sejarah kuno

                               sejarah kuno


between Chinese and Muslim astronomers all across Eurasia – in China,
Tibet, central Asia, and Transcaucasia – but was there exchange and borrowing?
This, as usual, is not easily answered; clearly, there is no general formula
that accurately describes the situation. It is best, therefore, to look at specifics.
To begin with the Muslim scientific literature deposited in the Imperial
Library Directorate, there is no indication that these works had any appreciable
influence on Chinese astronomy or mathematics. Further, during the
Yuan at least, there is no evidence to suggest that they were translated in part
or in whole into Chinese. They seem to have formed the working library of
Jamal al-Dın and his West Asian associates who made their calculations and
observations along traditional Hellenistic and Islamic lines. In short, these
works were not intended to “inform” Chinese scientists and so far as we know
no Chinese scholar of the period showed any interest in them.65
As regards instrumentation, it has been suggested by Needham that among
Kuo Shou-ching’s instruments there was an equatorial mounting. This he
believes was stimulated in part by a Muslim and European instrument known
as a torquedum. Kuo’s version was called the “simplified instrument” in
Chinese because it eliminated the ecliptic components and retained, following
Chinese tradition, the system of equatorial coordinates. This, Needham and
others have argued, anticipates Tycho Brahe and the equatorial mountings of
modern telescopes.66
On the whole, however, Needham detects little of Muslim influence on
Chinese astronomy either in instrumentation, system of coordinates, methods
of computation, or the Ptolemaic planetary model. He does leave open the
possibility of Muslim influence on Chinese techniques of calendar computation.
67 But, even here, there is not much evidence in hand to make such a case.
The official calendar of the Yuan was the Shou-shih li, “Calendar for F ixing
the Seasons.” This was compiled by Kuo Shou-ching with the aid of a large
team of observers and specialists. The calendar was promulgated in 1281 and
remained the official calendar of China until the end of the Ming. The consensus
opinion of historians of Chinese science is that this calendar betrays
no obvious foreign influence and appears to have been compiled on the basis
of traditional Chinese methods.68
While I cannot address these issues on a technical level, it is certainly
beyond dispute that the Ming dynasty, which followed the Mongols, exhibited
a lively and sustained interest in Muslim astronomy, astrology, and calendars.
The legacy was therefore mainly institutional rather than scientific or
technological.
In the first place, the Ming continued the Institute of Muslim Astronomy
172 Cultural exchange
65 Cf. the discussion of Peter M. Engelfriet, Euclid in China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), pp. 73–75.
66 Joseph Needham, “The Peking Observatory in AD 1280 and the Development of the
Equatorial Mounting,” Vistas in Astronomy 1 (1955), 67–83. See also the comments of M. C.
Johnson, “Greek, Moslem and Chinese Instrument Designs in the Surviving Mongol
Equatorials of 1279 AD,” Isis 32 (1940), 27–43. 67 Needham, SCC, vol. III, pp. 372–82.
68 Ho Peng-yoke, “Kuo Shou-ching,” in de Rachewiltz