When the first CICM missionaries set foot on Chinese soil in the late 19th century,  they engaged in a missionary entreprise which would lead them far beyond the traditional missionary field.  Not specifically trained for great intellectual endeavours when they left their homeland, but ending up at the edges of the Chinese empire,  among minority peoples and languages,  the missionaries became self-made linguists,  ethnologists or geographers.  The level of excellence which they built up through this forced cultural immersion,  is reflected in the documents and books which they collected during nearly one century and which have now found their way back to Belgium.

In 1993,  the Library acquired the private libraries and papers of  some of the greatest scholars in Oriental studies of the 20th century, all  CICM missionaries who had served in the Mongolian borderlands of China, Fr Antoon Mostaert, Fr  Louis Schram, Fr Paul Serruys and his brother Henry Serruys,  Fr Willem Grootaers, and others. Their collection added several new points of gravity to the library: Mongolian studies,   Chinese oracular script, and Chinese folklore.

More collections followed, such as J.B. Van Loon's library on Central Asia (in 1993 and 1995); Fr Joseph Schyns' fine collection of Chinese novels published and purchased in China in the first half of the 20th century;  and the library of the Foyer des Étudiants Chinois in Brussels, containing hundreds of anti-mainland China pamphlets and books spread in Europe by the nationalist KMT government in Taipei between the 1950s and late 1980s.

A valuable collection provides the private archive of Fr Dries Van Coillie. Detained in China after the Communist takeover, and later expelled, Fr Van Coillie became a widely asked lecturer on China in Belgium throughout the 1950s  to the '70s.  His massive collection of articles, paper clippings and random notes are an important witness to the China-image in the West during this period.

In 2007 two important donations were made. A massive collection of 6,000 volumes on Mongolian studies by Igor de Rachewiltz and a smaller, but unique collection of books,  journals and objects on the language and culture of the Dungan people in Central Asia by Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer.

The Verbiest Institute is committed to upholding the memory of these scholars,  by keeping their libraries together and making them accessible to external readers.

The Library presently holds about 31,000 volumes and is still expanding. It does not intend to keep up to date in all its branches. Some subjects will no longer be covered, such as Chinese oracular script, while a limited number of areas of interest have been set apart for special attention, viz.  Chinese frontier studies, particularly Inner and Outer Mongolia; history of the Church in modern and contemporary China;  Chinese-language scholarship on Christianity;   and State and Religion in East Asia.

The library will also be the repository to an  number of unfinished projects, bequeathed by individual scholars for the explicit use by future generations of bona fide research students.  These will be made accessible upon prior agreement and on a strictly ad hoc basis.

The Library is located at Vlamingenstraat 1, 3000 Leuven.

Books can be ordered by sending e-mail to SML Team and consulted at the Ferdinand Verbiest Institute at Naamsestraat 63.  Please also specify the exact shelf-number of the materials requested.

All titles of monographs have been entered in the University of Leuven on-line li brary catalogue.

The Library has grown into its present form thanks to the many authors who keep us abreast of their latest work.  The Library is particularly grateful for author copies of books, off-prints or journals.

(1886-1976)

Missionary in Eastern Mongolia and specialist in Chinese linguistics.  Father of the first sinological library in Belgium.  Discovered the tombs of the Liao emperors.

Jozef Mullie was a product of the Flemish priest, poet and teacher Cesar Gezelle.  Gezelle instilled in his pupil a passion for language, which he would carry with him for the rest of his life.  On 7 September 1903,  Mullie joined the CICM society, and when he completed his missionary training, he had already taught himself nearly every language between old Gothic and Mongolian.

In 1909, Mullie arrived in Northwest China,  in the area known to missionaries as the "vicariate of  Eastern Mongolia". Here Mullie began his missionary career as  a vicar to the parish of Father Heyns in Dayingzi, Bārin. With the help of the Mongolian community living near his parish,  Mullie improved on his knowledge of spoken Mongolian.

