International Dunhuang Project News No 45

IDP News Issue No. 45                                 

• Sven Hedin 1865–1952
• Sven Hedin and Dunhuang
• Höhner and Bohlin at Dunhuang 1930 and 1931
• The Sven Hedin Project
• Obituary: T. H. Tsien, 1909–2015
• Recent Publications
• Exhibitions and Conferences
• IDP Worldwide
• IDP UK

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Download this Issue as a PDF (736KB)

Issue No. 45, Spring 2015

2015 is the 150th anniversary of the Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin, and we mark this with articles by Håkan Wahlquist on Sven Hedin and other Swedish visitors to Dunhuang, the events held to commemorate this anniversary, and the Sven Hedin Project. The Sven Foundation at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm relaunched its website for the occasion. Artefacts from the Hedin collection are being made available through IDP.















Sven Hedin at the Mogao caves near Dunhuang, 6 November 1934. Photographer: Parker Chen. The Sven Hedin Foundation 1034.46.12.

Left: Sven Hedin (standing) with his mother and siblings, Stockholm 1882. The Sven Hedin Foundation, Hedin Family Album 06.01.
Right: The Westman-Hedin family grave, Stockholm. 19 February 2015. Photographer: Jerry Lantz. The Sven Hedin Foundation.

On 19 February 2015 the 150th anniversary of Sven Hedin’s birth was commemorated in Stockholm. A minor symposium was held in the Museum of Ethnography. The idea was to provide some examples of the multitude of uses to which the Hedin material and archives are put today. The Sven Foundation provides texts and photographs for translations and publications of Hedin’s books in many different languages; recently Uygur, Korean, Mongolian and Arabic have been added to the list. Cartographic material is provided to pinpoint sites for palaeontological finds, photographs to determine changes in the extent of glaciers, or the resilience of buildings to withstand earthquakes. Photographs are supplied to show what archaeological sites once looked like. Photographs for publication come from Hedin’s rich collections of portraits. The archives are drawn upon for researchers in geo- as well as human sciences; people who write biographies of artists, authors, politicians, military and fellow researchers, and scholars who work on the history of science. Those were just some examples given during a well-attended afternoon.
In the evening, representatives of the family and the Sven Hedin Foundation gathered at the Westman-Hedin family grave at the Adolf Fredrik church yard in Central Stockholm for the depositing of wreaths.
In Washington, the same evening, the Silk Road Dance Company presented a program of dance and music accompanied by texts selected from Hedin’s travelogues.

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Sven Hedin and Dunhuang

Håkan Wahlquist

Dunhuang/Mogao does not figure prominently in the records of Sven Hedin’s four expeditions to Central Asia. He visited the site only once, in November 1934, on his way back on what has been called his ‘car-expedition’ 1933–35, the last leg of the composite Sino-Swedish Expedition of 1927–35. Requested by Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nanjing Government and paid for by his Railway Ministry, Hedin had taken on to align possible routes for roads and railways connecting heartland China with its unruly western areas. To the Nanjing government this was of strategic importance. To Hedin it meant possibly a last chance to return to Xinjiang and the areas that he had researched more than thirty years earlier. He was approaching 70. In 1928 he learned that the Lop Nor Lake in 1921 had returned to its northern position and in 1930 he dispatched two of his men, Nils Hörner and Chen Parker C., to map the lake spreading its shallow surface east of Loulan.
Chen Parker C. was again on his staff, as were two more Chinese scientists; Kung C. C. and Yew Irving. He also brought with him his close associate and doctor, David Hummel, and the archaeologist Folke Bergman. Some ‘local’ hands, including two Swedes, Georg Söderbom and Efraim Hill, concluded the team. The Chinese archaeologist Huang Wenbi joined them at the last moment although he did not stay for the entire expedition.
The journey turned into an extraordinarily eventful and dangerous experience, through a landscape of political and military upheaval. At one point they faced an execution squad, at another they spent quite some time in detention in Urumqi. Hedin, however, true to his reputation, managed to fulfil his dreams travelling down the Konche and Kum Darya following that unstable system of rivers all the way to Lop Nor. A sub-team, in the meantime, with Folke Bergman and Georg Söderbom together with Hedin’s old scout Ördek, made the momentous re-discovery of Xiaohe Mudi (‘Ördek’s Necropolis’).
On the way back east the team, this time without Bergman and Hummel, mapped the best route through the Lop Desert to reach the oases of westernmost Gansu, Anxi and Dunhuang. In Dunhuang Hedin made a detour to the Mogao caves. He states that his visit to Dunhuang had had quite a different purpose than to study the already well-described caves. He went there out of ‘curiosity’ and ‘because it seemed absurd to have been at Tun-huang without having seen the famous grottoes’. However, he was not overly impressed.

