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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



An Inglorious Columbus ; or, Evidence 

 that Hwui Shan and a Party of Buddhist 

 Monks, from Afghanistan, discovered 

 America in the Fifth Century a. d. By 

 Edward P. Vining. New York : D. 

 Appleton & Co. Pp. 788, with Map. 

 Price, $5. 



The term " inglorious " is not intended 

 to be applied to our Christopher Columbus, 

 but, in the sense in which Gray, in his 

 " Elegy," speaks of " some mute, inglorious 

 Milton," to the Buddhist monk who, known 

 only to a few special scholars, has failed 

 to receive the universality of fame which 

 should be his due. According to the au- 

 thor's statement, and as is known to Asiatic 

 scholars, there is, among the records of 

 China, an account of a Buddhist priest who, 

 in the year 499 a. d., reached China, and 

 stated that he had returned from a trip to 

 a country lying an immense distance east. 

 In the case of other travelers, whose narra- 

 tives are also preserved in ancient Chinese 

 literature, the accounts which we possess of 

 their journeys were either written by them- 

 selves or their followers ; but, in the case 

 of Hwui Shan, the interest excited in his 

 story was so great that the imperial histo- 

 riographer, whose duty it was to record the 

 principal events of the time, entered upon 

 his omcial records a digest of the informa- 

 tion obtained from the traveler as to the 

 country which he had visited. It is this 

 official record, or rather a copy of it con- 

 tained in the writings of Ma Twanlin, which 

 is discussed in this work. But little doubt, 

 if any, exists as to the authenticity of the 

 record, but there are considerable differences 

 of opinion respecting what country it was 

 which the monks (who were missionaries of 

 Buddhism) visited, and described as Fusang. 

 Some of the critics believe it to have been 

 Japan, others America. Mr. Vining be- 

 lieves it was Mexico, and, in adducing the 

 considerations to support his belief, he tran- 

 scribes, or makes a summary of, all the pa- 

 pers that have been written on the subject, 

 except Mr. Leland's large book, which read- 

 ers are advised to buy. He believes that 

 the route followed by the priests, which is 

 obscurely described in their itinerary, was 

 from Japan, or the Asiatic mainland, along 

 the course of the Aleutian Islands " the 

 land of the marked bodies " to Alaska 

 "the Great Han" and thence along the 



Pacific coast to the " land of the Fusang- 

 trce," which plant is not yet identified, and 

 the " country of women," in Mexico. Among 

 the arguments relied upon to support this 

 view, are the correspondences of distances, 

 which, according to Mr. Vining's computa- 

 tions, are close enough ; the description of 

 the country of Fusang, the customs of its 

 people, and the characteristics of its vege- 

 tation, which is faithful as to Mexico, and 

 includes details that would not be true of 

 any other country ; accounts, in the tradi- 

 tions of Mexico, of the arrival of a party of 

 men similar to what the Buddhist party 

 must have been ; and the state of civiliza- 

 tion in Mexico at the time of the arrival of 

 the Spaniards, which was such as might 

 have grown up from an Asiatic implanta- 

 tion. On the other hand, the history of 

 Japan is reviewed, for the purpose of show- 

 ing that that could not have been the coun- 

 try visited. The book also contains a 

 translation of that part of the " Chinese 

 Classic of Mountains and Seas " which re- 

 lates to lands east of China a work which 

 is thought to be the oldest geography of the 

 world, and which has never before been 

 translated into any European language. 



Assyriology: Its Use and Abuse in Old 

 Testament Study. By Francis Brown. 

 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 

 Pp. 96. Price, $1. 



The author of this book is Associate 

 Professor of Biblical Theology in Union 

 Theological Seminary in this city. The 

 purpose of the book is to utter a caution 

 against too hasty and extensive generaliza- 

 tions upon the discoveries that are made, 

 one at a time, amid much groping in the 

 dark, among the ruins of the ancient em- 

 pires of the East, and which often seem to 

 have a bearing upon the records given in 

 the Bible. It is human nature to grasp 

 eagerly at evidence that seems to favor 

 what one wants proved, and to reject obsti- 

 nately what seems of an opposite charac- 

 ter ; and biblical scholars are prone to the 

 fault. Professor Brown advises such to 

 wait in matters of Assyriology for the re- 

 sults of searching criticism. The discov- 

 eries in that field, though undoubtedly des- 

 tined in the end to be of vast importance, 

 are, many of them not all as yet too 

 fragmentary and uncertain to build any- 



