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JESUIT TRAVELLERS in CENTRAL ASIA 1603-1721 Statue of Bento De Goes at Villa Franca Do Campo-Azores EARLY JESUIT TRAVELLERS IN CENTRAL ASIA 1603-1721 Statue of Bento de Goes at Villa Franca do Campo-Azores. EARLY JESUIT TRAVELLERS IN CENTRAL ASIA 1603-1721 C. WESSELS WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS ASIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES NEW DELHI * MADRAS * 1992 ASIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES. • C-2/15, S.DA NEW DELHI-110016 • 5 SRIPURAM FIRST STREET, MADRAS-600014. Price: Rs. 295 N.C. Rs. 36S(Speclal Price for Nepal) FlrstPubllshed:.1924 AES Reprint: 1992 ISBN: 81-206-0741-4 Published by J ..Jetley for 1\SJN.J EDUCATIONAL SERVICES C-2/IS,SOANewOelhl-110016 Processed by APEX PUBLICATION SERVICES NewOelhl-110016 Printed at C":oaytrf Offset Press. A-06, S.No. 2 Nolda, Dlstt. Ghazlabad (U.P.) EARLY JESUIT TRAVELLERS IN CENTRAL ASIA 1603-1721 BY C. WESSELS, S. j. WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. 1924 ISBN 978-94-017-6736-1 ISBN 978-94-017-6836-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-6836-8 PREFACE "If, as is undoubtedly the case, there are still vast regions unknown and unsurveyed for future travellers to explore, there is quite as large an undiscovered region, in the buried archives of the past, for the historical explorer to unearth and make known to us." SIR CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM 1). To many generations of geographers Central Asia, especially Tihet, was the land of mystery and darkness, isolated by nature and by man, in whose midst lay the sacred city of Lhasa, even more mysterious and unapproachable than Mecca or Kerbela; and it is only for some decades past that it has counted among the great fields of operation of modern geography. High as Mont Blanc are the desert-like plateaux of this "Roof of the World", and as if this elevation was not enough to render them difficult of access, they are set about by almost impassable mountain ranges; an arctic climate reigns in those bleak and forlorn regions. And if a traveller be so undaunted and hardy as to brave all the obstacles of nature, and to climb his way towards those icy wastes, he will find his road barred and himself ruthlessly turned back by the sparse inhabitants, inhospitable as their mountain sides. Hardly any explorer from Prejevalsky to Sven Hedin but testifies to the jealousy with which those desolate regions are guarded, and even as late as 1923 Dr. Montgomery McGovern experienced this inveterate distrust of the foreigner. It has not always been thus. This aversion did not exist in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before Chinese domination had influenced Tibet and grafted its own love of seclusion on its inhabitants. It was this milder feeling towards strangers from the West that allowed some Jesuit missionaries to explore the coun­ try. They entered it from the south and from the north, they traversed it along the valleys of the Indus and the Tsangpo, they 1) Losl Geographical Documents.- Geographical Journal (1913) vol. XLII, p. 34. VI PREFACE saw men and things unseen by any European before, they encoun­ tered hardships and dangers not less formidable than those for which we rightly admire explorers of a later date- and yet while the labours of other Jesuits contributed so largely to the opening up of China, the Philippines, Abyssinia and wide tracts of North and South America, Tibet practically remained an unknown coun­ try. They did, indeed, like their fellow-workers in other climates, record their experiences, but, strange to say, most of their writ­ ings remained hidden away in dusty archives, and the few things given to the world were vague and hazy and, to some minds, more suggestive of fiction than of fact, and thus cast a shadow of un­ certainty even over the few facts that had actually become known, justifying Hedin's remark that "over the interior of the vast Asiat­ ic Continent there hovered a pale reflection, faint and shadowy, of the journeys of Marco Polo and the old Jesuits" 1). This aspect of things has changed of late years. The merits of those "old Jesuits" have come more to the front, and more than once have met with due recognition at the hands of competent judges. At the same time criticism has not been idle: it has be~n caustic, it has even been unfair -the more unfair as being hased on ignorance or superficial knowledge. What the late Dr. Sieg­ mund Gunther, of Munich, wrote to me some years ago, is emi­ nently applicable to Tibet: "That the Jesuits have done much for our geographical knowledge is recognized on all hands; what they have done we hardly know at all." It is here we have one of Mark­ ham's undiscovered regions "for