KIRCHER (Athanase)? La Chine, illustrée de plusieurs monumen - Lot 118

KIRCHER (Athanase)? La Chine, illustrée de plusieurs monuments tant sacrés que profanes, et de quantité de recherchés de la nature & de l'art...Avec un dictionaire chinois et françois,... Amsterdam, Jean Jansson à Waesberge, & les Heritiers d'Elizée Weyerstraret, 1670. In-folio, (14)-367-(13) p., contemporary brown calf, spine ribbed, brown title-piece, edges mottled, restorations, title remounted (epid. to boards, browning, light marginal dampening, torn fold-outs repaired, 1 plate lacking). First edition in French, translated from Latin by François-Savinien Dalquié. It is illustrated with an engraved title dated 1667, a portrait by Kircher, 24 (of 25) plates, including two folding maps (the last engraving, Le Pont volant, is missing), and sixty mid-page engraved figures featuring Asian characters, costumes, deities, animals, plants and incarnations of Hindu gods. At the end is a Chinese-French dictionary of pronunciation, which did not appear in the smaller-format Latin original published three years earlier. This work by the famous Jesuit polygrapher Athanasius Kircher (1602 - 680) represents a milestone in the study of the Chinese language, providing for the first time a complete transcription of the famous Chinese inscription of Si'anfou, attesting to the preaching of the Gospel in China in the 7th century by Nestorian missionaries. For many years, this was the most extensive Chinese text printed in Europe. Kircher's China is also the first book to contain Sanskrit characters, here reproduced by engraving; the first to give a description of Lhasa and central Tibet, by Dorville and Gruebe; and the first mention in a European publication of the kingdom of Nepal. Provenance: 19th-century red armorial seal on upper flyleaf and similar stamp on v° of last f. (Cordier, I, 26; De Backer et Sommervogel II, col. 454-455, no. 21).