Excerpt from Beginnings of Writing in Central and Eastern Asia, or Notes on 450 Embryo-Writings and Scripts The present work is made up of several parts, which have been printed successively since 1885. The pages 1-67 are reprints from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1885, vol. xvii. pp. 415 - 482. Pages 68 - 144, printed in 1887, have never been published; and pages 145 - 189, long left in type, were as much as possible re-cast in January of the present year, thanks to the kindness of Messrs. Stephen Austin and Sons, the long famous Oriental printers of Hertford. The result in the work is a great inequality, which a complete alphabetical index of the writings referred to is intended to obviate to a certain extent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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For centuries, travelers have made Central Asia known to the wider world through their writings. In this volume, scholars employ these little-known texts in a wide range of Asian and European languages to trace how Central Asia was gradually absorbed into global affairs. The representations of the region brought home to China and Japan, India and Persia, Russia and Great Britain, provide valuable evidence that helps map earlier periods of globalization and cultural interaction.

The second edition of Charles Holcombe's acclaimed introduction to East Asian history from the dawn of history to the twenty-first century.

"An English adaptation of Helmolt's Weltgeschichte, with a rejection of sections which did not seem quite adequate from the point of view of its English readers". -- Publisher's note.