‘In a way, the “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas” disappointed me. I had expected something finer and more distinguished, and not the dull uniformity I found, neglected and allowed to fall into decay by a careless posterity. What is impressive is the multitude of grottoes, and the work and patience that must have been needed to excavate these rooms and niches in the hard conglomerate. The men who gave their time and strength to this gigantic labour must have had a burning faith in the power of their gods.’

 The first European depiction of the Mogao caves. Illustration from Gustav Kreitner. Im fernen Osten. Reisen des Grafen Bela Széchenyi in Indien, Japan, China, Tibet und Birma in den Jahren 1877-1880. Wien 1881: 665.

Hedin was a man for romantic and nationalistic poetry but does not strike you as a particularly great admirer of music or consumer of the arts, though he had artist friends, whom he sometimes showered with praise. His own drawings and watercolours he considered to be records of observations, though he did not mind if people saw an artistic talent revealed by them. One of the pillars of his world-view was surely the Protestant state church of his native country, but he was no great friend of missionary activities, which he considered unwarranted, apart from the medical and other help dispensed at their stations. He was an interested and mostly a positive observer of the religions and their expressions that he met along the road, in mosques, temples and monasteries. But he did not have the training or the inclination to explore the in reality fabulous interiors of the caves, nor their religious or artistic content. His eyes were probably more directed to the geological formations which had made them possible. He nevertheless climbed his way into no fewer than twenty-one. Discoveries could add adventure to his books, and provide chronology to the ever-changing landscape he studied and mapped. Archaeological materials collected, however, he left to others to analyse and publish.
Hedin had not visited the Mogao caves on any of his previous expeditions. Aurel Stein’s and Paul Pelliot’s periods of work there in 1907/1914 and 1908 respectively, were well known to him. But when Aurel Stein explored the treasures of the Mogao caves in 1907 Hedin was in Tibet on his last ‘one-man expedition’, to return to Central Asia only in 1927.
Hedin was, however, very early on aware of the existence of the caves, though of course not of their true contents. From Lilla Russell-Smith’s article on ‘Early Hungarian Visitors to Dunhuang’ we have been reminded that the first Europeans to make their way to the caves, in 1879, were the Hungarians Count Béla Széchenyi and the geologist Lajos Lóczy together with the geographer Gustav Kreitner. This happened during their expedition to China 1877-80. They all belonged to Sven Hedin’s Central European scientific contacts and Hedin’s library contains their well-read (or in Lóczy’s case ‘consulted’, since it is in Hungarian) reports on the the expedition. Count Béla Széchenyi’s work carries an inscription to Hedin, Kreitner’s book has pencil-strokes in the margins marking passages about ‘Tun-huang’.

Arminius Vámbéry with Sven Hedin on his left side and Lajos Lóczy von Lócz to his right. Standing to the right behind Vámbéry is Count Széchenyi Béla. Budapest 1902. Hedin Family Album 1: 42.01.

Hedin’s introduction to Central Asian researchers in Budapest dates to 1886 when, as a 21 year-old returning from a journey through Persia, he visited the great Turcologist and Orientalist, but also pilgrim in disguise and secret agent Arminius (Hermann) Vámbéry (1832-1913). Vámbéry’s early travelogues had been promptly translated into Swedish in the 1860s. They had been studied by Hedin and Vámbéry was one of several role-models influencing the young Swede. Hedin had indeed closely followed Vámbéry’s route through Persia, and Vámbéry was asked to write the foreword to Hedin’s first book, which he also did. He stayed with the Hedin-family during the 1889 Orientalist Congress in Stockholm, and they were to remain in contact until Vámbéry’s death.
Sven Hedin, on several occasions, met Professor Vámbéry in Budapest, addressing learned societies there, and then also got to know other scientists, especially Graf Széchenyi and Professor Lóczy, who became close friends of his, exchanging books and letters. In his travelogue The Silk Road Hedin recalls his many meetings with them in Budapest and how they discussed the Hungarian expedition of 1877-80. It was the Dunhuang – Anxi section of the journey that interested Hedin.
The letters from Hedin’s Hungarian colleagues do not mention Dunhuang. (As for Hedin’s letters they may be found in Hungarian archives). One paragraph may however be remembered. In a letter dated Budapest 4 April 1908 Professor Lóczy, believing that Hedin is to return from his Tibetan expedition to Kashgar via Gilgit (which he did not), mentions that: ‘In Khotan or Kashgar you will probably meet Herr Dr. Aurel Stein, who is on his way home from Kansu loaded with rich archaeological treasures!’