the historical explorer to unearth''. All the journeys that have been u!'ldertaken in Tibet by Jesuit missionaries will be treated of in the present work. The writer has had access to old books and other publications of which but few copies are known to exist, but the bulk of the information here presented was never published at all, and is derived from a large number of manuscripts which it has been his good fortune to "un­ earth" in the archives of the Society of Jesus. Each of the follow­ ing chapters will have its own list of MSS. appended. The object which the writer has tried to keep constantly in view, is to deter­ mine the scientific value of those letters, journals &c., to place the merits of their writers in their proper light, and thus to assign to them their rightful place among those who have contributed to- 1 ) Sven Hedin, Scientific ResuUs of a Journey in CentYal Asia z8gg-zgoz {Stock· holm 1907) IV, 531. PREFACE VII wards the development of geographical science. Hence the subject has been treated with such fulness as the limits of the book would pennit, and, while drawing on every accessible source of informa­ tion, the data furnished by the old documents have been tested by the light of the facts supplied by modem travellers. A few points should not be forgotten, if we would arrive at an equitable judgment. Those men had not been, as a rule, prepared for their arduous undertakings by thorough geographical and ethnical studies; they did not set out richly equipped with physic­ al instruments of various kinds; they were pioneers in the fullest sense of the word; without any precursors, without maps, without the experience of others to guide them. Nor, while they were out in regions untrodden by European foot, did they consider them­ selves in the first place discoverers who were making a name for themselves; geographers adding fresh data to the stock of human ki1owledge; explorers widening the horizon of the human mind; -before everything else they were, and remained, missionaries going out to cast abroad the seeds of the Gospel wherever human heart would give it soil; whose one ultimate purpose was to gain so\•.ls rather than to discover territories; who never lost sight of their raison d' etre, and therefore carried into their enterprises the same indomitable energy and daring that had called them away from friends and home to brave the perils of the deep without any wish or hope of gain or glory. Thus they must not be looked upon as geographical specialists, but as honest, level-headed men, writ­ ing of their experiences in a land of bewildering strangeness; their writings should not be perused by the light of the exacting canons of the specialist who reports for a geographical magazine or to a learned society. They should be read, with a critical eye indeed, but not in a spirit of fault-finding, and as to the facts reported, with a bias in their favour unless they can be shown to have erred. Certainly they did make mistakes, as who does not? Their written accounts are often insignificant, abounding in generalities and hopelessly lacking in those points which a scientific training would have made them pick up as of first rate importance. But even so they have theh merits as every pioneer has. Each chapter of this book is complete in itself and can be read independently. Bento de Goes' journey has been placed at the head by way of introduction, because his journey carried him VIII PREFACE from Lahore via Kabul, Yarkand and Turfan to Su-cheu, and thus covers almost the whole of Central Asia. This chapter and the following on Andrade were published in Dutch some years ago 1) ; as they appear here, they have been corrected and in large part re-written. The writer does not feel called upon to premise a detailed geo­ graphical and physical description of Tibet. The books of travel and exploration that have appeared of late years are so numerous, and the character both of the country and its inhabitants have become so generally known that the map appended to the book may be deemed a sufficient guide for the general reader. Finally there remains the pleasant task of recording the kind help and the valuable suggestions which I have received from so many quarters, and I wish to express here my deep sense of grati­ tude to the numerous friends and correspondents who have thus contributed towards the making of this book. Though it is impos­ sible for me to mention them all individually I cannot forbear to name two whose claims transcend all others: Father Henry Hosten, S. J., of St. Joseph's College, Darjeeling, the learned writer on the mission-history of India, who more than once directed my researches in my hunt for documents; and my friend Father Thomas Neervens, S.
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