Pages from confucius sinarum philosophus ("confucius, the philosopher of the chinese"), an annotated latin translation of three of the "four books" of qing confucianism by prospero intorcetta, philip couplet, rougemont, and herdtrich (paris, 1687). On the left is a portrait of confucius in a confucian temple, surrounded by the spirit tablets of the four assessors and the twelve wise ones. Many of the characters on the tablets are gibberish—the unidentifiable remaining four disciples are ziruo (子若), boniu (伯牛), ziyou (子有), and zhuzi (朱子)—and there are an unexplained further two tablets as well. The image of confucius was later used as the model of the engraving in du halde's description of china. The right page reads "the life of confucius, prince/first of the chinese philosophers". Mungello (curious land, 1989) opined that the translation represented the collective efforts of several generations of jesuits from ruggieri and ricci onward, all of whom studied and continuously improved the translation and commentary. For his part, du halde preferred the later translation of françois noël. Date: 1687.
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