in Late-17th Century China, Antoine Thomas, S. J., and the First Contacts of Ferdinand Verbiest, S. J., with the Jesuits in Paris
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Sarreal, Julia;
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Revisiting Cultivated Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Daily Life in the Guaraní Missions
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Anagnostou, Sabine;
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Jesuit Missionaries in Spanish America and the Transfer of Medical-Pharmaceutical Knowledge
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Hsia, Florence C.;
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Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China
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Prieto, Andrés I.;
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Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570--1810
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Jami, Catherine;
(2012)
The Emperor's New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (1662--1722)
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de Asúa, Miguel;
(2014)
Science in the Vanished Arcadia: Knowledge of Nature in the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay and Río de la Plata
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Hiraoka, Ryuji;
(2007)
The Manuscript Tenmongata kakitome (Astronomer's Note): Mixture of Nanban and Rangaku Astronomy
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Wang, Guangchao;
(2009)
Controversy over the Theory of Precession in Late Ming and Early Qing China
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Longfei Chu;
(2017)
From the Jesuits’ treatises to the imperial compendium : The appropriation of the Tychonic system in seventeenth and eighteenth-century China
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Pollock, Sheldon I.;
(2011)
Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500--1800
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Hsia, R. Po-chia;
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A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552--1610
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Hart, Roger;
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Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter
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Laven, Mary;
(2011)
Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East
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Leitão, Henrique;
(2003)
A Periphery between Two Centres? Portugal in the Scientific Route from Europe to China
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Hiraoka, Ryuji;
(2009)
Clavius and His Astronomical Data during the “Christian Century” in Japan
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Magone, Rui;
(2008)
The Textual Tradition of Manuel Dias' Tianwenlüe
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Golvers, Noël;
Nikolaides, E.;
(2009)
Ferdinand Verbiest and Jesuit Science in 17th-Century China: An Annotated Edition and Translation of the Constantinople Manuscript
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Shi, Yunli;
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Reforming Astronomy and Compiling Imperial Science in the Post-Kangxi Era: The Social Dimension of the Yuzhi lixiang kaocheng houbian
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