Some Asian neighbours

The French Jesuits, at the beginning, could only enter the Chinese empire by approaching it from Siam (now Thailand). L'Oiseau, the ship which left Brest in 1685 with the king's mathematicians on board, had to strengthen the position of this kingdom's sovereign, King Narai, against the Dutch East India Company. Therefore, the missionaries were to travel from Siam to Beijing by their own means. Delisle collected a detailed and illustrated account of their trip on a "ship with a flat floor plate", as well as a record of a lunar eclipse observed by Father Fontaney in december 1685 in the company of the King of Siam in his palace.

 

 

 

Observations astronomiques et physiques des Mathématiciens du roi envoyées à l’Académie royale

the King's mathematicians' account of their travel from Siam to China (p. 45 of a series of observations sent to the Academy - the diary starts at image 31 of the digitalisation)

 

While Fontaney and the king's mathematicians had had the opportunity to discover a Southern neighbour of China, their successor, Antoine Gaubil, turned his attention mainly to the East. In his Mémoires sur le Japon et la Corée, of which Delisle received a copy in 1752, the missionary strived to determine the longitude of Nagasaki, presented a map where the shores of the Kingdom of Corea could be identified, and described the Ryukyu Islands (which included Okinawa), an independant kingdom at that time, in about twenty pages.

 

 

Father Gaubil's astronomical research didn't stop on China's borders. Some documents relating to another great tradition of observations could be found in the manuscripts sent to Delisle : Indian astronomical papers. Received in 1752, the original manuscript of Father François-Xavier Duchamp on Indian astronomy [1] fulfilled a long-standing request. In 1738, in the already mentioned letter where Delisle shared with Fréret his interest in Gaubil's research, he wrote : "especially since he gave us the hope that he would add to his discoveries on Chinese astronomy some information about Indian astronomy, so that I could know the progress, or at least learn the history of Eastern astronomy, which I have always aspired to do." [2]

Insomuch as Delisle actually managed to fulfill this ambition, he owed it to still other "Easts". In the Dissertation read in 1728 in Saint Petersburg, he didn't mention India, but Cathay, in connection with China : "Indeed, he wrote, if I may express my feelings on that point, I am convinced that if one perfectly took note of Chinese ancient astronomy by adding what Ulugbeig taught us of the astronomy of Cathay to what the missionaries told us of the astronomy of the Chinese ; Chinese chronology could easily be matched to those of other nations on astronomical facts and one might at the same time deduce from it something useful to astronomy." [3] As a matter of fact, Ulugh Beg, astronomer-prince of Samarkand, was an important figure in the history of astronomy, according to the documentation collected by Delisle.

 


[1] Delisle collection, portfolio B1/13, piece 9. 1.

[2] Letter to Nicolas Fréret of February 18th, 1738, portfolio B2/4, piece 6. 4.

[3] Portfolio A7/10, piece 8, p. 4.