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0025 Serindia : vol.1
Serindia : vol.1 / Page 25 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000183
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INTRODUCTION   xxi

accuracy and steady progress in the typographical work. It may here find mention that owing to the great distance separating me from the Press it was impossible for me to see more than one proof of Chapters I-VII, printed during 1913, and of Chapter VIII, passed through the press in the autumn of 1919. Even for that one proof the available time was very scanty and the conditions of work, done mainly in camp, not favourable to complete accuracy. This may explain the relative frequency of Errata as shown for this portion of the text in Addenda et Corrigenda below.

From Chapter VIII onwards the printed form of my work has derived very great benefit from the painstaking attention of Mr. C. E. FREEMAN, for whose advice, drawn from long literary experience, and self-sacrificing care over an often very irksome task I cannot feel too grateful. My want of Sinologue qualifications added much to the labour of securing uniformity in the transcription (according to Wade's system as adopted in Professor H. A. Giles's great Dictionary) of Chinese names and terms and to that of assuring general correctness in Chinese references. M. Chavannes up to 1913 had rendered me this great service, and subsequently Mr. L. C. HOPKINS, I.S.O., the distinguished Sinologist, testified his friendly interest in my work by generously stepping into M. Chavannes' place at a heavy sacrifice of time and labour. To Mr. Hopkins's special competence in matters of Chinese palaeography I had already before been indebted for the reading of certain ancient Chinese seals. Dr. L. GILES has rendered me very willing assistance in the reading of proofs of the chapters dealing with the ancient Chinese Limes, while Professor SYLVAIN Lrvi, aided in parts by Mr. A. D. WALEY, gave equally kind help for the proofs of the Appendices of our departed common friends, MM. Chavannes and Petrucci. Mr. J. ALLAN kindly helped me with the proofs of those portions of Serindia which deal with explorations on not specifically Chinese ground, his wide Oriental attainments enabling him to offer a series of valuable corrections. Since the pressure of other urgent tasks made it impracticable for me to prepare the Index myself, Mr. R. H. NEW, of the Oxford University Press, was entrusted with this troublesome task under my general guidance. For the painstaking care which he has devoted to it I wish to record my grateful acknowledgement.

The end of the long labours recorded•in these volumes finds me far away from beloved deserts and mountains, and the goal by the Oxus, towards which my eyes have been drawn since my youth, still shrouded in the uncertainties of the future.' But there is encouragement in the thought of a big task safely accomplished and in hopes shared by kind friends whose care from afar has followed me on all my Central-Asian wanderings and under whose ever hospitable roof this record of past results is,concluded.

AUREL STEIN.

23, MERTON STREET, OXFORD: November 19, 1920.

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