8 - Of Men, Gods and Beasts: The Boxer Codex and the View of the World from Sixteenth-Century Manila

Summary

Introduction

In 2016, George Bryan Souza and Jeffrey Turley made available to the public the first ever complete and annotated transcription and English translation of the Boxer Codex, a late-sixteenth century manuscript dealing with the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and China. Fascinatingly, this manuscript—“discovered” and bought in 1947 by C.R. Boxer, publicised by him in 1950, and subsequently named after him—combines Spanish text and images in a Chinese style made by a Chinese artist. Though most likely compiled in Manila by a Spanish colonial officer, its contents also betray the influence of Chinese literature and genres of knowledge. Given this fact and their own reflections on it, Souza and Turley are curiously sceptical of the Codex's “Sino-Spanish” designation at the Lilly Library in Indianapolis, which now holds it.

In this study, I inquire into the origins and relation between the Codex's text and images and argue that this “Sino-Spanish” designation is appropriate and merits further consideration. Firstly, because the Codex offers insights into commensurabilities between Chinese and European knowledge. Secondly, and consequently, because this designation as Sino- Spanish recognises these commensurabilities within the Codex itself. Such a recognition of the hybrid origins of the Boxer Codex is necessary because a significant portion of the manuscript—97 pages out of 411 containing either text or images, i.e., 23.6%—is constituted of images, all of which are Chinese either in style or in derivation. Moreover, the images are not mere embellishments, but convey knowledge independently of the text (more on this further). Since these images were derived from Chinese literary genres, the Sinic contribution to the Codex is undeniable. This study shows that the anonymous compiler of the manuscript negotiated the commensurabilities between Spanish and Chinese literary genres in order to create it.

The present study follows in the wake of others that have considered non- European contributions, especially pictorial contributions, to early modern Spanish colonial knowledge-creation. Barbara E. Mundy's well-known work investigated the clash between indigenous and European spatial conceptions and pictorial conventions in sixteenth-century New Spain.