Selected Bibliography

• Adler, Lory and Richard Dalby. The Dervish of Windsor Castle The Life of Arminius Vambery. London: Bachman and Turner 1979.
• Bartholomä, Ruth. Von Zentralasien nach Windsor Castle. Leben und Werk des Orientalisten Arminius Vámbéry (1832–1913). Würzburg: Ergon 2006.
• Hedin, Sven. Genom Persien Mesopotamien och Kaukasien Reseminnen Förord av professor Hermann Vámbéry. Stockholm: A. Bonnier 1887.
• ————. Sidenvägen: en bilfärd genom Centralasien. Stockholm: A. Bonnier 1936. English translation by F. H. Lyons. The Silk Road. London: G Routledge and Sons 1938.
• ————. Den Vandrande Sjön. Stockholm: A. Bonnier 1937. English trans. by F. H. Lyon. The Wandering Lake. London: G. Routledge and Sons 1940.
• ———— with Folke Bergman. History of the Expedition in Asia 1927-1935 Part III 1933-1935 Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the North-Western Provinces of China Publication 25. Stockholm 1944. (On Mogao: pp. 241–42.)
• Hörner, Nils. Resa till Lop. Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner 1936.
• Kreitner, Gustav. Im fernen Osten. Reisen des Grafen Bela Széchenyi in Indien, Japan, China, Tibet und Birma in den Jahren 1877-1880. Wien 1881. (Published in Swedish in 1885)
• Lóczy, Lajos. A Khinai Birodalom természeti viszonyainak és országainak leirása. Budapest: K.M. Természettudományi társulat 1886.
• Russell-Smith, Lilla. ‘Hungarian Explorers in Dunhuang.’  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 3rd ser. 10.3 (2000): 341-362
• Széchenyi, Béla. Die wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der Reise in Ostasien 1877-1880 (3 vols.) Wien: Hölzel 1893-1899.
For works on Hedin which have made extensive use of the archives see:

• Odelberg, Axel. Äventyr på riktigt. Berättelsen om upptäckaren Sven Hedin (A Real Adventure. The story about Sven Hedin, the discoverer). Stockholm: Norstedts 2008.
• ————. Vi som beundrade varandra så mycket. Sven Hedin och Adolf Hitler (We really admired one another very much. Sven Hedin and Adolf Hitler). Stockholm: Norstedts 2012.
• ————.  Med Kungen som Verktyg (With the King as a Tool). Stockholm: Norstedts 2014.This tells the story of defence debate and its resultant political crises in Sweden before the Great War, in which Sven Hedin played a prominent role.
• For an annotated bibliography of Hedin’s works see Daniel C. Waugh’s excellent resource.This is also available from IDP as an online resource and a downloadable pdf.
Other recent works:

• Romgard, Jan. ‘Embracing Science. Sino-Swedish Collaborations in the Field Sciences, 1902-1935.’ Doctoral Thesis presented to the University of Stockholm, 2013.A dense description and analysis of the development of Sino-Swedish joint efforts in geosciences, including palaeontology, from Erik Nyström via Johan Gunnar Andersson to Sven Hedin.
• Shōgaito Masahiro. The Uighur Abhidharmakośabhāṣya Preserved at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. (Turcologica: 99). Wisebaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2014.A study of the Abhidharma part of the collection of Old Uyghur manuscripts with the Hedin collections in Stockholm (1935.52.0025-0040) According to Professor Kudara Kōgi these manuscripts belong to the ones found in the Yuan-period caves of Dunhuang/Mogao.

Håkan Wahlquist is Keeper of the Sven Hedin Foundation. He was formerly Senior Curator of the Asian Collections at the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm.

