This study aims to explore how private encyclopedism was practised in the late Ming and early Qing China, drawing on non-canonical natural historical texts beyond Bencao Gangmu 本草綱目. Prior to the rise of kaoju 考據 culture, late Ming China had already witnessed the proliferation of compilations of natural knowledge. Although criticized as inferior writings by mainstream Qing scholars, these texts still reflect the textuality and intellectual pursuits of the book culture of the period in question, and also exemplify efforts to develop a descriptive cosmology in a non-elite, non-philosophical context. A noteworthy example of this is Huayi Huamu Niaoshou Zhenwan Kao 華夷花木鳥獸珍玩考 (Examination of Flowers, Trees, Birds, Beasts, and Treasures from China and the Foreign World) compiled by Shen Maoguan 慎懋官, son of a former official devoid of extraordinary literary talent. Nested within the tension between reading and travelling, this private encyclopedic project aims to construct a mosaic of animals, plants, and minerals of the world by collecting fragments from a variety of textual sources. Shen’s neturalised, unauthored treatment of these sources demonstrates his appreciation for “tidbits” of previous natural knowledge, as well as his interest in remapping a living cosmos on the basis of these tidbits. This study endeavors to trace Shen’s personal library and his selective practice of compilation, as well as how he juxtaposed or reconciled different genres. The readers of Shen’s book and their modes of citation will also be examined. An investigation of these compilers and readers is expected to help understand a phenomenon in East Asian early modernity that is analogous to the culture of eruditio in Renaissance Europe.
First page of Shen Maoguan’s encyclopedia. Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.