ABSTRACT
Some of the most sophisticated thinking about bridging, or even merging, civilisations happened in the 1500s, in the Jesuits’ mission to China and the interreligious debates at the Mughal court. This chapter takes apart the thinking behind these unusual experiments. They exemplify a ‘deep cosmopolitan’ attempt to find common ground beneath the surface of the separate traditions. The later part of the chapter also lays out more explicitly a theory of how different layers of identity can map on to one another.