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Höhner and Bohlin at Dunhuang 1930 and 1931

Two other ‘sub-expeditions’ of the Sino-Swedish Expedition 1927–35 passed Dunhuang, though no Swedes other than Sven Hedin and Georg Söderbom visited the caves themselves. Nils Hörner and Parker Chen with their Mongolian helpers stayed there for a week in November and December 1930 on their way to Lop Nor and Loulan. Hörner describes Dunhuang as a beautiful and flourishing oasis, where one could rest and rebuild the caravan and its supplies.
Of more importance, however, was Birger Bohlin’s (1898–1990) visit in June 1931. On the 29th of that month he and his small team visited some newly discovered cave-temples along the Tang River southwest of Dunhuang, the Western Qianfodong (Hsi-ch’ien-fo-tung). Bohlin spent some time there, drew plans of some of the caves and took photographs. He published his finds in an article a few years later.

• Bohlin, Birger. ‘Newly Visited Western Caves at Tunhuang.’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 1.2 (1936): 163–66.
• Hörner, Nils. Resa till Lop. Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner. 1936

Sketch map showing the route taken by Birger Bohlin on his journey to Dunhuang in 1931 and the Western Caves. (From Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the North-Western Provinces of China: 26. Stockholm 1945: 288).

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The Sven Hedin Project

Lars Larsson

Sven Hedin (1865–1952) devoted his life to exploring Central Asia and Tibet. He spent almost twenty years in Asia, mapping such a large unexplored territory overland that it has never been paralleled in history. The purpose of the Sven Hedin Project is to make a series of expeditions through Asia in the footsteps of Hedin. Every second year will see a new expedition. The first stage of the project was carried out in April–May 2013, following Hedin’s 1906 route through the deserts of Eastern Persia (present-day Iran). The first two stages of the project have been funded by the National Geographic Society. The plan is to follow up on Hedin’s geographical and ethnographical observations, with the help of his maps, diaries and photographs, as well as repeating some of his most spectacular adventures. Like Hedin, we will capture the landscape and villages through which we we travel and the people we meet, but with digital photography and videography. In this way we can document how the landscape and culture have changed during the last century.
The second expedition will go to the Pamir in July–August 2015, a mountainous area in Central Asia known as the ‘Roof of the World’. During Hedin’s first large Central Asian expedition he explored this area in 1894–95. Our journey will take us through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China.
Hedin spent extended time with the Kyrgyz in the eastern Pamir while studying the glaciers of Muztagh Ata, ‘The Father of Ice-Mountains’ (7,546 m) in Xinjiang, China. He also traveled through more remote Kyrgyz settlements in the Afghan ‘Little Pamir’ of the Wakhan Corridor. This is the narrow finger in the northeast of Afghanistan and is a result of the ‘Great Game’ ­— the political power struggle between the Russian and British Empires for supremacy in Central Asia during the nineteenth century. The Wakhan was a buffer zone between the two rivaling empires. When Hedin entered the far eastern end of the corridor through the Wakhjir pass from China, he was to walk straight into the Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission of 1895 and the final historic settlement of the Great Game. He tried to keep neutral; dined alternatingly with generals from both sides but was a pawn in their Game.
The Wakhan Corridor once served as a part of the fabled Silk Road. Today the borders have been closed for almost a century making the Afghan Pamir one of the world’s most isolated regions. Today the only way to reach the Wakhan Corridor legally is to enter from the Afghan side in the far west along the Panj River. If you drive eastwards into the corridor, until the dirt road ends, it still takes seven more days of trekking to reach the eastern end. This is the Little Pamir where a small number of isolated Kyrgyz nomads still live. Hedin only traveled this upper part of Wakhan, but just one year later in 1886 the Danish lieutenant Ole Olufsen (1865–1929) set out on the first of two Danish Pamir expeditions where the main target was the lower Wakhan Corridor along the Panj River. Olufsen was the first European to collect ethnographical information on the Wakhi agro-pastoralists inhabiting this area.
Hedin’s collection of c.15,000 photographs has been buried for over a hundred years in the archives of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. The large undertaking of digitizing these old glass plates began in 2010 and is ongoing. We will be the first to take advantage of this unique material. Olufsen’s photographic collection, to which we also have access, is held in the Archives of the National Museum in Copenhagen and is of equal historic value. We will search for the exact locations of Hedin’s and Olufsen’s photographs and where possible capture new images to match the old ones. This gives us a visually striking comparison spanning 120 years, revealing changes in both landscapes and culture.
Finding historical camera locations can be an extremely time consuming task. Therefore we will use a powerful methodology based on geographic information systems (GIS). This greatly reduces the time required to find a location.
Our first objective is to study Muztagh Ata and determine how far its glacier fronts have retracted since 1894. By repeating Hedin’s photographs of the glaciers, georeferencing his map sketches in a GIS and comparing them to satellite images, we hope to be able to reconstruct what the glaciers looked like 120 years ago. This study is done in collaboration with glaciologists at the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University. Our results will have a unique scientific value in climate change research, since traditional studies based solely on aerial photography only reach back to the 1960s.
We will use the same methodology to reconstruct and study Hedin’s attempts to ascend Muztagh Ata. He made four attempts along two different routes; one towards the main summit and three towards the slightly lower northern summit, where he claimed to have reached a maximum height of 6,300 m. This was an astonishing feat and one of the highest ascents in the world at this time, but has later been disputed with claims that Hedin only reached 5,800 m. To settle this question with scientific rigor, we will combine our GIS with field observations while attempting to ascend the main summit along the same historical route as Hedin.
Our second objective is to follow up on Hedin’s anthropological work on the Kyrgyz. Our photographs will be supplemented with anthropological information gathered by traditional methods. We will also visit the more remote Kyrgyz settlements in the upper Wakhan. Repeating Olufsen’s photographs is our third objective.
By communicating our results and the unique material from the Hedin archives to the public in a groundbreaking way, with interactive and geographically oriented media powered by Google Earth, we will set a new standard for virtual exploration of historical and modern adventures. The development of this GIS is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Internet Infrastructure (.SE) and the first version is planned for release in 2015. The three subsequent Hedin-expeditions will cover the following areas: The Taklamakan and Lop deserts (Xinjiang), The Changtang plateau and the Transhimalaya mountain range (Tibet), Mount Kailash and the sources of the Great Indian Rivers (Tibet).
Lars Larsson is Expedition Leader and Lead Photographer on the Project. Latest progress can be found on the project website.

