116 The Han Kitab Authors
he provided brief accounts of the Chinese Muslim authors whose
works he listed. He pointed out that a “renaissance” of Chinese
Muslim literature had begun in the seventeenth century, adding
that he found it peculiar that there seemed to be no evidence of Is-
lamic works in Chinese from earlier periods.^4 It was Palladii’s view
that Chinese Muslims had begun writing in order to expand their
coreligionists’ knowledge of Islam and to proselytize Islam to the
Chinese, particularly in response to the recent missionary activities
of the Jesuits.
The establishment of the Manchu dynasty [in 1644 ] in the Middle King-
dom is regarded as a period of renaissance for the literature of Chinese
Muslims. Until then the Muslims in China had produced no original
scholarly works, except for a few translated monographs dealing with as-
trology [he intends “astronomy”]^5 and medicine. From the mid XVIIth
century, however, they laid the foundation for a literature of their own in
the language of the country they inhabited. In writing these works, they
had in mind two things: firstly, the elucidation for their fellow Muslims
of the tenets and legends of Islam; and secondly, the defense of their relig-
ion, against the attacks and ridicule by the Chinese, insisting on its supe-
riority over the religious teachings that existed in China at the time. It is
remarkable that the appearance of these works in the Middle Kingdom
coincided with the first written essays in the Chinese language by Catho-
lic missionaries. The one and the other, and for the same reasons, ex-
ploited Confucianism, the dominant school in the country.^6
According to Palladii, then, Chinese Islamic literature was in es-
sence a form of propaganda, and the Chinese Muslim authors were
analogous to Jesuit missionaries.^7 Chinese Islamic literature was
—————
One Read by Those High Above) Compiled by a Chinese Muslim Liu Chieh-lien. This
work was later included in Palladii’s bibliography. For more bibliographical detail
on Palladii’s works, see Panskaya and Leslie, Introduction to Palladii’s Chinese Lit-
erature of Muslims, pp. 38 – 39.
4. Panskaya and Leslie, Introduction to Palladii’s Chinese Literature of Muslims,
p. 67.
5. Panskaya and Leslie’s emendation; see ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Palladii was not the only Russian with such views. His book was a response
to another paper on Chinese Muslims, written by Vassilij Pavlovich Vasil’ev (for a
translation, see Vasil’ev, “Islam in China”). Vasil’ev argued that the Muslims in
China were convinced that they were going to convert China to Islam just as the
Buddhists did before them. Palladii argued that they presented a threat to Christi-