Travel Writings on Asia: Curiosity, Identities, and Knowledge across the East, c. 1200 to the Present (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Curiosity, Identities, and Knowledge in Travel Writings on Asia
Travel Writings on Asia. Curiosity, Identities, and Knowledge Across the East, c. 1200 to the Present, 2022
The first chapter reflects on the nature of travelling as the paradigmatic form of human experience and its literary reflection in travel writings. In linking travels and experiences of human encounters, the chapter enquires into the relations between time and space by linking the historiographical traditions of travel writings on Asian spaces as readings of space across time with a critical analysis of the development of conceptualisations and inventions of Asian spaces. In addressing the analytical concepts of curiosity, identities, and knowledge, the chapter questions the dominance of an ideologically biased framework based on the Foucault–Saidian power–knowledge nexus that privileges the ideological assumption that imperialist appropriations of space are the human condition of travel writings. The chapter re-establishes curiosity as a human intellectual capacity at the centre of analysis to capture transnational space of encounters.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2020
Myths and legends travel just like humans to distant lands under different circumstances. One among the two most popular etiological myths of Tibet tells that the earliest settlers on the Tibetan plateau were refugees who escaped the conflicts described in the Indian epic Mahabharata. This serves as the first legend establishing the Indian connection with Tibet. Such journeys of humans, ideas and texts always stimulated imagination in human beings. The narratives of journeys woven with the author's imaginations and experiences, gave us travelogues. An ancient genre of literature, travelogues serve as the base for various fictional and non-fictional works. Travelogues inquired the unknown, making us aware of the existence of diversified cultural extremities present in this planet and thereby playing a crucial role in cultural exchanges. However, very interestingly texts also embark on journeys along with humans; and create neo-textual sites for future discourse. In this paper the focus is on the exchanges between India and Tibet. Beginning from the first Indian Scholar Santarakshita, followed by Padmasambhava, Atisha et al to 20 th century Rahul Sanskritiyan, there has been continuous movement of scholars to and fro Tibet. Apart from documenting their journeys, they initiated huge influx of literary texts between these two ancient countries. As a result of which Tibet became the store-house of ancient Nalanda Tradition while it faced destruction in India. So, the paper firstly seeks out to discuss the influences of Indian scholars and texts in Tibetan culture from ancient times. Secondly, it tries to chart out the representation of Tibet in the writings of these scholars and trace the birth of Buddhist literature in Tibet. Thirdly, since travelogues also supported cartographic purposes, they portrayed both the cultural and geo-political zones, it looks into the interpretation and misinterpretation of culture channelized through these documents. Lastly, it attempts to problematize the various versions of documents written regarding such people and their journeys to understand the nature of perceptions and experiences.
Lookinga tt he development of studies of travel writinga nd travel accounts through recent decades one can distinguish between three different stages: to begin with, and actually starting with the very first collections and bibliographies of travel accounts from the late eighteenth century onwards,t he texts werep rimarilya ppreciateda sg oldmines of informationa bout the continents, countries,s ocieties, and cultures described by the manyd ifferent pilgrims, explorers,s cholars, and tourists.F rom the 1980s onwards,a nd duen ot least to the influenceo fM ichel Foucault and of EdwardW .S aid's Orientalism¹ many of the same texts werec riticized and valued as sources for ab etter understanding of the travelers' own prejudices and imperial gaze,cultures, and mentalities and thoseo ft heira udience and readers. Through the lastcouple of decades, however,itseems as if we have entered yeta nother stage: awhole wave of studies aiming at presentingt ravela ccounts as sources for global, transnational, entangled, and connected histories (Verflechtungsgeschichte and histoire croisée), and history of knowledge (Wissensgeschichte). To some extent,these turns and programmatic calls have come about as ac ritical prolongation of the postcolonial studies of the final decades of the twentieth century,but realizingthatitmight not be enough to blame the West for its images and knowledge of "the Rest" has led manyt oabetter understanding of how travel accounts can be read not necessarilyasr eflections of an either/or approach, but as expressions of the interactive and multidimensional productivity of the encounters. When the contextual complexities and knowledge effects at both ends, at destinations as well as points of departure and return, have to be taken into account,the more interesting studies tend to concentrate on one travel account or one traveler at the time. Previously, studies of largera rrayso ft ravela ccountsthose to the Orient or the New World, or those of French, British, Italian, or German travelers for example-werefairlycommon. Today, such comparative studies certainlystill continue to be published,but new insights seem rather to come from studies of single and perhaps also less well-known travelersa nd travel accounts.