Images of Naibend, Iran. Top: taken by Hedin in 1906 (The Sven Hedin Foundation, 1026.0469). Bottom: by Lars Larsson in 2013.
Hedin wrote at this time: ‘To the stranger, even a brief visit to Naibend is worth the effort of the entire journey through Persia.’. More than 100 years later, many parts of Naibend, an isolated village north of the Lut desert in Iran, have hardly changed. Sven Hedin called it ‘an earthly paradise’, where ‘[I] find myself at the foot of a steep ridge crowned by the fort of Naibend among tall houses and walls hanging like birds’ nests over the edges […] The whole scene reminds one of Ladak and Tibet.’

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Obituary: T. H. Tsien, 1909–2015

Tsuen-hsuin (T.H.) Tsien, Curator Emeritus of the East Asian Collection of the Joseph Regenstein Library and Professor Emeritus of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago, passed away in Chicago on 9 April 2015, at the age of 105.
For anyone involved with Chinese books or manuscripts, T.H. Tsien’s book, Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions is indispensable reading. First published by the University of Chicago in 1962, it arose from his PhD at Chicago (awarded 1957) and continues in print with a second edition in 2013.
T. H. Tsien was educated in China, graduating from Jinling University (the precursor of Nanjing University) in 1932 with a degree in Library Science. He worked in Jiaotong University Library, Shanghai, and then in the Nanjing Branch of the Peking Library. In 1941, he arranged the shipping of 300,000 rare books to the Library of Congress for safe-keeping during the war. After the war, he went to Washington DC to arrange their return. However, the outbreak of civil war in China made this impossible, and he remained in America together with the books. In 1947, Herrlee G. Creel (1905-94) invited him to the University of Chicago to manage the Far Eastern Library (now East Asian Collection). He remained in Chicago thereafter.
In 1978, after retiring as Curator of the East Asian Collection, he accepted Joseph Needham’s invitation to participate in the Science and Civilisation in China project, producing the volume Paper and Printing. In 2011 he published Collected Writings on Chinese Culture.
His influence lives on not only in his publications but in the East Asian Collection at the Library at Chicago and in the librarians he trained, who went on to head the East Asian Collections at Harvard and Princeton.

