Mapping Travel: The Origins and Conventions of Western Journey Maps

ground in these later chapters, which introduce hybrid artefacts with recognizably European elements. One of the most striking (fig. 6.16) juxtaposes a traditional painting of Jambudvıp̄a (dominated by alternating bands of green forests and blue rivers) with a monochrome Dutch-style map of the eastern hemisphere, its continents finely rendered and named. Hovering between the two is one of the strangest images in the whole book: ‘the sun, represented as a disc-like planet, circled by Chinese-style gated walls, with temple structures in a landscape of mountains, trees and clouds’. Could this vision have been inspired by cartouches on European maps depicting a walled, circular Garden of Eden? We shall have to ask Max Moerman.