To the five-day-old land, spread the interpretation of the scriptures, the travel notes of the scriptures are annotated

Author: (Tang) Huichao, (Tang) Du Huan (original authors), Zhang Yi, Zhang Yichun (annotators)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2000-04-01
Features: Huichao traveled to India in the Tang Dynasty to seek Buddhist teachings and wrote Journey to the Five Continents after returning to China. This book records the conditions of the countries he passed through and serves as important material for studying Central Asia and India in the 8th century. The entire book is lost, with only fragments surviving in Dunhuang manuscripts. Scholars from China and abroad have conducted extensive research, and the annotators have absorbed the strengths of various studies, added their own insights, and provided detailed discussions on historical matters. Journey of the Buddhist Pilgrim was written by Du Huan, who was captured by the Muslim army during the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty. He traveled through various regions in Central and Western Asia before returning to China and wrote this book to record his observations in different countries, making it one of the earliest Chinese records of the Islamic world. The original book is lost, but it has been compiled from Comprehensive Treatise on Ceremonies and Rites and supplemented with detailed annotations. The authors have based their punctuation on photographs of the original Dunhuang manuscripts, added subheadings, and corrected errors in the interpretation of the original text that had accumulated over the past half-century, based on research on vernacular and variant characters in Dunhuang manuscripts both in China and abroad. Additionally, the authors have utilized the latest academic research on South and Central Asia to supplement and revise shortcomings or inaccuracies in Fujita's annotations.