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Recent Publications

The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka

Tanya Storch
New York: Cambria Press 2014
HB, 268 pp., US$109.00, ebook
ISBN: 9781604978773
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

中国出土古医书考释与研究
The Study of Chinese Excavated Ancient Medical Manuscripts

马继兴
Ma Jixing (ed.)
Shanghai: Shanghai Scientific and Technical Publishers 2015
HB, 3 vols. CHY1280
ISBN: 9787547823668
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Cosmopolitanism in the Tang Dynasty: A Chinese Ceramic Figure of a Sogdian Wine-Merchant

Suzanne G. Valenstein
LA: Bridge21 Publications 2014
PB, 104 pp., US$44.95
ISBN: 9781626430358
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Archaeological and Visual Sources of Meditation in the Ancient Monasteries of Kuča

Angela Howard and Giuseppe Vignato
Leiden: Brill 2014
HB, 214pp. €125
ISBN: 9789004278578
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

The Silk Road: Interwoven History Vol. 1: Long-distance Trade, Culture, and Society

Mariko N. Walter and James P. Ito-Adler (eds.)
Cambridge MA: Cambridge Institute Press ACANSRS 2015
HB. 374 pp. US$32
ISBN: 9780991042807
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Tea In China: A Religious and Cultural History

James A. Benn
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 2015
HB/PB. 204 pp. $65/24
ISBN: 9780824839635/9780824839642
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Lady with the Phoenix Crown: Tang-period Grave Goods of the Noblewomen Li Chui (711-736)

Sonja Filip, Alexandra Hilgner (eds.)
Regensberg/Mainz: Schnell & Steiner and Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums 2014
HB. 144pp. €24.90
ISBN: 9783795429270
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Sogdian Epigraphy of Central Asia and Semirech’e

V.A. Livshits, Tom Stableford (trans.), Nicholas Sims-Williams (ed.).
London: Corpus Inscriptionum
Iranicarum, 2015.
ISBN: 9780728604025
Email: mc54ATsoasDOTacDOTuk

SPECIAL OFFER

The revised edition of Susan Whitfield’s Life Along the Silk Road is available to IDP News readers at a 30% discount. Containing two additional chapters — on an Axumite sea merchant and a Persian travel writer — the book also has a new introduction and footnotes.

University of California Press 2015
PB, 312 pp., colour, B&W, line drawings
$29.95, £19.95
ISBN: 9780520280595
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE
For the 30% discount use source code 15M4426 at checkout.

Journals

Bulletin of the Asia Institute 24

Carol A. Bromberg (ed.)
$80 ind., $95 inst. + shipping
ISSN: 08904460
ORDER ONLINE

The Silk Road 12

Daniel Waugh (ed.)
ISSN: 21527327/21532060
AVAILABLE ONLINE

敦煌研究 2014: 3
Dunhuang Yanjiu 2014: 3

Special Issue on the 70th Anniversary of the Dunhuang Academy

Sino-Platonic Papers 257 The Terminology for Carpets in Ancient Central Asia

Zhang He

AVAILABLE ONLINE

Guidebooks

Xinjiang: A Travellers Guide to Far West China

Josh Summers
ebook, £7.99, $9.99
ASIN: B00WF8YACE
AVAILABLE ONLINE

Dunhuang: A City on the Silk Road

Hong Kong: Make-Do Publishing 2015
ISBN: 9789881401514
The 150 page all colour guide includes an introduction to every cave that may be opened to the public (60+ caves), as well as sections on other attractions such as museums, sites such as Yumenguan, Yangguan and Suoyang and practical information.
SPECIAL OFFER TO READERS
Available for £4 + postage (RRP £7.99)
For delivery to a UK address, add £2.18, and £4.50 for overseas.
Pay by credit card — tel. +44 (0)1892 837171 quoting title and ISBN
OR Paypal (Paypal ID: hj1117solarAThotmailDOTcom) — include title and full delivery address in the buyer instructions.