Two years later, Mullie was transferred to Hata, where he was appointed as the director of the CICM secondary school. Taken by his teaching obligations, Mullie abandoned Mongolian and invested all his time and energy in the scientific study of the Chinese spoken language.  On thousands of cards, Mullie noted every detail of the Chinese dialect spoken in Eastern Mongolia: the grammatical use of the words,  peculiar constructions, proverbs,  even the position of the tongue, lips and teeth.  

In  1930, the  first results of Mullie's painstaking work were published by the Lazarist Press in Peking as  Het Chineesch Taaleigen (first of three volumes, written in Dutch and translated as The structural principles of the Chinese language : an introduction to the spoken language, Northern Pekingese dialect).

Mullie's most significant contribution to sinology was his discovery of the tombs of three of the emperors of the 11th century Liao dynasty. Careful study of the historical sources of the Song dynasty and contemporary geographical evidence, enabled Mullie to locate the tombs with virtual certainty. Mullie's reports were published  in the leading sinological journal of that period, T'oung Pao in 1922 and 1933. Unfortunately, the tombs were looted by robbers; the little that was left either disappeared or still awaits identification in the CICM China collections in Belgium.

In 1926, Mullie moved to the provincial capital, and former summer residence of the Manchu emperors, Chengde or "Jehol".  Mullie's knowledge of the language and customs made him the Church's interlocutor with the civil authorities.  On 19 June 1930, the provincial governor appointed him to the famine relief committee of the province.  When the famous Swedish explorer Sven Hedin visited Chengde, it was  Mullie who provided him with all help needed to carry out his work on the old imperial capital of Jehol.  

After more than two decades of missionary and scholarly labour in China, Mullie was summoned back to Belgium.  Mullie first headed for the port-city of Tianjin with the remains of the CICM founder, which he shipped back to Belgium,  along with his personal library of 1,400 Chinese and 3,000 western-language books.  Mullie himself then returned to Belgium by the Transsiberian railway.

Back in Belgium, Mullie was assigned to teach  his young fellow-missionaries spoken and literary Chinese.  In 1939, academic recognition came when Mullie was appointed to the chair of Chinese language and literature at the University of Utrecht, Holland.

Mullie spent the final years of his life as the unofficial librarian to the East Asian library of the University of Leuven.  Following the relocation of the French-language section of Leuven university in the 1970s,  the entire Chinese and Japanese collection was transferred to the newly  built French-language campus  of Leuven University ("Louvain-la-Neuve").  Mullie's books remained in Leuven and became the nucleus of the present East-Asian Library.

Mullie left an impressive collection of papers, including a set of detailed diaries, with first-hand reports on war-torn China of the 1920s, hundreds of letters to scholars, diplomats and Chinese officials, and materials on the beginnings of sinology as an academic discipline in Belgium.

Most papers and archival materials related to Mullie are now kept by the Katholieke Documentatiecentrum (KADOC) in Leuven. Entries to these and the Mullie holdings in the Memorial Library are constantly being updated and can be searched through the  Leuven University on-line Library catalogue.

Who are the Dungans? What is Dungan?

The Dungans  are an ethnic minority in Kazakhstan and Kyrghyz. They have been living in Russia and the Soviet Union for 130 years, since arriving from China in two distinct migrations.

The first migration was a headlong flight by Chinese Muslim rebels who were originally from Gansu  and Shaanxi  provinces. Defeated and pursued by the Manchu army, they crossed the Tianshan mountain passes in the extremely harsh winter of 1877. One of the three groups was that of the rebels from Shaanxi led by Po Yanhu (白彥虎), one of the leaders of the Chinese Muslim revolts of 1862-1877. This group settled in Karakunuz.

The second migration, that of 1881-1884, occurred after the signing of the Treaty of St. Petersburg in 1881 according to which the Yili  (伊犁) region, which had been under Russian rule, was handed over to the Chinese. Some of the Muslim people of this region decided to leave and migrate to Russia.

