Natural history floating across the oceans : Ludovico Buglio’s Shizi shuo (on Lions) / Yu Yating 余雅婷

Monumenta Serica, Volume 74, Issue 1 (2026), Pages: 71-95

Available through
Taylor & Francis

Abstract
In the process of contact between Chinese and Western natural history, Ludovico Buglio’s (Li Leisi, 1606–1682) Shizi shuo (On Lions, 1678) can be described as the earliest text of Western biological knowledge to be introduced to China. We can trace this book’s knowledge of natural history back to the De historia animalium, by the renowned Greek scholar Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Subsequently, Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder, AD 23/24–AD 79) authored Naturalis historia, an encyclopaedia on natural history that also includes references to Aristotle’s viewpoints. The medieval naturalist Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great, 1193–1280) later composed De animalibus, quoting Aristotle’s views and arguments. During the Renaissance, this link between Aristotle’s writings and Albertus Magnus’s text became a model to imitate for Conrad Gessner (1517–1565) and Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605); finally, Buglio adopted it for his translations. By examining the sources adopted in Shizi shuo, this article explores the view of natural history hidden in the text and how, through the lens of Renaissance readings, such a view floated across the oceans and reached the early Qing dynasty.