"There Is A Wind-Index-Pole Called The 'Fair-Wind-Pennon,' On Which Is An
Iron Disk Marked Out In 28 Points, Corresponding In Number To The 28
Constellations."[15]
+ Mr. Wylie justly observes that the evidence is all in accord, and it
leaves, I think, no reasonable room
For doubt that the instruments now in
the Observatory garden at Peking are those which were cast aside by Father
Verbiest[16] in 1673 (or 1668); which Father Ricci saw at Peking at the
beginning of the century, and of which he has described the duplicates at
Nanking; and which had come down from the time of the Mongols, or, more
precisely, of Kublai Khan.
Ricci speaks of their age as nearly 250 years in 1599; Verbiest as nearly
300 years in 1668. But these estimates evidently point to the
termination of the Mongol Dynasty (1368), to which the Chinese would
naturally refer their oral chronology. We have seen that Kublai's reign
was the era of flourishing astronomy, and that the instruments are
referred to his astronomer Ko Sheu-king; nor does there seem any ground
for questioning this. In fact, it being once established that the
instruments existed when the Jesuits entered China, all the objections
fall to the ground.
We may observe that the number of the ancient instruments mentioned in the
popular Chinese account agrees with the number of important instruments
described by Ricci, and the titles of three at least out of the four seem
to indicate the same instruments.
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