Tables with “European” layout in China: A case study in tabular layout transmission

This paper examines the early transmission of a specific table layout from Arabic sources to Chinese astronomers, and how it was adopted in the parallax correction tables in the Huihui lifa (Chinese-Islamic System of Calendrical Astronomy). The paper also discusses how, under the influence of European astronomy in the 17th and 18th centuries, this kind of layout was adopted in the equation tables by the compilers of the Chinese national history Mingshi and why they characterized such layout as new and “European”.