The two migrations were quite different in character. The first was that of desperate refugees fighting off the Manchu army and fleeing for their lives, and many of whom then perished in the snow. These refugees arrived and settled in three compact groups. The second migration was that of peace-time settlers who had a choice. They decided not to remain under Manchu rule; they gathered in the harvest, packed their possessions, and moved during the warm weather. They started on their journey in small individual groups. Their final destination was Sokhulu, but after crossing the border they settled all along a thousand-kilometre stretch.

The rough estimate of the total number of Dungans who arrived in Russia during these two migrations is over 10,000 people. By 1979 there were 51,000 Dungans, and around 70,000 by 1985. Up to 2007, the number of Dungans has steadily increased.

Most of the refugees and settlers who arrived in the 19th century were poor, illiterate peasants. Only the mullahs knew the Arabic script of the Koran. The first draft of a Dungan alphabet, based on Latin letters, appeared only in 1927. This alphabet, because of some current trends and events and the fact that it was regarded as unsuitable for properly representing the Dungan language, was gradually replaced after 1939 by an alphabet based on the Cyrillic script. This new alphabet went through a series of changes. The present Dungan alphabet, based on the Cyrillic alphabet plus five additional letters, thirty-eight letters in all, was adopted officially at a series of conferences in Frunze (present-day Bishkek) between 1953 and 1955.

Although Dungans have lost their flair for trade and, to a certain degree, their religion, they have retained many things that they brought from China: songs, legends, stories, wedding and funeral customs, and their speech which is the earthy, colloquial speech of the Chinese countryside.

Adapted and updated from Svetlana RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF DYER, Soviet Dungans in 1985: Birthdays, Weddings, Funerals and Kolkhoz Life, Taipei: Centre for Chinese Studies, 1991, pp. 1-7.

• Who is Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer?

(1883-1971)

Missionary in Gansu province (China) and anthropologist of the Monguor people

Louis Schram’s training as a missionary was like that of all his fellow prospective China-missionaries in Belgium in the early 20th century.  At the age of 18, he joined the novitiate of the C.I.C.M. Scheut congregation, after which he was sent to Leuven, where he studied Chinese and was prepared to leave for the East.   However, before being sent out to China, he exceptionally received permission to study anthropology and history of religions at the university of Leiden (Holland). This made him the first missionary ever of his congregation to be allowed to study abroad at a non-Catholic university.   Two years earlier Father Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954)  had published the first issue of his antropological Journal, “Anthropos”.  Expectations were high  among the missionaries that anthropology would serve them in their conversion of the non-Christian peoples.

Schram’s missionary career  in China began in 1909. His first mission field was the remote area of southern Gansu province, also know as Xining or Amdo.  In 1912,  Schram arrived in Xining with his confrere Jozef Essens  (1877-1926) as the first Catholic priests in the area.  Bordering on Tibet,  and situated at a crossroads of various linguistic, ethnic and religious groups, Xining proved to be a goldmine for someone with Schram's interests.

Schram’s attention was drawn to one group in particular, the so-called “Monguor”.   The Monguor were the descendants a people of nomads and of  a group of Mongols who had emigrated to this area in the fourteenth century.

Schram also ventured into the world of the Tibetans.   He studied Tibetan and shared the life of the Buddhist monks of the famous Kumbun monastery.   However, his plan for a mission among the Tibetans never materialized.

After a brief stay at the Verbist Academy in the 1940s, the study house of the congregation in Peking,  Schram was expelled from China. In the United States,  at the C.I.C.M.  house in Arlington (Virginia), he found the time and the environment to organize his findings on the Monguors in three monumental volumes. Part I, published in 1954,  delved into the origins of the Monguor people and described their social organization. Part II, published in 1957,  described the religious system of the Monguors.  In the third and final part of his work,  from 1960, Schram reconstructed the family-tree of the Monguors and found the missing link that connected the Monguors to the Mongolian ruler Činggis Qan.