Recent Publications from Germany

VOHD 5,2
Syrische Handschriften. Teil 2: Texte der Berliner Turfansammlung

Erica Hunter and Mark Dickens (eds.)
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2014
HB, 505 pp., €84
ISBN: 9783515107129
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

VOHD 12,7
Chinesische und manjurische Handschriften und seltene Drucke. Teil 7: Chinesische Blockdrucke aus der Berliner Turfansammlung

Tsuneki Nishiwaki, Magnus Kriegeskorte and Christian Wittern (trans.)
Simone-Christiane Raschmann (ed.)
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2014
HB, 448 pp., 8 b&w ill., €78
ISBN: 9783515108881
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

VOHD 13,27
Alttürkische Handschriften. Teil 19: Dokumente in Brāhmī und tibetischer Schrift. Teil 2

Dieter Maue
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2015
HB, 658 pp., 32 b&w ill., €90
ISBN: 9783515109970
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Berliner Turfantexte XXXI Miscellaneous Hymns. Middle Persian and Parthian Hymns in the Turfan Collection

Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst (ed.)
Turnhout: Brepols 2014
PB., 464 pp., 12 b&w ill., €80
ISBN: 9782503546285
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

Berliner Turfantexte XXXII Biblical and other Christian Sogdian texts from the Turfan Collection

Nicholas Sims-Williams (ed.) with contributions by Martin Schwartz and William J. Pittard
Turnhout: Brepols 2014
PB, 247 pp., 17 b&w ill., €70
ISBN: 9782503552385
PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE

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Exhibitions and Conferences

Cosmopolitan Metropolis Along the Silk Road — Luoyang During Tang Dynasty China

Museums of World Culture
Stockholm
12 September 2015 – 28 February 2016
Further Info
In autumn 2015, the Museums of World Culture re-opens the doors to the Caverns on Skeppsholmen in Stockholm. Here the visitor will travel through the Chinese metropolis of Luoyang City — a trading centre on the Silk Road during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and one of the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan cities. During the founding of the small town of Birka in Viking Sweden, when Norsemen were travelling and trading across Europe and into Asia, China experienced a period of economic stability and cultural development. It was also the time when China’s only female emperor, Wu Zetian, came to power.
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Henan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage.

Asia and Scandinavia
New Perspectives on the Early Medieval Silk Road

11 September 2015
Parallel to the opening of the exhibition the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities is organizing a symposium together with the Swedish History Museum. Finds of ‘exotica’ in archaeological contexts in east Scandinavia dating to the late first millennium AD have been noted by archaeologists since the beginning of the twentieth century. The symposium takes these ‘exotica’ as a starting point and opens the road eastwards, across Central Asia to meet current Silk Road-related research in China. The aim is to enhance interest in the exchange of luxury goods and everyday technology over the Eurasian continent during the first millennium.

Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road

Getty Center, Los Angeles
May – September 2016
In the Gobi desert of northwest China, some 500 decorated Buddhist cave temples with spectacular wall paintings and sculpture bear witness to the intense religious, artistic and cultural exchanges along ancient trade routes. The in situ art and the dispered objects from the Library Cave, comprise the only complete artistic environment to survive from early medieval China. In addition to objects from the site, the exhibition features three full-scale replica caves by contemporary artists at the Dunhuang Academy. It celebrates nearly thirty years of collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute and the Dunhuang Academy to conserve and protect this World Heritage site.

Event

Stein with dogs, Spin Khan and Dash. Srinagar, 1928. Photo 392/33(6), The British Library.
Freud with dogs, Fo and Tattoun. Hohe Warte, 1933. 42*, Freud Museum London.

IDP Lecture and Reception 2015
Aurel Stein, Sigmund Freud and the Other

Professor Craig Clunas
The British Library, 6pm, 6 November 2015
Tickets: £10/£8/£7 ONLINE BOOKING OPENS JULY 2015
This lecture considers the shared intellectual interests and parallel activities of these two giant figures in their respective fields.
Although there is no evidence that they ever met, the careers of close contemporaries Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) offer some intriguing parallels. Both were born as Jewish subjects of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, yet ended their lives as exiles from their homelands, on British (or imperial British) soil. Both were fascinated by the ancient world, and while Stein became one of the most famous archaeologists of his age, Freud was gripped by the extent to which archaeology provided a metaphor for the new practice of psychoanalysis. Both were collectors of Asian antiquities, and while Stein’s achievements are well known Freud’s significant Chinese collections have attracted much less attention than his Egyptian and Graeco-Roman objects. Both had significantly close relationships with their dogs. And both were and remain highly controversial figures, revered and occasionally reviled. This lecture will look at some of the shared intellectual interests and parallel activities of these two giant figures in their respective fields, considering what links as well as what separates them today.

