부산대학교 도서관

French Jesuit missionary to China Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare (1666-1736) finished drafting Notitia Linguæ Sinicæ in Canton in 1728 and sent the original manuscript to Europe shortly after, hoping to facilitate the learning of the Chinese language by aspiring missionaries and interested intellectuals through its publication. But his wish of having it broadly distributed in the West was fraught with difficulties from the start. Almost a century later, after the rediscovery of another original manuscript in the Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris, by French Sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832), it achieved a first, albeit very limited, wave of circulation in Europe by way of manual copies made from this original or its reproductions. This was followed by three further waves of wider circulation in the form of printed editions issued successively in Asia in the remainder of the 19th century. Over the years, scholars from the East and the West have studied various aspects of Prémare's important work. This article closely re-examines three European manuscript copies and three Asian published versions of Notitia Linguæ Sinicæ as well as related historical documents, and offers alternative views to past studies by Abel-Rémusat, Henri Cordier (1849-1925), Knud Lundbæk, and Li Zhen 李真, filling the knowledge gaps within them. The European copies of Notitia Linguæ Sinicæ represent samples of the first wave of circulation of Prémare's magnum opus, between the 1810s and the 1840s, starting with the first such copy made by Abel-Rémusat. The manuscript copy now held in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Archives, London, rarely examined by researchers, is especially important. Being the copy used for the first published edition in 1831, it functioned as the bridge for the second wave of broader circulation. Just as importantly, it also contains valuable insights on provenance and circulation history, and acts as a reliable standard for comparisons with two other known European copies currently held by two leading European libraries. Specifically, the paper has attempted to: 1) reconstruct the full provenance and provide some distinguishing features, hitherto largely ignored by academic research, of the manuscript copy of Notitia Linguæ Sinicæ now held by SOAS (CWML MSS 300), referred to here as 'Julien Copy A'; 2) re-confirm the identity of the copyist, previously challenged by some studies, of the copy now held by the British Library, London, (O/C ADD. 11708), referred to here as 'Julien Copy B'; 3) establish the identity of the copyist, contrary to conclusions drawn in a recent journal article, of the copy now held in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, (Cod. Sin. 1, [Guangzhou] 1830), referred to here as the 'Neumann Copy'; and, finally, 4) clarify the publication history of and the roles of the parties involved in, sometimes misunderstood by certain researchers, the first published edition issued by the Anglo-Chinese College of Malacca.