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Western Understanding of the Chinese Characters - In the case of Matteo Ricci(1552∼1610)’s Xiguojifa(西國記法) -

YUM, JUNGSAM 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Matteo Ricci(1552∼1610: 利馬竇(Limadou)) was a pioneer in formulating the Jesuit missionary approach to China in the 16th century. His attitude toward Chinese culture was relatively balanced between praise and criticism. Ricci began his discussion of Chinese culture by stating that educated Chinese stressed the written language far more than the spoken language. He noted that even friends living close together in the same city would communicate by writing rather than by meeting and talking. Ricci stated that the Jesuits had concentrated on learning guan-hua(官話)(literally, official’s language) of which the term mandarin, which means both the officials and official language, is a fairly close equivalent. Xiguojifa(西國記法) was written by Ricci, who had much interest in learning Chinese written language, and was published by Zhudinghan(朱鼎澣) after Ricci’s death. This book demonstrates not only a Western scholar’s effort to understand the Chinese characters, but the way how to memorize the words and things. So the book was titled as an Art of Memory(記法) in Western Countries(西國), Xiguojifa. When Ricci showed his ability of memorizing the Chinese characters forwards and backwards in front of the Chinese scholars, he was asked to teach Luwangai(陸萬陔)’s son the art of memory to make him pass the exam for government official. Ricci wanted to show off his memory and Western traditional art of memory, so he decided to write this book. Xiguojifa consists of six chapters, Yuanbenpian(原本篇), Mingyongpian(明用篇), Sheweipian(設位篇), Lixiangpian(立象篇), Dingshipian(定識篇), Guangzipian(廣資篇). His ultimate goal is to demonstrate the efficient way to memorize things and words, which have been transmitted in Western tradition. An immense weight of history in Western tradition presses on the memory section of Ad Herennium. The Ad Herennum was a well known and much used text in the Middle Ages when it had a special prestige because it was thought to be written by Cicero. Art of memory in the Western tradition must refer back constantly to this text as the main source of the tradition. Every Ars memorativa treatise, with its rules for ‘places’, its rules for ‘images’, its discussion of ‘memory for things’ and ‘memory for words’, is repeating the plan, the subject matter, and as often as not, the actual words of Ad Herennium. And the astonishing developments of the art of memory in the sixteenth century still preserve the ‘Ad Herennium’ outlines below all their complex accretions. The artificial memory is established from places and images[Constat igitur artificiosa memoria ex locis et imaginibus]. In Xiguojifa, Ricci also introduced the art of memory based on ‘Ad Herennium’ outlines. Through the images of words, he tried to explain that Chinese characters can be memorized. He thought if we make use of the icons of characters, we can understand easily how to know the meaning of characters. A sign of signification in Ricci was his remark about the written Chinese as the images of the words. He stated: “This method of writing by drawing symbols instead of forming letters gives rise to a distinct mode of expression by which one is able, not only with a few phrases but with a few words, to set forth ideas with great clearness,which in our writing would have to be expressed in roundabout circumlocutions and perhaps with far less clarity”. From the above description, we can judge that Ricci had an understanding of Chinese language which had on the whole a deep and solid basis. When European culture encountered that of China in the 16th and 17th centuries, Jesuits were willing to accept the Chinese culture and tradition. This book can help us to comprehend Jesuit accommodative ideas of Chinese characters at a very early stage of their activity in China.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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