A meeting of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was held on Friday evening in the Society's Room at Museum Building. Mr. £. B. Drow, Pri dont, occupied the Chair, and the meeting was attended by some fifteen or twenty members and Amongst those were Messrs, vou Kreitner, Rocher, Slevogt, Dr. Gabriel, Kirch-1 Moule ana others.
President opened the mee! ug by lsying before the Society an atlas of pacts of China visited a fow yeara Gaunt Széchiduyi and his expedi gift of Lieut. von Kreitner, who had b Attached tu the mission as a scientific momibor. The President commented on the value of the work before him and ex-Bros the thanks of the Society to the joner.
De. Birth than read the first portion of his Ta-tsin papers, which occupied the reader about an hour and-a-half, thus making up for the absence of which usually follows the reading of shorter papers. Having, by way of introduction, ead an essay on the various Chinese works from which the information regarding the in had been drawn and on he had made of them, a portion of which contained material hitherto: unknown, Dr. Birth began to trace the mute which must been channel of trade at the time when the Chinese General Pan Ch'ao sent the lieutenant Kan-ying in earch of Ta-tsin. The former was then staying at the Court of the King of An-hsi oF Parthia, and the capital of that country, Known tous by the name Flekatampylor, muar be the basis from what we may trace the continuance of the journey. The Chinese regards of the Hau dynasty describe the route from there across countries of A-man (old sound As-iman—Acbatana), Ssu-pin (0. S. Si-pan=Kiesiprov) and Yilo (0. S. Hu-lo=Hira), Hira, a great trading nin the Chaldzean luke, must have the port where ing collected his information about Wa-tein, Its configuration as a peninsula, connected by a land-road in the nosthwest with the Babylonian district—facts which have become known by recent i surveys quite lately again in a may of Bioporv's "published" in the. Berlin Geogr. Soc. Journal (1883)—auswers very well to the description made in the Hou Han Shu of the ancient city of Ttiao-chih, Hira, it should be understood, was connected with the Persian Gulf by a broad navigable canal leading into the Euphrates, Masudi speaks of sea-going vessels lying abreast the city as late as the fifth century. The Chaldwan lake, then, appears to have been the scene of render-vous between the Chinese ambassador and the "sailors on the western boundary of Parthia," who described to him the miseries of asea voyage in such drastic language as to frighten hu back to his chief. From Hira vessels went within three and twenty-four months round the Arabian peninsula into the Red Sea, where several ports were known as receivers of Oriental goods, But the port China, owing to ita silk piece ig to be dyed or re-woven at the manufacturing cities ('Tyru Sidon, ote.,) was principally interested, lay in the present Gulf of Akabal, Acand Eziou-gober were the ancient ort there, and Petra, locally called kam, was the gr emporium for oriental goods, whence they were sent to the Syrian markets or distributed over the Roma ire, The name Rekem, as reprosenting the entrance to Syria, as it were, has, according to Dr. Birth, caused the Chinese of the earliest period of their trade to call the whole country Liken or Li-kan, the Chinese not being able to pronounce the R._ Petra is merely the Greek trans-ion of this name, which, in Aramaic, "rock," and the latest designation country, Arabia Petriea," is derived from the Greek name of the city in. This, it appears, has been the route from the beginning of commercial relatives up to the year A.D. 166, when an embassy is stated, in Chinese to have arrived from the King of An-tun, offering as tribute rhinoceros horns and tortoise shells, articles of apparently Annamese ori Dr. Birth had remarked in the introduction inese Cuurts at those ti revived as tribute bearers adding to the glory of the most powerful empire. held that this embassy also did not come feom the Roman Emperor An-tun (Marcus jus Antoninus) direct, but that it was a private mission. "It is probably not an accidental coincidence that just at the conclusion of the Parthian War conducted or Petra, Their connection with the Chinese market through their Parthian friends, f lends they hed been in trade if not in ies, had been cut off by the armies of Roman) Government, th Dales of silk piece jer accustomed to expect did not arrive, nor did their own dyed and mustered piece-goods, their glass nick-nace, their real and tones, reach their de-China, What was under the circumstances more natural than that, jo mission should be sent through ocean and the China sea to open up direct communication with the Chinese themselves? Che mission was apparently mercantile undertaking 5 and we hav time when kept at peace Government should ing the friendship of the Emperor of China for political reasons, These ambassadors of A.D. 166 lad originally probably neither credentials nor tribute for the Chinese Buporor any piece of papyrus owered with Greek or Latin writing would have Gone for the former, and the tribute, as we have seen, was bought up in Aunam, where the after-thought ocourred to them to play the part of imperial messengers, in order to obtain the trading privileges sought for.
Another trade route, as-is shown by several passages from Chinese records, must have Ted through the Indian ocean to the inci chou and Yung-ch'ang, the pres an, and the Irawaddy route, which haa during the last twenty years become famous as the scone of distinguished travel en lively trafic in those day id jug glors had boon sent that way as presents to of Shan near the confines of Yiunan. hose the Chines Euperor by a tributary privee fon, being examined said that they came from the country of Ta-tain, On new year's day, A.D. 121, they gave a perform neo in the presence of the youthful peror An Ti.
During the Wei period, it may be con-chided from certain remarka occurring in the (written prior to A.D. 429) that th Roman trade routes i known (Ta-tein) is on the west of th is a river coming out of th to the west of it there is another great in the west of that sea there is the city of an (old sound, Dikean, Further on called Wa-chih-san; old sound, Odikean)"? and "at the city of Wu-chili-san you travel by river or on board slip for one day, then by sva, after six days' passage arriving in ith assumes that the ava"
Red Sea; the the sea on the the city of (Odiksan) Alex-'The journey from there to Aue tioch, the capital of Ta-tsin, took about ix days at those times, and the ons day's. river passage may have been caused by vessels using the uangable canal feeding from the little port of Kibotus, south vf the city, to Cauobas, where they put to Mr. Kleinwiichter mentioned cor tai illustration ins, in which and other records.) It is quit therefore, that at a time when battles fought on the banks of the Euphrates and itis, when two of the cities which lay on the road from Central Asia to the shipping jert in 'T'iao-chih (near the coast of the Persian Gulf), the cities of Ktesiphon and Seleucia were captured and destroyed with i should describing Fu-Christ was born.
The President, while thanking Dr. Birt for his paper, expressed his belief owing to the entirely novel views it opened with regard to an important problem of sinology, the paper could not fail to receive much attention amongst the scientific world 1 Europe, adding that the Society would ome day cotisider it an advantage to them to have such work brought forward from amongst their midst.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.