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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2011
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.
I have retained, in regard to the name of the traveller, the spelling of M. Julien, Hiouen Thsang, although, in following the French pronunciation, it is necessary to render ou by u or oo; preferring the former, the first name should be written therefore Anglice, Hiuen, or perhaps even Hwen if it be a monosyllable, as English sinologues write Foe-koue-ki, “Foe-kwe-ki.” I have thought it right, however, to leave the name as it is written in French, as likely to be more generally known under that form; in all other instances I have represented ou by u, as in the frequently recurring term Poulo, “Pulo,” from the Sanskrit Pura, “a city.” I have also made a few other necessary adaptations, as ch for tch, and sh for ch, as in Kua-cheu for Koua-tcheou, and Sha-cheu for Cha-tcheou, and some others of obvious necessity, with reference to French and English pronunciation.
page 108 note 1 Something of this had been effected by the translators of the Foe-Kue-Ki, and by M. Reinaud, with the assistance, as he acknowledges, of M. Julien, in his Mémoire Géographique Historique et Scientifique de l'lnde; but the former verifications are not always correct, and the latter are of limited extent. A more copious verification of Hiouen Thsang's route, as laid down in the appendix to Fa-hian's, was published by Captain Cunningham in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xvii., containing much accurate and valuable illustration, to which M. St. Martin makes frequent reference. M. St. Martin has, of course, for the basis of his identifications, the results of M. Julien's scholarship in both Chinese and Sanskrit, and the complete and systematic concurrence he has been able to establish between the nomenclature of both languages.