Colonial and Gender Discourses in Modern European Travel Writing About East Asia
History Research, 2012
This article explains how modern European travelers, particularly European women adventurers, described East Asia. Travel writings that are expected to be truthful are not free from travelers' own personal, cultural, social, and political experiences and perceptions. At the turn of the 19th century, Europe was dominated by colonial discourse based on Western-centered textualized or imaginary knowledge of-the Orient‖ 1. The imaginary texts affected European travelers. In turn, their travel writings helped substantiate and reinforce the texts. European women travelers, who were in a relatively disadvantageous situation at home, enjoyed going beyond the sexual boundaries imposed on them at home by using their assumed racial superiority in the Orient. However, their marginal position in Western society helped them ponder their own understanding of other peoples and cultures, of themselves, and of their home societies. This article traces not only the surface discourse of travelogues on East Asia, particularly on Korea, but also travel writers' inner worlds, focusing on differences between men and women.
PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS ON TRAVELS: CHRONICLES AND TESTIMONIES OF TRAVELLERS
ABSTRACT The present essay review explores the role played by travels to form cultures as well as the use of travel writing in the social science. Over centuries, intellectuals rested their reflections on the testimonies of travels as they have been formulated by other travelers. Whether medieval or pre-industrial travel experiences were used to delineate the epistemology of the whole social sciences in Europe, the viewpoint of tourist is neglected as naïve or subject to the lack of objectivity. Why travels now are not taken into consideration for the epistemologists?. Are modern tourists more naïve or enrooted in a great variety of prejudices? Are ancient travellers very different to tourists? © 2014 Pak Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction: Travel as Episteme—an Introductory Journey
2018
Those who go out in search of knowledge will be in the path of God until they return 1 PerCePtiVe reADers WiLL no doubt observe that I am, of course, unashamedly borrowing this volume's title from J. R. R.Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937). Bilbo Baggins's quest, as described in Tolkien's book and, within the metafictive diegesis, in the character's own memoirs of that same title, exhibit all the paradigmatic ingredients found in travellers' temperaments: an inquiring and curious mind, a love for adventure, courage and resourcefulness as well as distrust and fear of the unknown. Thus, Bilbo Baggins will endure, in equal measure, all the delights and discomforts that have besought fictional as well as historical travellers through the ages. At the onset of our own exploration into the mysteries of travel narratives it is fitting that we whimsically evoke Bilbo and the emphasis that his title (There and Back Again) places not only on the effects of travel itself but on the transformative impressions of the act of travelling on someone's life after his or her return to their point of origin as well as the importance of recording these worthy experiences. The hobbit-turned-writer expressive title equally underscores, as will become palpable in the ensuing studies, not only the reciprocal nature of any contact between the traveller and the peoples he/ she encounters but also the inescapable acquisition of knowledge which follows any such interaction. Scholars of medieval and early modern culture and history are keenly aware of the fact that travel narratives, travelogues and maps provide us with a privileged locus of investigation of issues of multiculturalism, nationalism and geopolitics. In spite of the fact that these travel narratives 2 enact intriguing cultural exchanges and transfers of knowledge among disparate ethnic, political and religious groups, they have often been 1 These words were uttered by the Prophet Muhammad, according to a hadith related by al-Tirmidhi (d. 892). 2 I conceptualize the term "travel narratives" not restrictively but very widely. Thus, it encompasses not only traditional written texts but also a wide array of cultural artifacts: maps, Portolan charts, merchants' journals, ships' logs, and also decorative objects, relics, and visual artifacts which depict either instances of travel or objects of exchange and trade that have been transferred through travel. Thus, the travel narratives we scrutinize serve to illustrate that travel created an opportunity for what in modern usage we would term "multicultural" interaction and exchange which circumvented rigid "national" boundaries and categories.
The familiar and the strange: Western travelers' maps of Europe and Asia, ca. 1600-1800 (2004)
Philosophy & Geography, 2004
Early Modem European travelers sought to gather and disseminate knowledge through narratives written for avid publishers and public. Yet not all travelers used the same tools to inform their readers. Despite a shared interest in conveying new knowledge based on eyewitness authority. Grand Tour accounts differed in an important respect from travelogues about Asia: they were less likely to include maps until the late eighteenth century. This paper examines why, using travel accounts published between 1600 atid 1800 about Italy and France (Europe) and India and Japan (Asia). It argues that maps of different types-coastlines, city platis, country topographies-appeared more frequently in accounts of Asian trips in part because of Europeans' more limited geographical knowledge about Asian destinations. More important, however, zvas the purpose of travel, the type of information gathered, and the intended audience of accounts. Seventeenth-century authors of Grand Tour experiences focused on single topics, ignored what seemed to be the familiar countryside they passed through, and showed little interest in geography. Their counterparts visiting Asia took an opposite tack, covering a wide range of subjects, including space, and cartographic representation was an important element within the account. Only in the eighteenth century, when the strange locale had become familiar and the familiar European destination became strange with new types of travel through it, were maps an important part of narrative.