The Travels of Fa-Hsien – H. A. Giles (1923) (1st ed)

S$90.00

The Travels of Fa-Hsien – H. A. Giles (1923) (1st ed)

S$90.00

The first edition of Giles’ second translation of the work, which is more accurate than his first translation of 1877.

Title: The Travels of Fa-hsien (399-414 A.D.), or Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms

Author: Faxian, H. A. Giles (trans.)

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1923. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, no dust jacket. Good. Ex-libris plate to endpaper, and some foxing. A small book. 96pp. excluding catalogue.

About Fa-hsien (from Wikipedia):

Faxian was a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled by foot from China to India, visiting many sacred Buddhist sites in what are now Xinjiang, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka between 399-412 to acquire Buddhist texts. His journey is described in his important travelogue, A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Xian of his Travels in India and Ceylon in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline. Antiquated transliterations of his name include Fa-Hien and Fa-hsien.

About Herbert Giles (from Wikipedia):

Herbert Allen Giles (8 December 1845 – 13 February 1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist who was the professor of Chinese at Cambridge University for 35 years. Giles was educated at Charterhouse School before becoming a British diplomat in China. He modified a Mandarin Chinese romanisation system established by Thomas Wade, resulting in the widely known Wade–Giles Chinese romanisation system. Among his many works were translations of the Analects of Confucius, the Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching), the Chuang Tzu, and, in 1892, the widely published A Chinese-English Dictionary.