Chinese Traveller Research Articles

Toponymic Representation Of Central Asia In Xuan Zang’s “Great Tang Records On The Western Regions”

This article is dedicated to the book “The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions” which recounts the historical journey of the Chinese traveller Xuan Zang to Central Asia in 627 AD, as he embarked on a travelling to India to study Buddhism. Throughout his travels, Xuan Zang meticulously documented the events he witnessed, the geographical locations of various countries, as well as the ethnography and daily life of the medieval inhabitants of the region. The travelogue provides detailed accounts of the distances and routes to several Central Asian countries, offering valuable topographical insights into the history of the region. Xuan Zang's extensive journey encompassed territories that now belong to the Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, offering unique perspectives and impressions of the places he visited. Furthermore, this article delves into comparative analyses of the accounts provided in Xuan Zang’s “The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions” and the Chinese historian Ouyang Xiu’s “Xin Tan Shu” presenting findings from scholarly works by Uzbek, Russian, and Chinese historians. This study sheds light on the rich historical and geographical information preserved in these pivotal sources.

A Deeper Look at the Origin and Evolution of the Social Work Profession

The purpose of this article is to examine how social work has changed from its beginnings to the early 21st century in India, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. It emphasises the significance of understanding social work's past in order to consider the field's potential futures. Qualitative research methods were utilised, and information was gathered from existing literature, informants, and through field visits for observation and verification to validate the collected data. Almshouses, or choultries, in India, can trace their origins back to the time of Buddha. Records from the Chinese traveller Fa-Hien reveals similar hospitals in India around 400 BCE. From the 7th century AD, the temples served food to devotees through 'temple kitchens. These institutions paved the way for almshouses in China, the Middle East, Europe, and Britain, signifying that the groundwork for Social Work as a profession in India predates the Charity Organisation Society and the Settlement House Movement. Although Social Work, both as a career and as a way of living, evolved in India, they were not explicitly mentioned as such in the countless books on Social Work that have been published over the decades.

African Perceptions of Trade Partners: A Ghanaian and Togolese Perspective of Sino-African Relations

Studies on perception in both development studies and international relations have shown that most nations have mutual perceptions predicated on and influenced by either fact, biases or stereotypes, or a combination of other identifiable qualitative variables. In this study, we explore and demonstrate that African perceptions differ from country to country and are well influenced by factors such as the country of origin, the knowledge base and orientation towards China. The connection between Africa and China is long etched in history (206 bce to 220 ce) evidenced by a series of cultural and trade exchanges between China and Egypt, and long since antiquated in historical records by the Chinese traveller, Du Huan, of the Tang Dynasty. With a combination of primary and secondary data collected via social survey using google forms with questionnaires administered to participants of 10 and 6 tertiary institutions in Ghana and Togo, respectively, and bolstered with documentary evidence, we find that there are no singular overarching African perceptions of China, as the African continent is a 55-state region with diverse conflicting political, economic and sociocultural proclivities. The study further observed that compared to Togolese, more Ghanaians perceive China to be a goodwill partner predicated on its involvement on public health emergencies of international concerns (PHEIC) and influence on national economies through debt reliefs and other form of assistance.

Performing love, prosperity and Chinese hipsterism: Young independent travellers in Pai, Thailand

Young independent Chinese travellers are increasingly visiting Pai, a small town in northern Thailand, in part influenced by the popularity of the 2009 Thai movie Pai in Love. Using a performance perspective, combined with theory on affordances, which have not yet been applied in the growing body of research on Chinese tourists, this article examines the wide variety of performances in Pai by young independent Chinese travellers, many of which revolve around tourist photography. Drawing upon participant observation and in-depth interviews with Chinese travellers in Pai, the findings reveal that many young Chinese independent traveller performances in Pai revolve around the creation of online self-identities of prosperity and globalisation, love and alternative social identities such as Chinese hipsterism or Xiao Qing Xin. Central to many of these hybrid performances is the digital camera, which affords new, more playful, embodied ways of encountering and interacting with tourist attractions, while simultaneously offering a means of recording and refining performances that are then distributed via the ‘statusphere’. The article’s use of a performance lens provides new insights into Chinese tourism consumption, and highlights the importance of physical, material and social affordances in performing tourism.

