Siiuinnn Philoaophm, wliich v:is then rendered from the I .iitinrninto I^jnglish l^v a certain J. Fraser in 1691 as llie Morals ofConfudus,rna Chinese Philosopher. This l:>ook gave the West the firstrntranslations of ‘I’he Confucian Analects—our primary source forrnthe ideas of Cliina’s premier philosopher—’lire Great learning,rnand ‘{‘he Doctrhie of the Mean (Ezra Pound would try his handrnat this last work centuries later). Couplet and Intorcetta alsorndiscussed—and provided excerpts from—The Book of Songs,rnthe ancient anthology of poetry considered one of the keyrnbooks of China. Of this book, they wrote (in Eraser’s English),rn”lis a collection of Odes. . . . Virtue is there magnified andrnextolled to the highest degree, and there are so many things expressedrnafter a method so grave and wise, that ’tis impossiblernnot to admire them.”rnLike Megasthcncs before them, and Whittier after them,rnthe Jesuit authors find an essential commonality of moral codernin both the Ivist and West. Their high admiration for the Confucianrntexts is manifest, their scholarship outstanding.rnDid all this interest and learning translate into curriculum?rnTo begin with, as Dunne and Mungcllo demonstrate, the Jesuitrncolleges at such places as Coimbra (Portugal) and Rome, to sayrnnothing of those they established at Goa (India) and Macao,rninitiated training in the languages necessary for missionaryrnwork in the respective countries. But it is in the course of thernDth centur that the .serious study of Asia really starts to enterrnthe curricula of various Western institutions of learning.rnAccording to Ramond Schwab, as eady as 1805, “the EastrnIndia Company founded Ilailcvbury College in England forrnthe purpose of training future employees in remote languages.”rnThese included I lindustani, Sanskrit, and l^crsian. Wilkins wasrnappointed to the facultw Schwab maintains that these classesrnwere conducted “for practical reasons” (he accepts Said’s theor’rnof “Orientalism,” and Said has in fact written a lengthy andrnrather turgid foreword for the Engli.sh edition of the book), butrnit is hard to sec what practical application the study of Sanskritrnwould hae had for “colonial civil servants.” Even here, onernsenses an element of pure, disinterested scholarly curiosity.rnChairs in arious Asian subjects were established at pAiropcanrnuniversities throughout the 19th century. To take only thernexample of Russia, E. Stuart Kirb, in his history of RussianrnStudies of China (1975), records that a certain V.P. Vasil’levrn(1818-1900) in 1851 was appointed to the first Russian chair ofrnSinologv at Kazan, and four years later to a .similar position atrnSt. Petersburg. Russian scholars had been translating the Confucianrnclassics as eady as the mid-18th century.rnAccording to Fhe Kodansha Encyclopedia of]apan (1983),rnJapanese studies were being pursued at European universitiesrnbeginning “eady in the 19th century, for example at the Universityrnof Paris and the Univer.sit of I_,cyden.” As for the L^nitcdrnStates, Chinese was being taught at Harvard bv 1870, andrnbefore Wodd War II the discipline had expanded to Columbia,rnChicago, California (Berkeley), and Pennsylvania, all institutionsrnthat continue to be leaders in the seholady stud- of EastrnAsia today (see John Lindbeck’s Understanding China, 1971).rnA report on Japanese studies issued b the American Council ofrnthe institute of Pacific Relations in 1935 found that “25 institutionsrnof higher education offered courses related to Japan and 8rnoffered some Japanese-language instruction.” Harvard, whosernHarvard-Yenching Institute was founded in 1928, already hadrnten faculty members teaching Japanese subjects alone.rnAll of this activity naturally resulted in graduate-levelrnresearch, and Frank J. Shulinan, the leading bibliographer ofrnAsian Studies in the world today, has unearthed doctoralrndissertations on Japan alone dating back as far as 1877. Theserninclude studies of Japanese porcelain manufactoriesrn(Columbia, 1880); flower arrangement (Paris, 1896); imperialrncourt poetry (Ilalle-Wittenberg, 1892); theatrical historyrn(Paris, 1901), to name onh’ a few (Prank J. Shulman, ]apan andrnKorea: An Annotated Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations inrnWesfern Languages J S77-J 969. American Library Association,rnChicago, 1970).rnFar more subtly than those who complain about the West’srn”ignorance” of Asia, Edward Said and his generation ofrnintellectuals recognize the long history of Western scholarsliiprnon Asia but castigate the West for its hidden agendas, includingrnthe desire to justify the subjection of Asia by Western political,rneconomic, and cultural forces—in a word, colonialism.rnAlthough Said’s main concern was with the Islamic Orient, hisrncharges have led to much hand-wringing among scholars ofrnEast and South Asia as well. And that is a lot of hand-wringing:rnthe latest membership directory of the Association for AsianrnStudies, the chief professional organization for Asianists, listsrnclose to 8,000 specialists in various Asian subjects!rnIf we repudiate a grounding inrnthe West under the influeneernof a radical egalitarian ideologyrnwhich holds all cultures to be ofrnequal value and importance, and ofrnequal interest to us, we will underminernthe very ground we stand on.rnAnd yet, at a recent conference on “Religion in ContemporaryrnChina” held at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington,rnD.C., the leading Western authority on Confucianism inrnthe world today, W-‘m. Theodore de Barv, publicly and refreshinglyrnstated his disagreement with Said’s view that Westernrnscholarship on Asia has merely served as the handmaiden of imperialismrnand colonialism. He pointed to the work of JamesrnLcgge, the late 19th century missionary who, like many beforernhim, came to admire the richness of the Chinese classics; hisrntranslations of them, included in The Sacred Books of the East,rnremain standard sources todaw And indeed there can be nornquestion that such admiration, even adulation, motivated therngreatest of the Asianists down through the centuries. Coupletrnand Intorcetta were praising the Confucian classics before thernend of the 17th century. The near veneration of Voltaire andrnother philosophers for these works is well known. Indeed,rnVoltaire praised Confucius in a poem:rnSEPTEMBER 1995/15rnrnrn