Chinese maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth century are typified by the Enlarged Terrestrial Atlas (廣舆圖) by Luo Hongxian (羅洪先) published in 1555 which were in black ink on rectangular grids. The former shows a map of China drawn on square grids of equal scales and the latter shows a map of China with text descriptions of foreign places. Some of the most well-known surviving examples of large scale maps of the Chinese Empire and ‘the world’ are given by the Map of the Tracks of Yu the Great (禹迹圖) and the Map of China and Foreign Countries (華夷圖) carved in stone around 1137. A new hypothesis for the origin of the Selden map in Aceh Sumatra is proposed based on the new evidences. Detailed analysis of the various spectral bands of the spectral image cube along with visual inspection of the large scale colour image showed that the map was not fully planned at the beginning but rather painted in stages, at times by trial and error and that it was unfinished. The likely detection of a basic copper chloride, such as atacamite, in the green areas suggests an influence from the South and West Asian rather than the European tradition. The detection of gum Arabic, a binding medium used by the Europeans, South and West Asians and the use of a mixture of orpiment and indigo, commonly found in European, South and West Asian paintings gives further evidence on the unusual origins of this map. Some of the pigments and their usage were found to be at odds with the common practice in paintings from China. The binding medium was found to be a gum, almost certainly gum Arabic, rather than the animal glue commonly used in Chinese paintings. The map was examined in situ and non-invasively by a remote spectral imaging instrument (PRISMS) modified for close range imaging, which was followed by a range of complementary techniques applied to a number of detached fragments, though most of the techniques are non-invasive and can be applied to the map directly in the future.
This paper addresses the question through material evidence provided by a holistic approach using a suite of complementary analytical techniques. One of the unresolved questions is the origin of the map. Since the ‘rediscovery’ of the Selden map of China, an early seventeenth century map of Asia, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the importance of the map in our understanding of globalisation in the early seventeenth century has been recognised.
0 kommentar(er)
