PEKIN LOOT.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 July 1919, Page 6

PEKIN LOOT.

GERMANY MUST RETURN IT. ASTRONOMICAL TREASURES. China, which is the living example among nations of her who waits and to whom all things at last come, is at length to receive • the reward of her waiting, when the loot seized from her by Germany after the Boxer Rebellion is returned to hor, according to the provisions set down in the Treaty oi Peace. Chief among this vast amount of loot which was taken at that time by all nations in general, but retained by the German Empire in particular, are five of the most ancient and most beautiful astronomical instruments in the world They were for the moat part wrought in bronze, and date back to studios made as early as 2000 8.C., \ylien the Chinese in the East, similarly to the Chaldeans in the West, were making the first astronomical observances. For the past eighteen years those seized by the German Government as part of the Boxer indemnity have been set up in the Court of Orangery at Potsdam, and the ancient observatory at Pekin, for which they were, constructed, has been bereft of it's finest treasures. Among the instruments which ancient China evolved for the pursuit of astronomy are a large contraption, resembling an equilateral, which was constructed in the thirteenth century by Ko-Chau-Kung, astronomer to the Emperor o! the first Tartar dynasty and founder of P?kin; a bronze quadrant sent to the Emperor ICang Hi yy Louis XIV; a huge bronze amillary sphere, which is *eventeenth century work, and the celestial globe, which is seven feet in diameter, is likewise made of bronzo, and vas in 1u74 constructed by Pere Verbiest, Jesuit, who had charge of the observa* tory between J CGI and 1721. I t was Ko-Chau-Kmig, the maker of the equilateral, '.vho in 1100 B.C. determined with ae'iuracy the obliquity of the ecliptic: and made attempts to estimate the distance of the sun from the earth. In this latter projec, however, he failed, his calculations being grounded on the assumption that the earth was flat. By some of the instruments mounted on "the ramparts of the observatory it is apparent that he Chinese anticipated by three centuries Tvcho Brahe's most important inventions. | RECORDS OF COMETS. Ever since 611 B.C. they have had trustworthy cemetery records, and much earlier attempts were wade ,to predict eclipses of the sun. One of the inosc ancient chronicles in existence, the Tshun-King, relates how the Emperor s two head astronomers, Hi and Ho, suffered death because .they neglected to proclaim the (jclipse of October 22, 2137 BC. By the seventeenth century the uative astoronomy of the Chinese had declined, and its study was carried on uwstly by Jesuit missionaries. It was these monuments to the ancient glory and scholarship of China'that Germany took and refused to return alter the general loo,ting of Pekiu. ANCIENT OBSERVATORY. Its observatory, from which they were taken, is situated in tho south-east corner of the inner city. It is a massive tower of medium height, at the top of which are fixed the remaining instruments, not a mass, of shining, severe steel or brass, but the products of a time when science and art and religion were one and ,the same thing, and the astronomer, who, with all his scientific calculations, though the eclipse was caused by the dragon eating the sun, was: not at all distracted if liis apparatus was profusely, beautifully decorated with the national dragon or conventionalined Bowrs, or anything else the cunning of the craftsman wished for ornamentation. From the left of the tower jijts ou.t a kind of shed with a curved: roofj'.iyery Chinese in character, under wliieh <iit a short time after the foundation of the city some of these Mongolian instruments were first set up, „„ On the terrace of the Orangery at Potsdam live of the bronze hostages of ancient China are still waiting their release, five of the most beautiful examples- of the , art and science of the lijast, harking back to a civilisation tvhich had already grown old before Europe's had begun. Their surroundings are anything but congenial, the style of the Orangery being Florentine. While, maps are being redrafted and lands and rights seized by the German Empire in the course of its career are being returned to their original owners the five instruments of China's earliest sages, after their period of waiting, will probably soon be taking their way across half the world again, to the ramparts of the ancient Observatory of ICublai Khan.