![]() Kunlun Mountain is characterised by an outstandingly broad range of identifications with real mountains. In this paper I try to trace this long and complex process. I argue that Kunlun mountain range and the Yellow River source below it, as they appear in modern Western maps, are cartographic images imported from Chinese cosmography and cartography. The Yellow River that crosses its territory from the West to the East has long been the symbol of the Chinese state. Kunlun is a cosmic mountain typologically similar and sometimes identified with Mount Meru and at the same time, the name of a long mountain range in the Western part of China. Kunlun Mountain and the Yellow River belong to the general knowledge one has about Chinese cosmography and geography. The complete volume can be downloaded here: Finally, some methodological points of map analysis will be raised. In particular, the link between the circular world maps and maps of China will be demonstrated, as well as the place of these atlases in the global trend of the atlas production. At the same time, the atlases will be considered as a hierarchical system of maps. After a critical survey of studies of the circular world maps through the current rise of interest in them, and especially questioning their affinity to East Asian Buddhist-style world maps, established by Nakamura Hiroshi中村拓 (1947), as well as derivations of these maps from the Kangnido (1402) by Gary Ledyard (1994) or the Western maps of the early 18th century by Richard Pegg (2014), I shall reveal their overlooked affinity with cosmographical maps shaped as inversed “cosmographs.” These maps are found in the Chinese Almanacs of Auspicious Images (17th – 18th centuries) and convey the symbolism of the square Earth inscribed into the round Heavens. Their confusingly archaic and simplistic maps continued to be produced and reproduced in an almost unchanged form, not matching the mainstream of modern cartography and insensible to its development. This article seeks to trace the origins of the circular world maps, the distinctive feature of popular atlases, which became widespread in Korea in the 18th-19th centuries. Especially interesting is their combination, as an example of fusion of cartographical traditions. Both of these features have not yet been considered in scholarly literature from the proposed perspective. At the same time, I shall provide evidence of borrowing the lake image from the Chinese cartography. Having recalled practical and cosmographical reasons for the western orientation in the European and Chinese cartographical traditions, I shall try to demonstrate that the western orientation of the investigated map of China originates from portolan-style world maps. In the second part I shall discuss two related structural features of the map: its orientation with the West on top and the location in the West of a huge Lake (Lacus). I argue that, despite being highly plausible, it cannot be taken ‘without reservation’ and should be marked in reference studies as a reconstructed identification. ![]() Giving full credit to the arguments of Cortesão in favour of his identification, I shall discuss some of its weak points. Most of the references to Luis Jorge de Barbuda in scholarly literature are still based on the seminal study by Cortesão, however, direct references tend to diminish. Armando Cortesão identified the map’s author with a Portuguese cartographer Luis Jorge (Luys Jorge, Luys Gorge, Luis Georgio, since 1596 registered as Luis Jorge de Barbuda), having meticulously collected data about him scattered among different written sources (letters, royal cédulas, collective declarations). ![]() ![]() Dahlgren, who took notice of a letter about it, written to Ortelius by Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598) on the 28th of February 1576. Attention to the provenance of the map of China in the Theatrum was first called by E.W. In the first part of this paper I shall trace the history of the authorship identification, revealing transmitted errors and confusions, which resulted from misreading of primary sources and secondary literature. Ortelius ascribed the map of China to a ‘Ludouicus Georgius’, now generally believed to be a Latinised name of the Portuguese cartographer Luis Jorge de Barbuda (fl. The earliest printed map of China in the European cartographical tradition is found in the 1584 edition of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first world atlas in a modern sense (1st ed. ![]()
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