China.- Hager (Joseph) Description des Médailles Chinoises du Cabinet Impérial de France, précédée d'un Essai de Numismatique Chinoise, first edition, half-title, engraved plate and folding engraved map of the Silk Road, illustrations, Chinese characters in text, foxed, book-label of Jacob Manzoni, original pink paste-paper boards, paper label to spine, uncut, rubbed, spine browned, spine and corners neatly repaired, [Cordier BS 688; Löwendahl 728; Lust 1130], 4to, Paris, An XIII 1805.
⁂ Finely printed study of Chinese coins including an essay and map of the trade between ancient Greece and China via the Silk Road. Joseph Hager (1757-1819) taught Chinese in Paris and Pavia, and was an influential figure in the European study of Chinese. In 1801 he published a prospectus for a Chinese dictionary and An Explanation of the Elementary Character of the Chinese, a work he described as the first proper study of Chinese characters. Other scholars disagreed and Julius von Klaproth accused Hager of being a charlatan and published a scathing rebuttal in 1811.
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