Samuel Beal
The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang
Centuries before biography became a business, before the peccadilloes of Royal mistresses and forgotten courtesans obtained a ''market value,'' the writing of the Master's life by some cherished disciple was both an act of love and piety in the far East. The very footprints of the famous dead became Luminous, and their shadows shone in dark caves that once withheld them from the world.
SI-YU-KI
The reader who looks into the pages of this book will find ample material for study on some important questions; the different manners and customs of separate people, the various products of the different soils and the diverse class divisions of the society; when Buddhism flourished and when Buddhism declined as also how the devoted pilgrims encountered the perils of travel in foreign and distant lands and endured sufferings by desert, mountain and sea.