THE SELDEN MAP OF CHINA-塞尔登中国地图

This is one of the first Chinese maps to reach Europe. It came into the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in 1659 from the estate of the London lawyer John Selden, who must have acquired it by 1653 at the latest, as in a codicil to his will dated that year he describes the Map and an accompanying compass as having been “taken both by an englishe comander”. Perhaps Selden acquired it from an East India Company trader who took it from another European, Japanese, or Chinese vessel in the lawless conditions of the South China Sea, but the East India Company records make no mention of it.

这是最早到达欧洲的那些中国地图中的一张。1659年，它从伦敦律师约翰·塞尔登的府邸进入牛津大学博德利图书馆；赛尔登最迟是在1653年得到了这张地图，因为在他1653年订立的一份遗嘱的附件中，他说这张地图和一个随附的指南针都是“一位英国指挥官得到的”。可能赛尔登是从一个东印度公司的商人手里获得了这张地图，而它又是这个商人在南中国海缺乏法律约束的环境中，得自另一艘欧洲、日本或中国船只，但是东印度公司的档案并没有提到它。

Striking in both size and appearance, the Map was kept on permanent display in the Anatomy School and is noted in a list of the School's contents that was prepared by its Keeper, the antiquary and diarist Thomas Hearne, in 1721. Although it was never lost sight of, its importance lay undiscovered until January 2008, when it was examined by the American scholar Robert Batchelor who noticed two features that distinguish it sharply from all Chinese maps that had been produced hitherto.

这张尺寸和外观都很引人注目的地图被放在解剖学院永久展出，而且在其保管人——古文物家和日记作者托马斯·赫恩于1721年准备的该学院的目录单中被记录下来。尽管它一直在看得见的地方，但它的重要性直到2008年才被发现。那年，美国学者罗伯特·贝秋勒在检视地图时，注意到它有两个特点，而这两个特点将它与迄今为止绘制的所有中国地图清楚地区别开来。

The first is that it is not just a map of China, but of the whole of East and Southeast Asia. Earlier and most later maps depicted China not only as the centre of the known world, but as occupying almost its entire area. China occupies less than one half of the area of the Selden Map, which is centred on the South China Sea, with an equal area depicting the Philippines, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Southeast Asia, and notionally at least, India. The depiction of China itself is not the purpose of the map, and is copied from a standard printed map of the period.

第一个特点是它不仅是一张中国地图，而且是整个东亚和东南亚的地图。比它早的和多数比它晚的地图都把中国描绘成不但是已知世界的中心，而且占据了已知世界的几乎整个区域。赛尔登地图以南中国海为中心，中国只占据了地图区域的一半不到，此外还用相同大小的区域描绘了菲律宾、婆罗洲、爪哇、苏门答腊、东南亚，以及至少是想象中的印度。这张地图对中国的描绘是从同时期印制的标准地图上拷贝过来的，且这种描绘本身并不是这张地图的目的。

The second is the presence of shipping routes with compass bearings radiating from the port of Quanzhou on the coast of Fujian Province to all the areas covered by the Map, which charted the commercial world as no map, whether European or Chinese, had done before.  It is thus the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography, unique in not being a product of the imperial bureaucracy. It indicates the extent of China's intercourse with the rest of the world at a time when it was generally supposed to have been isolated.

第二个特点是地图上存有多条航海路线，它们的罗盘方位从福建省沿岸的泉州码头辐射至这张地图覆盖的全部地区——这张地图对商业世界的描绘方式前所未有，以前的地图，不论是欧洲地图还是中国地图，都没有这么做过。它因此成为中国商人制图的最早范例，是唯一的非朝廷官方出品的地图。它表明了中国与世界其他地区进行交流的程度，而当时的普遍观点认为中国是与世隔绝的。

A third feature of the Map became apparent during the course of the conservation work that was undertaken following its discovery. When the old backing was removed, the main sea routes, identically drawn, were found on the reverse, showing not only that this was a first draft, but that the map was being drawn by systematic geometric techniques. It is the first Chinese map to be produced in this way, and its use of voyage data obtained from a magnetic compass and distances calculated from the number of watches is a technique with no western parallel.

这张地图的第三个特点在它被发现后所进行的保护工作的过程中体现出来。当它老旧的背衬被取掉后，在地图背面发现了画得一模一样的主要航线——这表示它不仅是地图的初稿，而且该地图是用系统几何技术绘制的。它是第一张用这种方法制作的中国地图，它使用的是取自磁罗盘的航海数据以及从观测数量计算出来的距离，西方还没有类似的技术。

Unfortunately, it is not known exactly when and where the map was drawn, or who drew it and for what purpose. Recent scholarship suggests that it was probably produced in the early seventeenth century by a Chinese, as Chinese sources are used for the place-names on the Map and also the shipping routes; the compiler was probably based in Southeast Asia, as the Map's depiction of that area was to remain the most accurate for another two centuries. It is elaborately decorated with landscapes and plants, and was almost certainly produced for reference in the house of a rich merchant rather than for use at sea.

不幸的是，这张地图绘制的准确时间与地点、它的作者是谁、为了什么目的——这些都不知道。近来学界指出，它很可能于17世纪早期出自一位中国人之手，因为源自中国的信息被用作这张地图上的地名和航海路线；编绘者很可能位于东南亚，因为这张地图对该地区的描绘在随后的两个世纪里一直是最准确的。这张用风景和植物精心装饰过的地图，几乎可以肯定是在一个富商家里制作出来用于参考，而不是供海上使用。