Translated from the Chinese of Huien Tsiang (a.d. 629).
By SAMUEL BEAL, B.A. (Trin. Col., Camb.), R.N. (Retired Chaplain and N.I.), Professor of Chinese, University College, London; Rector of Wark, Northumberland, &c.
The progress which has been made in our knowledge of Northern Buddhism during the last few years is due very considerably to the discovery of the Buddhist literature of China. This literature (now well known to us through the catalogues already published) contains, amongst other valuable works, the records of the travels of various Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who visited India during the early centuries of our era. These records embody the testimony of independent eyewitnesses as to the facts related in them, and having been faithfully preserved and allotted a place in the collection of the sacred book of the country, their evidence is entirely trustworthy.
It would be impossible to mention seriatim the various points of interest in these works, as they refer to the geography, history, manners, and religion of the people of India. The reader who looks into the pages of this book will find ample material for study on all these questions. But there is one particular that gives a more than usual interest to the records under notice, and that is the evident sincerity and enthusiasm of the travellers themselves. Never did more devoted pilgrims leave their native country to encounter the perils of travel in foreign and distant lands; never did disciples more ardently desire to gaze on the sacred vestiges of their religion; never did men endure greater sufferings by desert, mountain, and sea than these simple-minded, earnest Buddhist priests. And that such courage, religious devotion, and power of endurance should be exhibited by men so sluggish, as we think, in their very nature as the Chinese, this is very surprising, and may perhaps arouse some consideration.
In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. xii.-336 and x.-352, cloth, price 21s.
MEDIÆVAL RESEARCHES FROM EASTERN ASIATIC SOURCES.
Fragments Towards the Knowledge of the Geography and History of Central and Western Asia from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century.
By E. BRETSCHNEIDER, M.D.,
Formerly Physician of the Russian Legation at Pekin.
EXTRACT FROM PREFACE
The subjects dealt with in the two volumes form a carefully revised and improved edition of three essays gathered into one collection, viz.:—
1. Notes on Chinese Mediæval Travellers to the West, 1875.
2. Notices of the Mediæval Geography and History of Central and Western Asia, 1876.
3. Chinese Intercourse with the Countries of Central and Western Asia during the Fifteenth Century, 1877.
Since the first publication of these papers, large additions have been made to the stock of our knowledge regarding the regions of Central Asia which, previously to the Russian occupation of these tracts, had been inaccessible to scientific exploration. Thus new light has been thrown upon many interesting geographical questions suggested by the narratives of mediæval travellers, or hitherto based only upon more modern but vague and dubious Chinese accounts.
To bring the new edition of those former researches up to the present advanced state of knowledge on the subject, I had to study a vast amount of literature, written for the greater part in Russian, which has come to light, on Central Asia, and was obliged to read through a great number of works and papers, some of them published in Russian Turkestan, and, therefore, difficult to obtain. In general, all reading accessible to me bearing on the subject has been made use of for the elucidation of mediæval geographical questions arising out of my researches.