ABSTRACT
This essay deals with the interpretive procedures at work in the writings of Matteo Ricci concerning the religions of China. Ricci’s narrative on the origins of Buddhism in China made use of an old Chinese legend, the dream of the Emperor Mingdi. Following Ricci, different Christianised versions were elaborated in the Western world. It is argued here that those revised versions have been influenced by a well-spread literary trope (found in Tacitus and Plutarch): the dream asking King Ptolemy to introduce to Alexandria the god Sarapis.
