JapSin II, 39.1
Xinfa liyin 新法曆引.
By Tang Ruowang 湯若望 (Johann Adam Schall von Bell).
One juan. Bamboo paper, one ce. No date or place of publication.

The cover has a label with the title: Liyin 曆引 and a Latin inscription: “Introductio ad astrono | micos calculos | a p. Adamo Schall.”

Cf. Pfister, p. 180, no. 23; Couplet, pp. 21–22; Hsü 1949, p. 373; Väth, p. 363, no. 6; Courant 4953.
Source: Albert Chan, S.J., Chinese Books and Documents in the Jesuit Archives in Rome, p. 325.

This work explores the relationship between time, temporality, and power by utilizing interactions between Jesuit missionaries and the Ming and Qing governments of late imperial China as a case study. It outlines the complex relationship between knowledge of celestial mechanics, methods of measuring the passage of time, and the tightly controlled circumstances in which that knowledge was allowed to operate. Just as the Chinese courts exercised authority over time and the heavens, so too had the Catholic Church in Europe. So as messengers of God’s authority, the Jesuits identified the importance of astronomical and temporal authority in Chinese culture and sought to convey the supremacy of Christianity through their mastery of the stars and negotiate positions of power within both imperial governments.

"Wang Xishan....drew on the Tychonic model to construct his own, while pointing to some contradictions in the Jesuits’ writings. The model expounded in Wuxing xingdu jie 五星行度解 (Explanation of the Five Planets’ Angular Motions, 1673), gave a physical, rather than merely geometrical, account of planetary motion: Wang proposed that its cause was an attraction force comparable to that of a magnet"-–Cf. N. Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China, p. 726.