Page:The Ancient Geography of India.djvu/19

PREFACE. ix

especially as his journal is particularly meagre in geographical notices.*

The third Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Thsang, was also a Buddhist priest, who spent nearly fifteen years of his life in India in studying the famous books of his religion, and in visiting all the holy places of Buddhism. For the translation of his travels we are wholly in- debted to M. Stanislas Julien, who with unwearied resolution devoted his great abilities for no less than twenty years to the acquirement of the Sanskrit and Chinese languages for this special purpose. The period of Hwen Thsang's travels extended from A.D. 629 to 645. During that time he visited most of the great cities throughout the country, from Kabul and Kashmir to the mouths of the Ganges and Indus, and from Nepal to Kanchipura near Madras. The pilgrim entered Kabul from the north-west, viâ Bamian, about the end of May, A.D. 630, and after many wanderings and several long halts, crossed the Indus at Ohind in April of the following year. He spent several months in Taxila for the purpose of visiting the holy places of Buddhism, and then proceeded to Kashmir, where he stayed for two whole years to study some of the more learned works of his religion. On his journey east- ward he visited the ruins of Sangala, so famous in the history of Alexander, and after a stay of fourteen months in Chinapati, and of four months in Jalandhara, for the further study of his religion he crossed the Satlej in the autumn of A.D. 635. From thence his onward course was more devious, as several times he

• The travels of both of these pilgrims have been most carefully

and ably translated by the Rev. S. Beal.

† Max Müller's ‘Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims,' p. 30.