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Exploring the Propositions in Maps:The Case of the 'Yuji tu' of 1136 Peter K. Bol The Yuji tu 禹跡圖 (Fig. 1) that was engraved into stone in 1136 has become one of the most famous maps in China's cartographic history.1 It has been the subject of studies by many scholars of historical geography and cartography. In part this has been because it seems to be on the way to becoming a modern map: It is the earliest extant national map that not only appears to have been intended to be geographically accurate, using a scaled grid, but also succeeded to a considerable extent.2 But this is not the only way to think about the map as an historical artifact. Yan Tingting 闫婷婷 has carefully reviewed the scholarship on the Yuji tu. What can we say with certainty? First, we can be sure that the original source used by the 1136 map, and the version known as the Yuji tu 禹迹圖 engraved at Zhenjiang 鎮江 in 1142, dates from the period 1081–94, following Cao Wanru 曹婉如, and perhaps 1087–1089, following Liu Jianguo 劉建 國, based on the dates for changes in the course of the Yellow River and in some administrative place names. The 1142 map states that it was engraved based on the "Chang'an edition" of 1100. Second, we can see that it employs [End Page 209] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. A rubbing of the Yuji tu from 1136 in the Rübel Asiatic Research Collection of the Fine Arts Library at Harvard University. The grid is labeled as 100 li to the side (1 li = about 0.5 km). a traditional method of "calculating distance and drawing squares" 計里畫 方, although no extant earlier map shows the grid. Third, the map scales the width of river lines. Fourth, the map for the most part uses Song administrative place names, with some Tang period place names. Fifth, the map names many rivers and mountains, although the effort to stay in alignment with names and locations in the Tribute of Yu (Yugong 禹貢) section of the Book of Documents 尚書 leads to misrepresentations. The authorship of the original source has not been resolved, although the most pertinent debate (between Cao Wanru and Li Yumin 李裕民) is over whether the great [End Page 210] Northern Song polymath Shen Gua 沈括 (1031–1085) could have been the author.3 Various scholars have used the map as a source for historical geographic research and Prof. Yan applauds the effort to see the map in a larger intellectual context, such as Ge Zhaoguang's 葛兆光 discussion of Song national mapmaking in the context of thinking at the time about the relationship between concepts such as "all under heaven" (Tianxia 天下), the "Central Country" (Zhong guo 中國) and the surrounding "tribal peoples" (yidi 夷狄). Some issues may not be worth pursuing further. Trying to find one person to whom the map's authorship can be attributed makes sense only if we are referring to an official whose office or staff was responsible for the map. Maps of this order are more likely to have been collaborative works, based on compilations of data, and requiring some amount of expertise. From my perspective, knowing when and how the original source was composed is more useful than identifying one responsible person. My approach to the Yuji tu begins from the idea that a map—any map—is a proposition about the world that is being depicted.4 It is not a transparent window on the world but a set of choices about what to depict, forced on the cartographer by the fact that no map can represent everything when the scale is reduced. To see what kind of propositions a map is articulating depends in the first place on asking what the alternatives were at the time, in terms of both cartography and content. Second, we can explore the cartographic methods by asking what methods were available to cartographers at the time and, based on the map itself, see what can be inferred about how the map was drawn. Third, we can inquire into the context of the map's production as a means of asking why it was made. Yan Tingting notes scholarship...
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