Four Pilgrims :: CONTENTS

CONTENTS

I: HIUEN-TSIANG Master of the Law; and his Perilous Journey to the Sacred Land of Buddha, A.D. 627–643.
CHAP.		PAGE
I.	The Isolation of China	1
II.	Buddha and Buddhism	5
III.	An Adventurous Journey	9
IV.	Through India in the Seventh Century	27
V.	Indian Social Life in the Seventh Century	47
VI.	The Journey Home by a New and Perilous Route	55
VII.	Peaceful Days	61
II: SÆWULF, AN ENGLISH PILGRIM TO PALESTINE
I.	Early Pilgrimage to Palestine	65
II.	“Dieu le Veult”	68
III.	SÆwulf’s Record	72
III: MOHAMMED IBN ABD ALLAH, Better known as Ibn BatÛta, the Greatest of Moslem Travellers, A.D. 1304–77.
I.	The Whirlwind from Arabia and What Followed	89
II.	A Resolute Pilgrim	96
III.	A Roundabout Pilgrimage	104
IV.	Glimpses of Arabia, Persia and East Africa in the Fourteenth Century	109
V.	To India by Way of Constantinople and the Steppes	117
VI.	An Eastern Despot	128
VII.	Perils by Land and Sea	137
VIII.	Off to Malaysia and Cathay	147
IX.	Moors of Spain and Negroes of Timbuktu	158
IV: LUDOVICO VARTHEMA OF BOLOGNA, Renegade Pilgrim to Mecca, Foremost of Italian Travellers.
I.	The Great Age of the Renaissance and of Discovery	163
II.	From Venice to Damascus	165
III.	Over the Desert to Mecca	172
IV.	The Escape from the Caravan	186
V.	Certain Adventures in Arabia the Happy	190
VII.	The Pagans of Narsinga	208
VIII.	Farther India, Malaysia and the Banda Islands	221
IX.	Some Cunning Manoeuvres	235
X.	War by Land and Sea	244
XI.	The New Way Round the Cape	249

PREFACE

Pilgrimage has been popular in all countries and at all times. For what could be happier than an agreeable change which should contribute at once to welfare of soul, refreshment of spirit, and vigour of body? Adventures on the way gave zest to the enterprise. If the more timid or feeble were content to visit neighbouring shrines, those of hardier mould, like the Wife of Bath, took more formidable journeys.

“Thries hadde she been at Jerusalem;
She hadde passed many a straunge strem;
At Rome she hadde been, and at Boloigne,
In Galice at Seint Jame, and at Coloigne,
She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye.”

Some of the boldest and bravest of ancient travellers were pilgrims, and we have their records of wide wandering. But their style is archaic, has at best little purely literary merit, and is usually forbidding. They are little known, except to the special student.

The footprints then are scanty, and all the worse for time, which testify to ardent spirits that once inhabited the warm vesture of flesh, but have long, long ago been laid to rest. I have tried to set forth certain of these dead and half-forgotten worthies as with “organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,” even as we. Four have been chosen. Three of these were shrewd, fearless, observant men, who overcame surpassing obstacles and met with adventure almost unparalleled. The first of my bundle of four was a Chinaman, a Buddhist monk of the early Seventh Century, who started alone on an almost impossible quest. My second was an Englishman of the earliest years of the Twelfth Century, who gives us some notion of what the ordinary palmer was like who got to Jerusalem,

“e qui devoto

Il gran sepolchro adora e scioglie il voto”

(“and venerates the Holy Sepulchre and discharges his vow”). My third was a Mohammedan, who, in the first half of the Fourteenth Century, made several pilgrimages to Mecca and ran over the world from Tangier to Pekin and from Turkestan to Timbuktu. My fourth was a very son of the glowing age of Julius II, the first European Christian on record to reach Mecca, one who outstripped the Portuguese in reaching the aromatic islands of the Banda Sea. In each case, there is a brief historical foreword to give the pilgrim due introduction into his proper setting.

William Boulting.

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