明末耶稣会稀见文献《拜客问答》初探

An Exploration into Matteo Ricci's Bai Ke Wen Da

法国国家图书馆现藏明末天主教耶稣会稀见抄本《拜客问答》一册,总字数计约万言,内容遍涉欧洲风俗、世界地理、各地物产等领域,且包含一则《伊索寓言》故事,为明末士人开启了一扇瞭望西方社会文化的窗口。特别值得一提的是,《拜客问答》用来呈现"西学""新知"的载体并非当时占据书面语主流的文言,而是通俗的白话文,其中亦夹杂欧化语。本文集中研究《拜客问答》这一文本,考定其作者及撰述年代,分析其撰述目的,进而探讨其文体形式与语言特色,并尝试以汉语书面语系统从文言到白话的转变这一历史背景为框架,考察该文本的独特性。

After settled down in Beijing in 1601 , Ricci made a lot of friends among Chinese literati and scholar-officials. Probably during this period, Ricci started to write the booklet Bai Ke Wen Da( Questions and Answers Between a Guest and a Host) , in order to summarize his common conversations with his mandarin visitors in the form of dialogue as a chief source for the younger Jesuits to learn vernacular Chinese and especially the manners of conversation in China. This paper focuses on the rare manuscript Bai Ke Wen Da by putting it under the frame of the transformation from baihua ( vernacular Chinese ) to wenyan ( classical Chinese) of the system of Chinese written language, and tries to distinguish its author and time of writing, to explore its style and language characteristic and its significance in the formation of modern Chinese written language.