1848.] through Ariana and India. 4/7 



prior to the Mahomedan conquests. The minute accuracy of its details 

 and the faithful transcription of the native names of men and places, 

 give it a vast superiority over all the Mussalman works that I have 

 seen, excepting only that of Abu Rihan. And yet this invaluable ac- 

 count has been impugned by Major Anderson of the Bengal Artillery, who 

 states his conviction that in its present form the nomenclature of Hwan 

 Thsang cannot claim an antiquity of one hundred years : and he after- 

 wards remarks that " the distances and directions are utterly worthless, 

 being the combined results of misreadings, misunderstandings and guess- 

 work." This is a sweeping condemnation of one of the most accurate 

 of all ancient works, but I am happy to say that I can prove beyond all 

 doubt that Hwan Thsang is nearly always right in his " distances and 

 directions," and that the Major is generally wrong in his conclusions. 

 In the first place, Major Anderson has used the wrong key, and he 

 has consequently failed in unlocking the treasure of Hwan Thsang' s 

 Itinerary. Having fallen upon the word Chi-na lo-che-fe-lo, 

 which Hwan Thsang says was the name given to the peaches introdu- 

 ced into the Panjab from China, the Major's Persian reading immedi- 

 ately suggested that it was derived from the Persian term shaftdlu (a 

 peach), with the name of China prefixed to designate the country from 

 whence the fruit had been imported. But & partial similarity of sound 

 cannot be admitted as a proof of identity, when we have the direct tes- 

 timony of Hwan Thsang himself that the name bore a very different 

 meaning. Chinishaftdlu means simply " China peaches, " whereas the 

 meaning of the original name was " son of the king of China. " These 

 translations, added to the transcriptions, enable us to identify the names 

 in Hwan Thsang's Itinerary beyond all possibility of doubt. Thus 

 Chi-na-lo-che-fe-ta-lo, is only a transcript in Chinese syllables of 

 China-raja-putra, " sons of the China Raja. " The Chinese alphabet 

 possesses no R, and consequently this letter, as in the present instance, 

 is always replaced by L. I have stated that Chinishaftdlu bears only 

 a partial similarity to Hwan Thsang's name: for it will be remarked 

 that the third syllable of the original is altogether omitted in the 

 Major's proposed reading ; whereas my rendering of the term gives an 

 equivalent for each syllable, and at the same time possesses the exact 

 meaning attributed to the appellation by Hwan Thsang. 



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