The Eastern Sea Route as Depicted in a Chinese Historical Geographical Description of Foreign Lands of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) Daoyi zhilüe (“A Brief Description of the Island Barbarians”, 1349/1350): Chapters 1–4, Translation with Commentary

Abstract

This article is the first in the series of planned publications with translations of separate chapters from a Chinese historical-geographical description of foreign lands Daoyi zhilüe (“A Brief Description of Island Barbarians”, 1349/1350) written during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). The first four chapters of the treatise which describe policies on the eastern sea route from China are included in this work. The article offers the first translation of these chapters into Russian, accompanied by detailed historical commentary. Apart from that, in the research part of the article the author has briefly analyzed the order of the chapters in the treatise and compared it with the previous sources of similar nature. The translations are an important source for studying various aspects of the history of the Penghu islands, Taiwan and the Philippines in the 14th century AD.