About the book:

In this volume, the author wishes to sketch the portraits of some of the great characters of the time, from the founders of Chinese imperialism and of the T’ang dynasty to their contemporaries Hsuan-tsang and I-ching, the pious pilgrims whose travels across the Gobi desert and the Pamir plateau or along the shores of the South Seas equal in interest those of our most daring explorers, down to the thinkers and sages whose speculations attained, in the realm of metaphysics, horizons yet more vast.

Contents: In the China of the Epics; The Appeal of Buddhism; Through the Wide West; Persian Paintings in the Gobi; One the Eve of the Shattering of the Hordes; In the Land of Graeco-Buddhism; Towards the Holy Land of the Ganges; In the Sacred Places of Buddhism; A Journey in the Deccan in the Time of Ajanta; The Monastic City of Nalanda; Harsha, the Poet King; From Pamir to Tun-Huang; The Glory of the T’angs; Pilgrims of the Southern Seas; The Voyages of I-Ching; In the Peace of the Pagodas; The Metaphysical Flight of the Mahayana; In the Mystic Heaven of Buddhism; and the Revelation of Indian Art.

About the author (from wikipedia):

René Grousset (5 September 1885 – 12 September 1952) was a French historian, curator of both the Cernuschi and Guimet Museums in Paris, and a member of the prestigious Académie française. He wrote several major works on Asiatic and Oriental civilizations, with his two most important works being History of the Crusades (1934-1936) and The Empire of the Steppes, a History of Central Asia (1939), both of which were considered standard references on the subject.