Indian Law from a Seventh-Century Chinese Buddhist Perspective

This paper will discuss the passage in the 7th-century Chinese Buddhist traveller monk Xuanzang’s “Record of the Western Regions of the Great Tang (Dynasty)” on law and legal procedure in early medieval India. Xuanzang’s depiction of the Indian legal system is compared and contrasted in some detail with the information gained from the Artha-and Dharmaśāstra literature. The particular features in Xuanzang’s report which clearly differ from the śāstric literature are explained in the context of Tang China’s social and political situation. By doing so I do not only want to warn from reading the “Record” as a face-value description of India but also would like to highlight the necessity to read a specific text like the “ Record” in its immediate context which is more Chinese than Indian. Interpreted in this way Xuanzang’s record gains what it loses on the “historical” side by presenting a fascinating compilation of “facts” about a cultural other in which idealisation – the “description” of an ideal (pseudo-) Buddhist legal system – is used for the end of indirectly criticising and influencing his own social and political environment.

Arsacid Cities in the Hanshu and Houhanshu

In the reports of Chinese travellers submitted to the Emperors, they mentioned the places they had visited or heard of. Although some scholars have tried to identify these Chinese names as specific places in the Iranian Plateau and its bordering plains, their locations are still somewhat vague and debatable. This article discusses the place-names mentioned in Chinese sources and attempts to verify that they could have denoted the localities along the ancient Great Khorasan Road and other routes, which were once the main sections of the Silk Road. Among them, the route that Chinese traveller Gan Ying might have passed before he reached the western frontier of the Arsacid Empire will also be discussed in this study.

(r) we Americanised?

“Spa(R) … Could you tell me where I can find a spa(r)?” “Are you sure you want to find a spar?” A Chinese traveller, inquiring about the nearest spa while on a tour in South Africa, left the local hotel receptionist confused. This anecdote involved the overuse of the R-colouring sound and aroused my interest in rhoticity in China English. Rhoticity in English refers to ‘the production of historical or orthographic /r/ in the syllable coda of words such as father and card” (Becker, 2014: 141). However, since the R-colouring sound in English, a simple allophone feature, does not distinguish word meanings, its pronunciation features and phonological environments have seldom been taught in EFL classes in China.

Italy’s Image as a Tourism Destination in the Chinese Leisure Traveler Market

This study aims to measure the image of Italy as a tourism destination on the Chinese leisure traveller market. To this end, Echtner & Ritchie’s model (1991) is applied; however, compared to its original formulation, it is implemented with greater consideration of the experiential dimension and potential travel constraints affecting the perception of the range of tourism goods and services on offer. This enables not just a denotative, but also and above all a connotative measurement of the image, thereby reducing the risk of ambiguity in the interpretation of the most significant attributes that emerged during the analysis. Adopting a hypothetical segmentation of the market in question, it was also possible to the elements that act as encouraging and discouraging factors regarding a holiday in Italy are highlight, identifying tailor-made approaches to the construction and promotion/commercialisation of tourism products designed to be attractive to the specific segment of interest.

Some artistic descriptions and ethical dilemmas in Shan Shili’s travel notes on Italy (1909)

In this paper I will analyze what were the emotions that Rome, and its artistic heritage, excited in a Chinese traveller’s eyes and heart—rationally and unconsciously—at the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper will focus on the analysis of some pages of the Guiqian ji (归潜记), written by Shan Shili, the wife of the Ministry of China in Rome from July 1908 to November 1909. Unlike Chinese travellers of the previous period, she, during her sojourn in Rome, was more fascinated by art and culture than by scientific and technological marvels. This ‘unknown territory’—art, history, mythology, in brief, the historical and cultural European past—unknown to her, but also to the Chinese at that time, attracted her curiosity insomuch as to use artistic descriptions as means of cultural dialogue between her own culture and the other’s culture. But what did the discovery of a different artistic expression provoke in a Chinese traveller? Did she appreciate these forms of art? Did they go along with her artistic and cultural tastes? The analysis of some explanations of artistic works (paintings and sculptures), offered by Shan to her readers, and the reading of emotions and feelings which these works presented to her—esteem, repulsion, admiration or disapproval—allow us to draw a brief cultural dialogue between a Chinese female traveller and the other (Italian), at the end of the Qing empire.

Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300–1800 by John N. Miksic (review)

Reviewed by: Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300–1800 by John N. Miksic Loh Wei Leng Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300–1800 John N. Miksic Singapore: NUS Press, 2013. pp. i-xxii, 1–491. ISBN 978-9971-69-574-3 This monograph brings to the fore Singapore’s pre-colonial past, a narrative which serves as a corrective to the common perception that Singapore’s history began in 1819 with Raffles as its founder, substantiated by evidence gathered over three decades of archaeological research.1 In addition, the extension of Singapore’s historical record has been facilitated by the integration of Singapore’s past with studies from the broader scholarship of Asian and world history. The Introduction presents an overview of the main themes which the book addresses in three parts, each comprising four chapters. It begins with a historical background, followed by a second section on the archaeological data, and a third which locates Singapore in its regional context. More specifically, ‘This Introduction will show how an ancient maritime trade network evolved in Southeast Asia and gradually spread westward to India and eastward to China …’ with subsequent discussions illustrating how the sea route ‘was much more important – from both commercial and cultural points of view – than the overland road’ (p. 1). The latter proposition refers to the book’s title, the `Silk Road of the Sea’ which Miksic contends ‘has been almost completely ignored’ (p. 2). This may perhaps be an overstatement given that scholarly writing has not only drawn attention to the maritime silk road but also to the existence of not just one but numerous overland silk roads (Christian 2000). Indeed, Southeast Asian prehistoric material together with a large corpus of historical writing on oceanic east–west passages date them back to the first millennium and even before, as Miksic himself attests to the sea route being ‘over 2,000 years old’ (p. 1). ‘Forgotten Hints’ from Singapore’s archaeology point to Singapore as a trading port, the Temasik alluded to by Chinese traveller Wang Dayuan c.1330 (pp. 171–81), and mentioned in Sejarah Melayu (the Malay Annals) as a stopover en route to Melaka by its Malay rulers coming from Palembang. The historical setting which supplies the context for the emergence of the fourteenth-century port can be found in the chapters in the first section which provide detailed summaries of major works and many more, from the standard references on prehistoric Southeast Asia (Higham 1989) through Graeco-Roman texts, Periplus Maris [End Page 118] Erythraei (the Sailor’s Guide) and Ptolemy’s Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis (Guide to Geography), later incorporated in Arabic route books from c. ninth century CE (Tibbetts 1979), the vade mecums in Southeast Asian history such as Wang Gungwu’s ‘The Nanhai Trade’ (1958) and Paul Wheatley’s The Golden Khersonese (1961) to the more familiar and popular tale of traveller Marco Polo, 1292–3. The ports on the east-west maritime route in his Travels, including those in Southeast Asia, have since been corroborated by archaeological discoveries (p. 39). Epigraphy sometimes supplies texts, for instance ‘the oldest known Buddhist texts composed in Southeast Asia’ (p. 58) are attributed to stone inscriptions of the late fourth and fifth century CE scripts found at the foot of Kedah peak. Together with written sources on the two-way China–India voyages of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, Faxian in 414 and Yijing in the seventh century, their accounts of passengers on merchant ships via Southeast Asia point to trade and shipping in the pre-Srivijayan era. Indeed, ‘vibrant Buddhist interactions’ between India and China were facilitated by a significant increase in commerce along the maritime networks of exchange in the fourth and fifth centuries (Sen 2014). What then of maritime trade in ancient Southeast Asia? The archaeological record is of enormous importance when material remains may provide the only available data to verify narratives of past processes. Hence, Dongson drums (map, p. 26) from present-day north Vietnam, found throughout Southeast Asia, support the suggestion of prehistoric maritime trade emerging within Southeast Asia while archaeological artefacts from the first major Southeast Asian kingdom, Funan in the...

