Forschungszentrum Gotha (University of Erfurt), Germany.
Hist Sci. 2024 Mar;62(1):3-22. doi: 10.1177/00732753231181285. Epub 2023 Jul 13.
While interest in early modern herbaria has so far mainly concentrated on the dried plants stored in them, this paper addresses another of their qualities - their role as manuscripts. In the 1670s, the German botanist Paul Hermann (1646-95) spent several years in Ceylon (today Sri Lanka) as a medical officer in the service of the Dutch East India Company. During his stay he put together four herbaria, two of which contain a wealth of handwritten notes by himself and several later owners. First, it will be shown that these notes provide information on the linguistic skills and interests of those who collected plants in an overseas trading settlement. Hermann's botanical practice demanded and, at the same time, generated knowledge of Sinhalese (an Indo-Aryan language that is spoken by the largest ethnic group on the island) and its script. In his herbarium, observations on the semantics, morphology, and pronunciation of Sinhalese are inextricably intertwined with those of botanical nature. Second, on the basis of these voluminous notes, the character of early modern herbaria as manuscripts will be highlighted. And third, Hermann's herbaria will be integrated into an investigation of scribal practices and publication strategies of eighteenth-century botany. Along with field notes, letters, manuscripts, illustrations, and printed books, herbaria were knots in the textual-visual mesh of early modern botany.
虽然人们对早期现代植物标本馆的兴趣迄今为止主要集中在保存在其中的干燥植物上，但本文探讨了它们的另一个特点——它们作为手稿的角色。17 世纪 70 年代，德国植物学家保罗·赫尔曼（Paul Hermann，1646-95 年）在荷兰东印度公司的服务下在锡兰（今天的斯里兰卡）担任了几年的军医。在他逗留期间，他整理了四本植物标本集，其中两本包含了他自己和后来几位所有者的大量手写笔记。首先，将表明这些笔记提供了在海外贸易定居点采集植物的人的语言技能和兴趣的信息。赫尔曼的植物学实践需要并同时产生了对僧伽罗语（一种在岛上最大的族群中使用的印欧语言）及其文字的知识。在他的植物标本集中，对僧伽罗语语义、形态和发音的观察与植物学性质的观察密不可分。其次，基于这些大量的笔记，将突出早期现代植物标本馆作为手稿的特点。第三，赫尔曼的植物标本集将被纳入对 18 世纪植物学的抄写实践和出版策略的研究中。与野外笔记、信件、手稿、插图和印刷书籍一样，植物标本集是早期现代植物学的文本-视觉网格中的结。
