Author Archives: Tina Schivatcheva

Silk Road Travellers’ Texts Conference, Zhejiang Normal University, 15-16 December 2018

On the 15th of December 2018, Dr Sally K Church presented a paper entitled “Illuminated Texts Presented to the Mongol Khans by 13th-14th-century Western Travellers” at the International Conference on “Silk Road Travellers’ Texts from the 13th-14th centuries: Bibliography and Research”, held in Zhejiang Normal University 浙江师范大学, Jinhua 金华, Zhejiang 浙江, China, 15-16 December 2018. She was accompanied by Yasmin Faghihi, Head of the Near and Middle Eastern Department, Cambridge University Library, who presented a paper on “Paper: A Commodity and its Impact on Cultural Expressions”. We were fortunate to have Zhao Luyang 趙魯陽 with us to help us navigate to the conference and prepare our 12-minute presentations. She was an excellent interpreter and commented masterfully on our papers.

The name of the conference in Chinese was “13-14 shiji silu jixing wenxue wenxian zhengli yu yanjiu” yantaohui (‘13-14 世纪丝路纪行文学文献整理与研究’研讨会).

 

”The Maritime Expeditions of Zheng He”: Dr. Sally Church’s lecture at SOAS

The first page of a set of maps associated with Zheng He’s voyages called Zheng He hanghai tu 郑和航海图, also known as “the Mao Kun map”, from a collection dated 1628, but perhaps from a century earlier.

On the 6th of November 2018, Dr. Sally Church delivered a lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on the topic: ‘The Maritime Expeditions of Zheng He’ as part of the ‘Maritime Silk Route: Across the Seas of Asia’, a Specialist Art Short Courses programme of the Department of the History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts, and also part of the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art at SOAS.

The event took place on the 6th of November, 10-11.15 am, Room B202, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG.

Xiang Da’s 1934 Transcription of Chen Cheng’s Diary & Treatise

(This source has been summarised and put online by Dr. Sally K. Church with the help of Tina Schivatcheva.)

Between 1413 and 1420, Chen Cheng 陳誠 (1365–1457) travelled on three diplomatic missions between China and Herat (in present-day Afghanistan). These missions are remarkable because of the length of the journey (approximately 4,053 miles, or 6,521 km), and because of the written records Chen Cheng left behind. Of particular interest are the diary, or logbook, he wrote of the first outgoing journey, Xiyu xingcheng ji 西域行程記 (Record of the Journey to the Western Regions), and the treatise he wrote on eighteen of the places he visited along the way, entitled Xiyu fanguo zhi 西域番國志 (Account of the Polities in the Western Regions). He presented both works to the reigning emperor, Emperor Yongle 永樂 (r. 1403-1424), on his return to China in 1415 after completing his first mission.

The treatise was significantly abridged (from 6,000 to 2,000 characters) and then included in the Ming Shilu 明實錄 (Veritable Records of the Ming), where it is referred to as “Shi Xiyu ji” 使西域記 (Record of the Mission to the Western Regions, Ming Taizong shilu 明太宗實錄, v. 13, j. 169, pp. 2b–6b). Parts of it were later copied into other works, including the Ming shi 明史 (Official History of the Ming). The diary, on the other hand, dropped out of circulation until 1933, when it was discovered, together with a full version of the treatise, in a private collection. This collection was purchased by the Beijing (then Beiping) Library. In 1936, these two works by Chen Cheng were included in a larger collection of manuscripts called Guoli Beiping tushuguan shanben congshu 國立北平圖書館善本叢書 (Shanghai: Commercial Press), printed in 1937.

After the two works were discovered, but before they were published in the Beiping Libarary collection, they were transcribed and published by Xiang Da 向達, in two parts, numbers 3 and 4 of volume 2 of the journal Yu Gong 禹貢 (1934). This journal is rather obscure, but two copies are held in the Cambridge University Library. One of the copies, however, is missing number 4. The other copy of the journal has both issues (3 and 4). Because the task of finding Xiang Da’s two articles is so difficult and complex, I decided to scan them and make them available here, with thanks to the Cambridge University Library.

In the lists of contents for the the two issues, Parts 1 and 2 are both called by the name Xiyu xingcheng ji, even though Part 2 also contains Xiyu fanguo zhi. The transcription of Xiyu xingcheng ji begins in Part 1 (Vol. 2, No. 3), but does not quite finish the work by the end. It is continued in Part 2 (Vol. 2, No. 4), followed by the transcription of Xiyu fanguo zhi.

The complete reference to the two works is:

Xiang Da 向達. 1934. Xiyu xingcheng ji 西域行程記 and Xiyu fanguo zhi 西域番國志, in Yu Gong 禹貢, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1 Oct. 1934), pp. 31-41; and Vol. 2, No. 4 (16 Oct. 1934), pp. 18-28.

These versions of the the diary and treatise have been reprinted, with annotations, in the modern edition of Chen Cheng’s collected works: Zhou Liankuan 周連寬, ed. and annot. (2000), Xiyu xingcheng ji 西域行程記 and Xiyu fanguo zhi 西域番國志, by Chen Cheng 陳誠 and Li Xian 李暹, in the series Zhong wai jiaotong shiji congkan 中外交通史籍叢刊 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju).

Xiang Da’s work has therefore now been superseded by Zhou Liankuan’s. However, Xiang Da’s 1934 version in Yu Gong does contain his short introduction, which is of interest.

You can download the two works by clicking on the following link: XiangDa1934Diary_Treatise