漢譯地質的學書に見る「西學東漸」 : 江南製造局刊『地學淺釋』を例として

Abstract

In the late Qing period when China was exposed to a torrent of xixue-dongjian (西學東漸), which literally means "the diffusion of Western knowledge to the East, " a large number of institutes were established in order to publish translations of Western books. Highly prominent among them was the Jiangnan Zhizao-ju Fanyiguan (江南製造局翻譯館), or the Department for the Translation of Foreign Books at the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai. As an institution attached to a government munitions plant, it was outstanding in respect of its endurance, prolificity, and long-lasting intellectual and social effects. Most of the Arsenal's translation works were carried out by means of xiyi-zhongshu (西譯中述), a traditional method of collaboration between Westerners and Chinese. However, it is considered epoch-making, because the Qing Government itself took the initiative for the whole project. In order to meet the urgent demand for practical sciences and technology advocated in the Yangwu movement (洋務運動) at the time, they aimed to publish translations "by the Chinese and for the Chinese, " in the true sense of those words. While several studies have been conducted both in China and abroad on the translation practices and translators of the Arsenal, few attempts have so far been made at a comparative study on the Arsenal's translations themselves and their original works, which were written mostly in English. This paper first focuses on Dixueqianshi (地學淺釋), published in 1871, which is a Chinese translation of Sir Charles Lyell's Elements of Geology, 6th ed. 1865. Needless to say, geology was one of the most prominent sciences in the British intellectual circle during the 19th century, and therefore, the process of its translation and distribution in China might reveal some important aspects of xixue-dongjian in the field of modern science. In the first chapter, Lyell's theory is examined from the historical viewpoint of English geology in order to clarify the background of its translation at the Arsenal. Inquiry into the significance of its Chinese translation follows, comparing Dixueqianshi with Elements of Geology both in their respective vocabularies and specific passages. Lastly, I demonstrate that Dixueqianshi was diversely accepted or interpreted at different places and moments, in China as well as Japan, in this period of drastic change. In conclusion, it could hardly be claimed that translators at the Arsenal were able to perfectly represent Lyell's theory in Chinese. However, it should be recognized that this was a result of the fact that they had chosen information that seemed relevant to Chinese readers of the time from Western geology, which itself was still in its developmental phase. Besides, the fact that that Dixueqianshi had been translated as a practical introduction to mineralogy in the first place but later came to be viewed as a guide to evolutionism in China should not be overlooked. These facts should be considered with reference to the innate diversity of geology as a science as well as the expansive worldview which geology would develop.