THE TRAVELS OF FA.-HSIEN.*
Tun book of which this is a revised edition appeared nearly fifty years ago. For half a century it remained the best available translation of Fa-hsien, and it has now been super- seded not by the work of some younger scholar, but by the efforts of its still vigorous and enterprising author. The publishers are to be congratulated on having made of this new edition an elegant and delightful little book. Professor Giks has never been a philologian in the German sense of the word. All his life he has persistently brought before the English reader only that which seemed to him to be of general human interest. There are many scholars who would turn Fa-hsien into a textbook of Buddhist history or a treatise upon Indian geography. To Professor Giles the pilgrim's story is simply a human document. There are too few rather than too many human professors in the world, and we owe much to the humanity of Professor Giles. It must, however, be said that there are still a great many points in Fa-hsien's text which require elucidation. The work requires a knowledge not only of Chinese, but also of Buddhism and Indian languages ; it is, I believe, being done by Dr. Friedrich Weller, a very learned professor of the other kind.
Turning from Fa-hsien's interpreters to his own text, it is worth noting that it is extremely short. It occupies only sixteen pages of print in the Chinese edition which lies before me ; it is, in fact, about the length of an article in a modern quarterly. It is obvious that the writer of so small a pamphlet must, if he is to produce literature and not a mere schedule of names and numbers, use every device to avoid small concrete details. One feels that Fa-hsien might with advan- tage have relegated to a table at the end of his brochure information about the number of monasteries and clergy in the places he visited. The refrain is too long for the song. It is a relief for once (on p. 68) to come to "villages, all the inhabitants of which are pagans and know nothing of the Buddhist Faith, of cramanas or Brahmans or any other of
• The Travels of Pa-hsien (399.414 A.D.); or, Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms. Re-translated by H. A. Giles, M.A., Professor of Chinese in the University of Cam- bridge. Cambridge : at the University Press, 1923. 15s. net.]
the heterodox religions." However, the exquisite retort made by some pilgrims to the teasing questions of these heathen shows once again that in the art of repartee Paganism
is no match for piety.
I have said that Professor Giles deals always in what is humanly touching and interesting. It is such passages as the following that have given him an affection for Fa-hsien :
" He had now been many years away from his own land of Han ; the people he had had to deal with were all inhabitants of strange countries ; the mountains, the streams, the plants and trees on which his eyes had lighted were not those of old days ; moreover, those who had travelled with him were separated from him— some having remained behind in these countries, others having died. Now, beholding only his own shadow, he was constantly sad at heart ; and when suddenly, by the side of this jade image, he saw a merchant make offering of a white silk fan from China, his feelings overcame him and his eyes filled with tears."
There is no other passage in the book so intimately personal as this. There is a good deal of Buddhist folk-lore, some of it queer, some of it beautiful, and all of it very tangled and Indian. But undoubtedly the chief value of the book is scientific rather than aesthetic, and for this reason I think it a pity that the translator has "attempted to make the narrative appeal to the general reader by the omission of foot-notes which most people dislike, and of references to authorities which are usually altogether ignored." Is there not here some confusion of thought ? Of course, readers are irritated when poetry or pure literature, perfectly intelligible in themselves, are burdened by an unnecessary display of philological dis- cursiveness. But do they ever prefer that works of informa- tion (and this is surely one) should be inadequately supplied with commentary ? Notes on Herrick are tiresome. But it would be equally tiresome if, say, Bradshaw were, like some of his continental colleagues, to omit all explanation of the stars and daggers which decorate his text. To continue the metaphor, does " Vaipulya Parinirvana Sutra" (p. 65) mean
Saturdays only, or Saturdays excepted ? And what of the "Yen (?) siitra " ? The first question-mark is Professor Giles's, but the doubt it implies will be echoed by every
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