A Concealed Reading for Early Chinese Christians: Text, Context, and Circulation of the Discourse on Vegetarianism (Su shuo 素說) in the Early Modern Period

Abstract

This article provides a new study on the profound cross-cultural encounters and adaptations between different religions in China. The overreaching goal is to analyse the philosophical relevance and value of the Su shuo 素說 (Discourse on Vegetarianism) in the context of the religious practices of vegetarianism and fasting that were adapted, reframed and used by Chinese Catholic converts starting in the early modern era. The Su shuo is the ninth section of the Cang ju 藏句 (Concealed Sentences), which is a forty-folio manuscript written on Chinese bamboo paper held in the ARSI (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu). In the text of the Cang ju, its author, Xiong Ding 熊定, refutes ten ‘superstitious’ beliefs and practices commonly present in seventeenth-century Chinese culture. The manuscript preserved at the ARSI is a copy of the now-lost original booklet by Xiong Ding, which was hand copied by a Chinese Catholic convert named Ruohan 若翰 (John). Based on textual evidence and the context of the manuscript, the Cang ju must have circulated in both non-Christian and Sino-Christian communities during the early Qing dynasty (1644–1912), therefore, between the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth century. This article also provides the first Chinese transcription and English translation of the Su shuo.