《易經》的最初西傳與翻譯：17至18世紀中葉耶穌會士的翻譯策略和意識形態初探

The Early Transmission and Renditions of the Yijing: The Jesuits' 17th to mid-18th-Century Translation Strategies and Ideologies

《易經》在16世紀末葉傳入歐洲之後，便以中國卜筮、宗教、歷史及哲學經典的多重樣貌，成為西方漢學研究的顯學之一。本文旨在檢視初期耶穌會傳教士將《易經》傳入西方的動機、方法與意識形態，特別是與《聖經》詮釋傳統（biblical exegesis）一脈相承的索隱派思想（Figurism），如何影響了17至18世紀中葉在中國本土的耶穌會士對《易經》的詮釋與翻譯，並得出若干結論：初期耶穌會士從不同層次挪用並詮釋《易經》文本，試圖弭平天、儒之間在神學教義、歷史觀、及哲學思想上的歧異，以遂行利瑪竇「適應政策」以降之「儒耶一家」（Confucian-Christian synthesis）文化融入策略，最終達成傳教目的。他們在教廷和康熙皇帝的默許和贊助下，深入研究、理解並翻譯《易經》，這種基於文化主位（emic perspective）意識形態的索隱詮釋觀點促使部分耶穌會譯者介入改寫《易經》原典，以降低這本玄奧中國經典與西方基督教文明相遇時所遭到的抵抗。此舉雖一定程度促成了近代中西雙向的文化涵化（interculturation），然而以白晉為首的索隱詮釋法過於穿鑿附會，其刻意強調天教啟示真理的神祕性反而不利《易經》被重理性思辨的歐洲學界所接受。儘管如此，經由他們對《易經》的譯介，原本處於歐洲文學多元系統邊緣的中國宇宙觀終為西方神學傳統帶來了一定衝擊，對於17至18世紀中葉的中西文化交流有其不可磨滅的貢獻。

Long viewed as a divinatory, religious, historical and philosophical work with roots in ancient Chinese culture, the Yijing has secured an idiosyncratic position in the Western academic sinology. This paper looks at the motives, strategies and ideologies with which the early Jesuit missionaries introduced the Yijing to the West, particularly with reference to the biblical exegesis tradition and how its derivative ''Figurism'' had influenced their interpretation and translation of this work. The present study purports to investigate how the Jesuit missionaries had appropriated the Yijing at multiple levels to facilitate the Confucian-Christian synthesis (following Matteo Ricci's Accommodation approach), in order to proselytize the Chinese gentry by mitigating the conspicuous discrepancies between Christianity and Ruism. With the acquiescence of the Roman Church and the patronage of the Kangxi Emperor, the Jesuit missionaries studied, interpreted and rendered the Yijing. Driven by an emic perspective based on Figuristic ideologies, a certain group of Jesuit missionary scholars penetrated and rewrote the Yijing to reduce the degree of passive resistance once this enigmatic Chinese canonical text encountered Christian civilization. What they did to a certain extent led to the reciprocal inter-culturation of China and the West. However, the Figurists' overly accommodating approach and their deliberate emphasis on the esoteric revelation of the ''biblical truth'' encrypted in the Yijing simultaneously prevented this text from being accepted by the reason-oriented European literati. Nontheless, the Figurists' translation and dissemination of the Yijing, did grant traditional Chinese cosmology, then in a peripheral position, access to the European literary polysystem as a challenge to the central Christian doctrines. Undoubtedly their efforts made a crucial contribution to the cultural communication between China and the West from 17th to mid-18th centuries.