Opisanīe Tibeta v nyni︠e︡shnem ego sostoi︠a︡nīi. S kartoi︠u︡ dorogi iz Chen-du do Khlassy. Perevod s kitaĭskago. Ma, Chieh, 1792. C8720

Opisanīe Tibeta v nyni︠e︡shnem ego sostoi︠a︡nīi. S kartoi︠u︡ dorogi iz Chen-du do Khlassy. Perevod s kitaĭskago. Ma, Chieh, 1792. C8720

Ever The Twain Shall Meet. If one goes far enough west one will arrive at Petersburg's eastern back door, and by such machinations of the imagination we were able to include this beautiful aquatint of Tibet from a volume translated from the Chinese by Russian Sinologue Nikita Iakovlevich Bichurin, a.k.a the monk Iakinf (1777-1853). A Chuvash by nationality, Iakinf was born in the Kazan province but died in St. Petersburg. He was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and it was he who set up the first Chinese language school in Russia in Kiakhta. Kazan became a major center for Oriental studies. In 1855, two years after his death, a faculty of oriental studies was set up at St. Petersburg University. We don't know what Iakinf thought of St. P. per se, but he had contact with Pushkin and other Petersburg intellectuals and was said to be well ahead of his western contemporaries in erudition in Sinology. All of his most important works and translations were published in that fair city.

C8720