Kangxi yu xifang kexue: Li Leisi de Jincheng Yinglun (Kangxi and Western Science: Buglio’s “Ying Lun”)

Translations in Chinese language made by Jesuit missionaries are an important material in the field of research related to the history of cultural exchange and circulation of ideas between China and Western countries. Apart of translations of religious works, scientific books are indeed a very useful tool of investigation and can give us an insight about the exchange of scientific knowledge between Europe and China. From this point of view, the italian Jesuit missionar Buglio and his books of zoology still are worth of research. Ludovico Buglio S.I. (Mineo, 1606 – Beijing, 1682), chinese name Li Leisi 利类思, is a well-known Jesuit missionar operating in China in 17th century. Altough he wrote books both in Western and Chinese language, he is famous for his works in Chinese, three of them describing the West to the Chinese literati and the imperial court. He is the author of the famous Shizi shuo 獅子說 (1678), (On Lions), wich has been studied first by Giuliano Bertuccioli (Bertuccioli 1976), and has been, recently, object of study again in China by Zou Zhenhuan (Zou 2013). Shizi shuo has been indicated as the book which probably firstly introduced the Western zoology into China. Ludovico Buglio in 1679 also wrote the Jincheng ying shuo 進呈鷹說 (Treatise on Hawks), later renamed Ying lun 鷹論 (On Hawks) later reproduced in the Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成 in 1725, during the reign of Yongzheng. The aim of my paper is to describe in details this book and the context which saw the making of this work, giving to this book the attention and the importance that it deserves. In particular I will try to discuss some questions raised by the analysis of the zoology-related lexicon used in the book, comparing them to the terms contained in the latin edition of Aldrovandi’s Ornithologiae, the main source of the book.