Travel and Social Media in China: From Transit Hubs to Stardom

This paper investigates how the concept of self-organized travel in China is shaped by travellers' engagement with social media. The investigation reveals some of the dynamics behind travel-related postings on the Internet and how the understanding of the Chinese traveller is deepened. The article is intentionally descriptive, and it presupposes two things. First, that an evolvement towards a more advance and sophisticated level of Internet use in China starts around the millennium, and second, that the Chinese reform period had not existed for more than a few years before short distance self-organized travelling within the larger cities became very popular. This form of travelling was often in small groups and centred around local transit hubs. Locals with knowledge about a certain area became self-appointed tour organizers and a self-organized travel phenomenon slowly emerged. This article uses a famous trial from 2006 to exemplify how the bulletin board system (BBS) played a decisive role in creating self-organized travel in China and thus describes how Chinese self-organized travel developed on the Internet. By proving a link between the BBS and self-organized travelling the groundwork is laid for describing how social media and self-organized travel are related. The article follows the concept of donkey friends to show that postings on a BBS were a premature form of social media postings and that the period between the first BBS travel postings and the first Sina blogs can be classified as the origin of an Internet-based travel community in China. The users of these blogs and BBS developed into celebrities who excelled in self-organized travel. They used travelling as a way to distinguish themselves from other bloggers. The article then investigates how social media is used to promote travelling by different agents in the travel market. Again the trendsetting bloggers provide a link between promotion and social media. There will be a short introduction of the statistics on Chinese social media and a prediction of future trends followed by some concluding remarks.

Klebsiella pneumoniae meningitis in a 38-year-old Chinese traveller with impaired glucose tolerance: A new emerging syndrome?

Early diagnosis and appropriate empirical treatment of bacterial meningitis reduce morbidity and mortality. Prevalence rates of different causative pathogens associated with bacterial meningitis can depend on age, the underlying medical condition, way of infection and geographical distribution. Klebsiella pneumoniae represents an infrequent cause of community-acquired meningitis in South-East Asia and North-East Asia, where it accounts for 20% of all bacterial meningitis, frequently associated with septic metastatic complications. We describe a case of K. pneumoniae meningitis, diplopia and chemosis in a recently immigrated patient with impaired glucose tolerance. The reason for the high prevalence of metastatic septic infections caused by K. pneumoniae in Taiwan and South-East Asia remains unclear: high prevalence in this area of serotype K1 and K2 and the expression of a novel locus called magA conferring to bacterium an elevated phagocytosis resistance and an active proliferation ability have been suggested. A high degree of suspicion for this etiology must be taken into account in immigrants from China and Taiwan. Due to a very high lethality, guidelines on empiric treatment should be considered in the management of bacterial meningitis, with the patients geographical origin and the clinical syndrome (meningitis and endophtalmitis) as potential risk factors for K. pneumoniae infection.

The Progress of Indolence: Readings in (Neo)Augustan Literary Culture by Camille R. La Bossière

ESC 26, 2000 a representative sampling of critical evaluations of the genre by Tolkien, Max Liithi, and Bruno Bettelheim as well as the three critics Rowe, Tatar, and Zipes mentioned above. If Broadview Press plans a third edition, I would suggest that they consider the aesthetics of presentation, the audience for which the anthology is intended, and a new Introduction that shows to advantage the benefits of an anthology combining tales, variations, and selected critical material. BARBARA GARNER / Carleton University Camille R. La Bossiere. The Progress of Indolence: Readings in (Neo)Augustan Literary Culture. Toronto: York Press, 1997. iv, 67. $12.95 paper. As Camille R. La Bossiere argues in this book, indolence is a pervasive yet strangely neglected theme in modern literature. Prom James Thomson’s “The Castle of Indolence” (1748) to the twentieth-century novels of Hugh MacLennan, authors have worked to portray the absence of work, sometimes condemn­ ing indolence as a moral and economic sin, but as often finding some delight, even truth, in the phlegmatic wisdom of the mod­ ern sage. For since the eighteenth century, Western thought on indolence has been marked by paradox. Even where the en­ trepreneurial spirit of Western culture calls for action, its morals and philosophy have preached the virtues of moderation, calm, and doubt. This is the paradox that La Bossiere finds in Thomson’s “The Castle of Indolence,” which, in his reading, ultimately fails to dispel the charms of idleness that it appears to vil­ ify. As Samuel Johnson observed, the most enchanting part of this poem is the wizard’s lush paean to Indolence at the beginning of the poem. The second canto, where the Knight of Arts and Industry restores ambition and commerce, is com­ paratively prosaic and unappealing. Ultimately, the glory of a crowded ledger-sheet inspires dull poetry, and there is some­ thing naggingly sensible, even Christian, about the wizard’s sermon against avarice and ambition. It is “grevious folly,” he 102 REVIEWS intones, to “heap up estate, / Losing the days you see beneath the sun” (canto 1, stanza xix). From classical culture, as well, Thomson inherited an ethic that seems inconsistent with the motivations to industry. The ancient ideal of the via media or golden mean, upheld even at the end of the poem, promotes moderation and calm and, thus, deflates the Knight’s exhorta­ tions to commercial vigour. In this way, La Bossière deconstructs “The Castle of Indo­ lence” to suggest its ultimate encouragement of the very languor that it seems to condemn. In his very participation in the neo­ classical Christian culture of the eighteenth century, Thomson was of the devil’s languorous party without knowing it. La Bossière finds much the same contradiction lurking in the work of other Augustan authors. Jonathan Swift, for example, wrote a sermon against sleeping in church. Yet, like other Anglican clergymen, Swift despised disruptively ardent and demonstra­ tive piety (what they called “enthusiasm”) even more than the Sunday Christian snoring through the sermon. In his role as satirist, Swift’s scathing attacks on European pride and dog­ matism leave little justification for ambition or effort. What could be more “indolent” than the placid rational life of the Houyhnmhnms? The same ambivalence characterized the at­ titudes of Samuel Johnson. Johnson spent his life denouncing idleness and his own constitutional lethargy, yet he had no good answers in his work to the paralyzing question posed near the end of “Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749): “Must helpless Man, in Ignorance sedate, / Roll darkling down the torrent of his Fate?” As urged by Thomson’s indolent wizard, the vanity of all human desire seems to leave no option but torpid inertia. Even travel, ironically, induced indolence. For Goldsmith’s Chinese traveller in Citizen of the World (1761-62), Lien Chi Altangi, the great lesson of travel is the ultimately contra­ dictory nature of all experience and philosophy, a conclusion that appears to confirm the Confucian goal of achieving a “just equipoize of the passions.” In the face of contradictory motiva­ tions, what philosophy can there be except to sustain balance and tranquility? Humans reside, as Pope instructed, on the “Isthmus of a Middle State” (Essay on...

Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World

An authentic and scholarly description of travel to various Western Asian countries and India providing detailed accounts of the condition of Buddhism in those countries during the 7th century. The records preserved by the famous Chinese scholar traveller are very interesting as they refer to the geography, history, manners, and religion of the people of the countries West of China of India in particular visited by the pilgrims.

Growth of libraries in India

The Indian civilization dates back to 3000 B.C., but there is no reliable evidence to show that any recorded material then existed.1 During the Ie the world’s longest poem, Muhabharatu, was composed in this period. So were the Vedas and Rumuyunu. It was during the timeofAsoka (269-232 B.C.) that his promulgations were inscribed on stone pillars and rocks in two different scripts to become the first official records inscribed in public places .s Thus, these inscriptions could be ascribed as the first libraries of India.3 Also the memorials and shrines built with sculptures of Buddha’s birth stories and discourses, and labelled with short inscriptions have been called “open libraries”.4 Of the earliest libraries, Nalanda university library has a distinct place. It was large enough to cater to the needs ofthousands ofstudents and hundreds of teachers. Foreign scholars used to visit this library to find authenticated copies of the sacred books of Buddhism. The library was housed in three splendid buildings; one of them was a nine-storied building. The size of the collection is not known, but it is estimated that it comprised hundreds ofthousands ofvolumes; one visiting scholar, I-tsing, is reported to have stayed for ten years to copy four hundred Sanskrit texts. The library is reported to have flourished until the twelfth century, but as it was completely destroyed, no further details about it are known.5 Besides Nalanda, the famous Chinese traveller, Hiuen Tsang, mentions in his work, Sipki, other Buddhist libraries at Tamralipti (now in West Bengal) and at 24 monasteries. These libraries consisted ofBuddhist scriptures and commentaries and were well equipped and had a number of scribes to copy manuscripts. Non-Buddhist works had no place in these collections; if gifts of such works were received, they were sold and their

To the East of Samatata

The famous Chinese traveller Yuan Chwang travelled throughout India during the second quarter of the seventh century a.d.: he proceeded eastwards as far as Samataṭa, and when he was turning back he mentioned six countries which he had heard of but could not visit. Their names are given in serial order: “(1) Shihli-Ch'atalo to the north-east (from Samataṭa) among the hills near the sea; (2) south-east from this, on a bay of the sea, Kamolangka; (3) Tolopoti to the east of the preceding; (4) east from Tolopoti was Ishangnapulo; (5) to the east of this was Mohachanp'o; and (6) to the south-east of this was the Yenmonachou country.”

