塔里寒考

Abstract

Taoist Ch'ang-ch'un's Travels is one of the best travel stories in China. It is also an extremely important material on the historical geography of Central Asia in the Middle Ages. Emile Bretschneider, Wang Kuo-wei and Arthur Waley have made considerable contributions toward identifications of various place names appearing in the Travels and the routes followed by the Taoist and his followers. It was the late Professor Michiyo Naka who, for the first time, pointed out confusion in the chronology of Chingis Khan's expeditions into Central Asia and corrected the errors in both Persian and Chinese histories of the time, and the main source he used for this purpose was the Travels. There remain, however, a few points that have not yet been clarified; the location of T'a-li-han, the place where the Taoist was received in audience by Chingis Khan, etc. The present author tries to identify T'a-li-han not with the present Taliqan but with Kunduz and to prove that Ch'ang-ch'un did never go into or beyond the Hindu-kush.