National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

goes still farther in his »Älteste chinesische Beziehungen zu Innerasien«.¹ He identifies the
fire-mountain K'un, mentioned in the Shu-ching, with the K'un-lun, and believes to re-
cognize it in an earlier volcano north of Kucha, that is to say in the central part of
Tien-shan; and as the name K'un-lun is already mentioned in the Yü-kung, the oldest Im-
perial Geography of the Chinese, Conrady removes their knowledge so far back as to
the 20. or 22. century B. C. However, he cautiously adds that this supposition holds good
only in case that the Chinese tradition is authentic. HERRMANN, on the other hand, denies de-
cidedly that the Chinese have had any positive knowledge whatever regarding the Tarim
Basin and the mountains of Central Asia before the second century B. C. Lower down in this
volume he tries to prove that the oldest China, as it is described in the Yü-kung in reality
did not reach so far as to the threshold of Central Asia at Tun-huang, not only to Ning-hsia
on the great bend of the Huang-ho and to the source of the Wei-ho in Eastern Kansu; further
that the supposed K'un-lun Mountain in reality was a tribe, the Kun-lun 昆侖, though
not in Tibet, but in the district of Ordos, to which the phantastically depicted expedition
of the above-mentioned king Mu in reality was directed, — or, in a word, there is
nothing that indicates a mountain of Central Asia before the second century B. C.²

It seems, as if the term Ts'ung-ling during different periods of China's history, and even
to different travellers of the same period, has had a different meaning. Sometimes one even gets
the impression that the Chinese writer himself has not been quite sure of what he meant with
the term, and that he was not able to point out the physical boundaries of the Ts'ung-ling.

It must be regarded as a most fascinating task within the domains of historical
geography to try and find out how far the Chinese information of the Kara-korum reached,
and what they, during different epochs, really meant by the Onion Passes of classical
fame. To approach the solution of this problem we have consulted, as we hope, nearly
all those passages of the Chinese literature — partially translated here for the first time — where
the Ts'ung-ling is mentioned. When reading those old narratives and chronicles one cannot
but admire the determination and perseverance with which the Chinese travellers have pene-
trated this region, so difficult of access, and once a terra incognita even to them. One
feels astonished at their objectivity, their truth, their self-restraint, their calmness, their
patience, their courage, and that perfect lack of boasting or exaggeration that characterises
their narratives. The fables they tell belong to their time, their creed and their religious
superstition. But their geography is conscientious and in most cases correct and if their
statements in mathematical exactitude cannot be compared with what nowadays is demanded
by European scientific explorers, they are, at any rate, by far superior to the European
travellers of the Middle ages, nay, to many modern explorers, and to the information
brought together by any other Oriental nation.

In the time of the emperor Wu-ti (B. C. 140—87) of the Han dynasty, the Chinese
got their first knowledge of the existence of great civilised nations in the west. In B. C. 125
Chang Ch'ien 張騫³ returned from his expedition to the countries at the Yaxartes and