Kircher, Athanasius, S.J.

folio (384 x 245mm.), [14], 237, [11 (including index)] pp., illustration: engraved allegorical additional title, vignette on title, portrait of Kircher, 2 double-page maps, one folding, 18 (of 23) plates, 3 folding, 60 engravings in text, mostly half-page illustrations, including views, natural history subjects, inscriptions and scripts, woodcut characters etc. in text, initials and tail-pieces, binding: contemporary speckled calf, spine in seven compartments with raised bands gilt, lacking 5 plates (lettered Yy, Zz, Aaa, Bbb and one other), engraved title spotted, joints cracked, spine chipped, binding somewhat rubbed and a little scuffed

Merrill 20; Sommervogel IV 1063-65.24; Cordier, Sinica 26; Caillet 5773

first edition. Based on many years correspondence with Jesuits active in China, where Kircher himself had wished to go, and in particular the Commentarii of Father Ricci, this work is replete with accurate and important information, and includes the first publication of the famous Nestorian inscription of 781, written largely in Chinese and partly in Syriac, which Gibbon was later to discuss. It also contains the first Sanskrit grammar published in the West and the first appearance in a European book of the Devanagari script (engraved). There was another issue in the same year published under the imprint of Jacob van Meurs.