Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

38 IXTKODUCTIO.V.
word, from the Ling-wai-tai-ta, and in chapters IX, XVIII, XXIII, XXIV,
XL and XLII he has made good use of this same work.
Geographical studies, though extensively applied to every part of China
proper during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were treated with consider-
able contempt where foreign countries were concerned. The enthusiasm for 5
geographical record^ shown by the men of the Fan Ch5ng-ta, Ch6u K'u-fei
and Chau Ju-kua kind, was certainly rare and unappreciated in their times;
the public taste was not given that way. Chang K'i6n and Pan Ch'ao, the
early explorers of the West, had become national heroes, it is true; Fa-hie
and Htian-tsang, the Buddhist pilgrims, had in their time occupied public 10
attention in a high degree, but Confucian learning was the order of the day
at the end of the twelfth century, when Chu Hi was writing his great Com-
mentaries on the Confucian classics. The antiquities of China, the history of
its art, the philosophy of the classical and Tauist schools, Buddhist chrono-
logy, the poetry of the past and present, all were studied with an ardour 15
worthy of a period which may justly be called the age of renaissance in
China. But the knowledge of foreign countries was an obscure, unprofitable
hobby, taken up only by a few officials whose special duties disposed them to
make these researches, and which in no way appealed to the public fancy.
Confucian philosophers actually threw discredit on what was then known oi 20
the geography of foreign parts, and one of the well-known essayists of the
period, Ch'ong Ta-ch'ang, tried in his K'ao-ku-pien to prove the untrust-
worthiness of all geographical information on foreign lands.
The first publication of the complete text of the Chu-fan-chi was, it
would seem, in the early part of the fifteenth century, when it was incorpor- 25
ated- in the great collection of Chinese literary works called the Yung-lota-tien
(Jfi ^ M).
-i^
In this ponderous and extremely rare manuscript
collection it remained buried until 1783, when it was unearthed by a learned
Han-lin and a great lover of literature, Li TMau-yuan (^ fj| 7ic),andin-
corporated in his collection known as the Han-hai (g 'z^). From this, the 30
first printed copy, it would seem, of this book ever published, another edition
was made in Chang Hai-p'ong's (gg ;^ |J|)
collection entitled Hiau-tsint'au-yuan
(^ l^ |ij- J^), which was brought out in 1805. These two ver-
n