宗覚の地球儀とその世界像
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概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
Although the Buddhist geographical conception of the world and the Western conception of a spherical earth are incompatibly different, Sokaku (1639-1720), a Buddhist priest in the mid-Edo era, made a globe working out a compromise between the two conceptions. The globe is still extant. It has the same parallels and meridians as those of the Western globes. The continents on the globe, however, have unique characteristics: Africa is separated from the Eurasian continent and is deformed, while the Americas are two continents and their locations are incorrect. Such alterations are made in order to make the world shown by the globe consistent with the Buddhist image of the world consisting of Mt. Sumeru and the four continents in the ocean surrounding the mountain. The crystal cylinder embedded at the north pole on the one end of the axis of the earth seems to symbolize Mt. Sumeru. A similar compromise is found in the writings of Sokaku's contemporary, Mori Shoken(16531721), though his idea is explained only by a rough illustration showing a globe which has Mt. Sumeru at the north pole and the four continents around it. It is yet unknown whether Sokaku's globe was influenced by Shoken's illustration. Still, both of them interest us because they interpret the Buddhist conception of heaven and earth in terms of the Western spherical earth theory. Sokaku's Buddhist idea of the world strongly influenced Hotan, a contemporary priest, when Hotan made his Buddhist world map, which was published in 1710.
- 日本科学史学会の論文
- 1976-03-31