Art. V.—Notes on Hwen Thsang's Account of the Principalities of Tokháristán, in which some Previous Geographical Identifications are Reconsidered

Recently engaged in compiling a Map of Badakhshán and the adjoining regions, to illustrate a paper for the Geographical Society, I have naturally been led to consider the interesting geographical details which the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsang gives of those countries, as well as the current interpretations of his routes and localities. In several instances those interpretations seem to me open to amendment. The most eminent of Hwen Thsang's geographical illustrators are Major-General Cunningham and M. Vivien de St.-Martin; both of whom have dealt ably with the whole series of the Chinese Traveller's wanderings. If, after the careful study of a small part of these, I venture to differ from both accomplished commentators in regard to some of the identifications which concern that part only, I trust that I shall be guilty of no presumption. Recent documents, in part as yet unpublished, afford advantages for this discussion which were not available to my predecessors.

Art. IV.—Summary Review of the Travels of Hiouen Thsang, from the Translation of the Si-yu-ki by M. Julien, and the Mémoire Analytique of M. Vivien de St. Martin

In an appendix to the publication of the translatíon of the Travels of Fa Hian, the Foe Koue Ki, was added an itinerary professing to be that of another Chinese traveller, Hiouen Thsang, who visited India in the first half of the seventh century. As it was an extract from a geographical Encyclopædia of comparatively recent compilation, some doubt was suggested as to the degree of confidence to which it was entitled, although enough of interest was obviously attached to the account, and it was most desirable that we should have access to the original through the medium of a translation into some familiar idiom. The eyes of European scholars were naturally directed to the most eminent of sinologues, M. Stanislas Julien, who, in compliance with their wishes, undertook and has now completed the task. Some notice of the result of his labours will be, no doubt, acceptable to the Royal Asiatic Society, although the limited space that is compatible with the extent of the Journal compels me to a more summary review than a careful and minute analysis would require.

Art. VIII.—Account of the Foe Kúe Ki, or Travels of Fa Hian in India

To all those who take an interest in the early condition of India, and who are anxious to see that obscurity which hangs over the periods of its history prior to the Mohammedan invasion, dissipated, in however partial a degree, some most acceptable glimmerings of light have been presented in a recent continental publication. This work is derived from Chinese literature, and has been made accessible to European readers, by the talents and industry of some of the most eminent of those who have rendered Paris illustrious as a school for the cultivation of the language and literature of China. In the course of last year, a book, which was announced some years ago, but was suspended by the lamented death of its distinguished translator, the late M. Remusat, and again interrupted by the demise of another celebrated Orientalist, M. Klaproth, who had undertaken to continue it, was brought to a completion, and published by M. Landresse. It is entitled the “Foe Kúe Ki,” or “Relation des Royaumes Buddhiques,” and is an account given of his travels by Shi Fa Hian, a Buddhist priest and pilgrim, who went upon a pilgrimage to the chief seats of the Buddhist religion in India, at the close of the fourth century of our aera. Shi Fa Hian, or simply Fa Hian, a name which signifies, according to M. Remusat, “Manifestation de la Loi de Sakya,” or “Manifestation de la Loi,” quitted China with this purpose in the year of our Lord 399. He was six years on his route to Central India, including of course a residence, more or less protracted, at various places on the way; he spent six years in India, and was three years on his return, arriving in China a.d. 415. The accounts which he gives are such as might be expected from his religious character, and, to say the truth, are somewhat meagre, relating almost exclusively to the condition in which the religion of Buddha existed at the different places which he visited. Such as they are, however, they are exceedingly curious and instructive, even in this limited view, and exhibit a picture of the state of Buddhism in India, flourishing in some situations and declining in others, which, although we were not wholly unprepared to expect, yet we were hitherto without any accurate means of appreciating. Besides, however, their especial subservience to an authentic history of the religion of Buddha, the travels of Fa Hian are of great value, as offering living testimony of the geographical and political divisions of India at an early date, and one at which we have no other guide on whom we can rely. I have, therefore, thought that a summary review of the principal subjects which are described in the Chinese traveller's journal might not be unacceptable to the Society.