Athanasius Kircher (1602 to 1680), a German Jesuit polymath in Rome, never went to Asia. China illustrata (Amsterdam 1667) compiles Jesuit sources: Bento de Goes's overland journey of 1602 to 1607, which proved Cathay was China; Martino Martini on the Manchu conquest; and above all what Johann Grueber and Albert Dorville told him and drew after travelling from Beijing via Xining, the Kokonor desert and Lhasa to India in 1661. It adds Kircher's own theories that Chinese and Asian idolatry came from Egypt. The corpus holds four scans of the 1667 Latin edition and the 1668 Dutch translation; quotes here are from the Getty copy.
How they knew
Compiled from others
Who “Tartar” means here
Several peoples: the Kalmyk (Oirat, Khoshut) Mongols of the Kokonor steppe, the peoples of the 'Tangut' kingdom around Lhasa loosely counted as Tartary, the Manchus who had just conquered China (the 'Sino-Tartar' monarch), and Marco Polo's medieval Mongol khans.
Why read it
The best-known 17th-century picture of inner Asia, with engraved plates of Kalmyk dress, tents and the Dalai Lama drawn from eyewitness sketches, and the Manchus shown rebuilding Beijing.
Watch out
Everything is second-hand and filtered through Kircher's missionary hostility and speculative theories (Egyptian origins, Prester John). OCR of all copies is fair only, so quotes were checked against page images.
Editorial contextCrossing the desert beyond the Great Wall at Xining on the way to Lhasa, Grueber and Dorville found it inhabited at set seasons by 'Tartars whom they call Kalmuk', camped along rivers where pasture was best, in hordes 'which not unfittingly deserve to be called portable cities'. The same Tartars roamed the desert as raiders, so caravans needed a strong armed escort.
This desert, however squalid it may be, is nevertheless inhabited at fixed times of the year by the Tartars whom they call Kalmuk, along the banks of the rivers where there is more pasture, in hordes which not unfittingly deserve to be called portable cities; the Tartars roam the desert far and wide here and there for the sake of robbery, so a caravan must be equipped with a strong force to repel the violence of the attacking Tartars.
Working translation
Original wording
Hoc desertum quamtumvis squalidum sit, à Tartaris tamen, quos Kalmuk vocant, constitutis anni temporibus, ubi ad ripas fluminum major pascuorum copia est, per hordas quæ portatiles non incongruè civitates dici merentur, habitatur; Tartaris desertum hinc indè longè latéque latrocinandi causâ divagantibus; undè ad Tartarorum insultantium violentiam propulsandam valida manu Caravanam instructam esse oportet.
Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (China illustrata, Amsterdam 1667), from the oral report and drawings of Johann Grueber and Albert Dorville
Beijing burned by a rebel, rebuilt by the Tartars in four years
Editorial contextExplaining that Chinese houses and palaces are almost all of wood and burn easily, Kircher cites Beijing: at the start of the Tartar invasion a rebel and tyrant (Li Zicheng) set it on fire for four days, but the Tartars, meaning the conquering Manchus, restored it to its former dignity with four years of building. Here the 'Tartars' are the rebuilders of a capital.
since almost everything is built of wood, if a fire breaks out somewhere and is not checked, whole cities are often reduced to ashes in a short time; as happened to Peking, the vastest of all cities after Nanking, which at the beginning of the invasion of the Tartars was consumed in a four-day fire by a rebel and tyrant, but was restored by the Tartars to its former dignity by four years of building.
Working translation
Original wording
ut quemadmodum omnia ex ligno ferè constructa sunt, ita quoque incendio alicubi exorto nisi obstetur, integræ sæpè urbes exiguo temporis spatio in cineres rediguntur; uti Pekino accidit, quæ urbs post Nankingum omnium vastissima à Rebelle & Tyranno ad initium irruptionis Tartarorum quadriduano incendio consumpta fuit, à Tartaris tamen quadriennali fabricatione in pristinum dignitatis statum restituta.
The Kalmyk tent: folding sticks inside, rough wool outside
Editorial contextDescribing Grueber's engraving of a Kalmyk dwelling (Figure A), Kircher explains the felt tent: a framework of small folding rods inside, covered outside with a coarse woollen material bound with ropes. This is the yurt, with its collapsible lattice wall, as reported by an eyewitness.
Figure A shows their dwelling: it is a Tartar tent made on the inside of small folding rods, and covered on the outside with a rough material of a kind of wool, bound tight with ropes.
Working translation
Original wording
Habitationem eorum Figura A. exprimit, estque tentorium Tartaricum intrinsecùs ex parvis plicatilibus bacillis confectum, exterius verò rudi ex certæ lanæ materia funibusque constricta contectum.
Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (China illustrata, Amsterdam 1667), from the oral report and drawings of Johann Grueber and Albert Dorville
A living god in Lhasa, and relics made of his excrement
Editorial contextKircher says traces of the famous Prester John survive in the 'Tanchut' kingdom that the Tartars call Barantola and the locals Lassa (Lhasa). There are two kings there: one governs, the other, the Grand Lama, sits hidden in his palace and is worshipped as God the Father, so much that people believe even his dung cures all ills. The Jesuits were refused access to him and drew only his portrait.
There are also two kings in this kingdom: the first attends to the administration of the whole kingdom; the other, whom they call God the Father or heavenly Father, or else the Great Lama, or high priest of the sacrificers, lives like a deity in the innermost recesses of his palace and receives the ceremonies of divine worship from all; and they hold him in such honour that they foolishly persuade themselves that even his filth and excrement are of great help against every kind of illness.
Working translation
Original wording
Sunt & in hoc Regno duo Reges, prior administrationi Regni totius incumbit; alter, quem & Deum patrem sive cœlestem, aut etiam Magnum Lamam, sive sacrificulorum Pontificem vocant, in ultimis Palatii sui recessibus Numinis instar residens, ab omnibus divini cultus recipit cerimonias; tantoque eum in honore habent, ut vel ipsius sordes & excrementa ad omnes infirmitatum adversitates plurimum conducere stultè sibi persuadeant
Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (China illustrata, Amsterdam 1667), from the oral report and drawings of Johann Grueber and Albert Dorville
Hostile missionary framing; the Prester John link is Kircher's own speculation, and the excrement relics are hearsay the Jesuits did not see.
Transcribed from the page image (corpus OCR partly garbled); long s normalized.
The fine print
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
compilation of Jesuit reports (Grueber and Dorville's 1661-1664 overland journey through Tibet, Trigault/Goes on Cathay, Martini) by an author who never travelled to Asia; includes Kircher's own theories
Research notes
Second-hand compilation; Kircher's speculative etymologies and Egyptian-origin theories are his own; Grueber's original notes lost, surviving mainly through Kircher and Thévenot.
Dutch 1668 (gri_33125008480481) and French 1670 translations exist.
Why it matters
The most widely read seventeenth-century Latin synthesis on China, Tibet and Tartary; argues explicitly that Cathay is China and reproduces Grueber's route through Tartary and Tibet, thereby shaping the European atlas image of 'Tartaria Magna'.