Heaven is Round, Earth is Square - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 129

Purchas includes Hondius's map for a perverse purpose: to demonstrate 'the er-
roneous conceits which all European Geographers have had of China'. He inserts
the map at the beginning of a description of China by the Jesuit missionary Diego
de Pantoja. Pantoja begins his description of China with a declaration: 'This great
Kingdome of China is almost foure square, as the Chinois themselves describe
the same.' The Portuguese Jesuit knows that China is square, and European carto-
graphers don't, or so Purchas decides. Having thus exposed the error of European
maps of China by singling out Hondius, he then promises that his readers will see
a 'more complete Map of China' later in the volume. The correct map of China is
duly unveiled forty pages on, and Purchas makes a great fuss about it (Fig. 20).
ThisisnotaEuropeanmapofChina,hestresses,butaChinesemap.Itshowswhat
Chinaactuallylookslike.Europeans,'knowingnothingofthem,haveentertayned,
and beene entertayned with Fanci-maps, instead of those of China'. The time for
fanciful maps was now at an end.
Purchas explains that the original of the Chinese map came to him from none
other than John Saris, who acquired the map in Bantam under awkward circum-
stances. The owner was a Chinese businessman who had to forfeit his goods to the
East India Company for debts unpaid. Saris, 'seeing him carefull to convay away
a Boxe, was the more carefull to apprehend it, and therein found this Map, which
another Chinese lodged at his house, lately come from China, had brought with
him'. The man had tried to spirit the map away on the understanding that foreign-
ers should not be permitted to have maps of China. (My experience at Friendship
Pass thus belongs in a long tradition of embargoes on national maps.) 'The great-
nesse of the danger at home (if knowne) made him earnestly begge for that which
wasontheothersideasearnestlydesiredandkept',Purchasnotes.Sarisrefusedto
relinquish the map, and when he left Bantam in 1609, he brought it back with him
to London.
ThemappassedfirsttoRichardHakluyt,acartographicadvisertotheEastIndia
Company and Purchas's predecessor in the publishing of travellers' tales. Hakluyt
supplied Purchas with much of the material that went into Purchas his Pilgrimes ,
as the latter acknowledged by giving the topic the subtitle Hakluytus Posthumus .
Purchas would have acquired the map from Hakluyt's estate after he died in 1616.
Purchas admits to being at a disadvantage in presenting this map to his readers,
as he can't read the Chinese labels. 'It being in China Characters (which I thinke
none in England, if any in Europe, understands) I could not wholly give it, when I
give it; no man being able to receive, what he can no way conceive.' He is not dis-