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NATURE 



[Dec. 20, 1888 



would otherwise have been. Lives which have been spent 

 in the effort to secure this knowledge have not been lived 

 in vain. To aid in securing that the tenth edition of the 

 "Encyclopaedia Britannica" shall mark an advance in 

 our mastery over Nature comparable with that which is 

 chronicled in the ninth there are still those among us 

 who " would even dare to die." 



MEDI/EVAL RESEARCHES EROM EASTERN 

 ASIATIC SOURCES. 



Mediceval Researches from Easterti 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. (London: Triibner and Co., 

 1888.) 



FOR some years past, owing mainly to the labours of 

 Colonel Yule, European students have been made 

 acquainted with the travels of European explorers of the 

 Middle Ages in Central Asia and China. In " Cathay and 

 the Way Thither,'' published in 1866 by the Hakluyt 

 Society, and especially in his monumental edition of 1875 

 of the travels of Marco Polo, Colonel Yule laid before 

 the world a record of practically all that had been done 

 by mediaeval travellers from Europe in these regions. Dr. 

 Bretschneider's work is of the same nature, inasmuch as 

 it deals with explorations of the same period in the same 

 regions, but with this exception — his travellers are Chinese 

 and start from China, Colonel Yule's are European and 

 start from Europe. The former goes to Chinese litera- 

 ture as his storehouse, the latter to European literature. 

 Each is complementary to the other ; and, indeed. Dr. 

 Bretschneider acknowledges that it was Colonel Yule's 

 works that led him to -study and collect the materials 

 supplied by Chinese literature regarding the mediaeval 

 history and geography of Central Asia. He found that 

 such quotations from the works of Chinese travellers as 

 had made their way to Europe were not always carefully 

 or faithfully translated ; and as his position of physician to 

 the Russian Legation at Pekin gave him peculiar oppor- 

 tunities of study, and placed at his disposal the valuable 

 and rare library of Chinese works collected over a long 

 series of years, at the expense of the Russian Govern- 

 ment, by the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, he deter- 

 mined to investigate the subject at first hand for himself. 

 The result was the publication, in the pages of the Trans- 

 actions of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic 

 Society between 1874 and 1876, of a series of papers 

 dealing with Chinese knowledge of Central Asia, and 

 Chinese travellers there from about 1200 to 1600. Three 

 of these papers are collected in the volumes before us, 

 and form, as it were, the backbone of the work, viz. 

 "Notes on Chinese Mediaeval Travellers to the West"; 

 " Notices of the Mediaeval Geography and History of 

 Central and Western Asia"; and " Chinese Intercourse 

 with the Countries of Central and Western Asia during 

 the Fifteenth Century." The new edition is brought up 

 to date by references to the results of recent researches 

 and investigations of Russian and other travellers, and 

 especially to the vast increase in our knowledge of these 

 regions produced by the rapid extension of Russian 

 territory in the direction of India and China. 



Dr. Bretschneider tells us that Chinese literature 

 contains very considerable accounts of the geography 

 of Asia at different times, and of the nations which 

 formerly inhabited that part of the ancient world. These 

 are mostly to be found in the histories of the various 

 dynasties which have successively ruled China. At the 

 end of each of the twenty-four dynastic histories, a 

 section is devoted to the foreign countries and nations 

 which came in contact with the Chinese Empire. These 

 were probably collected by Chinese envoys, or compiled 

 from the reports of envoys or merchants coming from 

 those countries. Another category is drawn up in the 

 form of narratives of journeys undertaken by Chinese. 

 They never travelled, it seems, for pleasure, or to enlarge 

 their sphere of knowledge. We owe all their narratives 

 of travel either to military expeditions, or official missions, 

 or pilgrimages to places famed for their sanctity. The 

 number of these reports is not inconsiderable ; but 

 the difficulty of searching them out is great, as they 

 do not, as a rule, exist as separate publications, but 

 lie concealed amongst collections of reprints ; and many 

 of them have been wholly lost, their existence at one time 

 being known only from ancient catalogues, or quotations in 

 books which have survived. The difificulties of elucidation 

 also are very great, for even when translated they require 

 a vast number of explanations. This will be understood 

 when we mention that, besides prefaces, introductions, 

 explanations in the text, &c., there are 1188 footnotes, 

 some of them running over several pages, in these two 

 volumes, containing altogether rather less than 700 pages. 

 The first paper, entitled " Notes on Chinese Mediaeval 

 Travellers to the West," is confined to the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, " the period of the development and the zenith of the 

 power of the Mongols in Asia," and the earliest journey 

 recorded in it is the itinerary of Chinghiz Khan's army from 

 Mongolia through Central Asia to Persia in 1219. This is 

 followed by the record of the journey of an envoy of the Em- 

 peror of North China, sent in 1220 to Persia, and as far as 

 the Hindu-Kush Mountains, to meet Chinghiz Khan. The 

 third journey recorded is that of a monk, who travelled, by 

 order of the great conqueror, from China to Samarkand 

 He left Shantung, in the extreme east of China in 1220. 

 went by way of Pekin, crossed the eastern part of 

 Mongolia, probably passed near the modern Uliassutai, 

 traversed the Chinese Altai Mountains, near the present 

 Urumtsi, and along the northern slope of the Thian-Shan 

 Range to Lake Sairam, whence he descended into Hi, went 

 through Tashkend, crossed the Syr-Dariainto Samarkand, 

 and thence went southwards to Balkh, and on to Cabul. 

 He returned by the same route, except that he made a 

 shorter cut across the Mongolian desert ; and arrived at 

 Pekin in 1224. Such a journey performed either way to-day 

 would probably make the traveller the geographical hero 

 of the year, and it is recorded that, when he entered 

 Pekin on his return, "venerable old men, men and women, 

 assembled from all sides, and accompanied the master (the 

 traveller) with fragrant flowers, and bowing before him 

 obstructed the road." The fourth traveller started from 

 Mongolia, and going by Samarkand, went westward to 

 the Elburz Range, and the country where the Mulahi or 

 Assassins lived ; and the fifth was a Mongol officer who 

 wandered about Central Asia between 1260 and 1262. 

 The records of these various journeys are full of the most 