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IDP Worldwide

IDP Business Meeting

(From l. to r.), Liu Bo, Alla Sizova, Luo Huaqing, Viacheslav Zaystev, Susan Whitfield, Yukiyo Kasai, Birgit Schlyter, Ann Olsén, Patrick Hällzon, Sarah Mullan, Håkan Wahlquist, Laurent Héricher, Sam van Schaik, Simone-Christiane Raschmann, Emma Goodliffe, Sheng Yanhai.

Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul
24-26 April 2015
The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul kindly hosted the IDP Business Meeting, with support from Royal Swedish Academy of Letters and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust. Representatives from all IDP’s full partners attended, except for Japanese colleagues. We also missed colleagues from the Musée Guimet and the Museum of Asian Art although other colleagues from Paris and Berlin were present.
The first session consisted of short presentations by all attendees on their recent work. Highlights from these presentations are given below.

• Funding for work on the Tangut material has been awarded for 2.5 years.
• An archive of photographs documenting the IDP project has been created. This contains photographs from 1994 onwards. Search online on IDP for ‘Photo 1280’.
• Three collections of material from foreign travellers to Dunhuang (Desmond Parsons, Irene and John Vincent and Raghu Vira) have been donated to the British Library.
• A six-year ERC collaborative grant (British Museum, SOAS and the British Library) has been awarded. One output of this project is a database of transcriptions and map interface.

IDP Sweden

The Hedin Foundation

• The Hedin part of the Jarring-Hedin project (19,000 digital files of images) is currently being completed.
• There is planned and on-going parallel work on Hedin’s films, watercolours and maps.

National Museum of World Culture

• Upcoming exhibition in autumn 2015 and a parallel symposium is scheduled for the beginning of the exhibition (see p.9 ).
• Applied for research project funding for ‘The Early Medieval Silk Roads in Swedish Museums’, a collaborative project with other Swedish institutions.

IDP Russia

• 2018 will be the 200-year anniversary of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts and an international conference is planned. As part of the anniversary celebrations a guide to the manuscripts will be published.
• A multi-year international project (UK: Andrew West, Russia: Viacheslav Zaytsev, Ireland: Michael Everson) for encoding the Tangut script and Tangut components in the UCS (ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode Standard) was completed in 2014.
• A collaboration with the British Library on Tangut texts was proposed.

IDP China

National Library of China

• IDP China moved back into the main building following renovation and so can now give reader access again to the manuscripts.
• NLC have provided new equipment, (computer and camera back) and 120,000 images have been uploaded to the database.
• In autumn 2014 there was an exhibition of Dunhuang manuscripts at NLC.

Dunhuang Academy

• All 381 of the Chinese manuscripts and 179 Tibetan manuscripts in the Academy have been digitized.
• Manuscripts from other Gansu collections are now being digitised.
• Material from Dunhuang Academy is to be shown in 2016 exhibition at Getty Museum (see Exhibitions).
• 2016 will be the 10-year anniversary of the British Library signing an MoU with the Dunhuang Academy. There will be events in London and Dunhuang to celebrate the anniversary.

IDP Germany

Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities

• The complete Turfan collection has been digitised. Some items are still having metadata added.

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

• There is a new collaborative doctoral project, ‘Silk Road Fashion’ between with Free University of Berlin, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, State Museum of Prehistory and Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

IDP France

• The Pelliot collection has been digitised (with the exception of some manuscripts which still require conservation).
• The library is still undergoing refurbishment – some Chinese books are now being held in external stacks.
• IDP France reported the forthcoming visit of the Director of the BnF to Dunhuang. Since then at that visit, the BnF presented a copy of the TIFF images of all the Pelliot collection of Dunhuang manuscripts to the Dunhuang Academy for their non-commercial use.

Redevelopment

The next session focused on the progress of redevelopment of the database and sharing of initial website designs. Susan Whitfield confirmed that the redevelopment would involve replacing the current database (4D) with a new open source database (MySQL) with PHP and JavaScript. The code will be made available on GitHub. A timetable for the work was discussed.
Attendees had the opportunity to look at the initial website designs and some improvements were suggested.

Roundtable

A roundtable with Turkish colleagues followed to discuss potential collaboration. The following colleagues attended:
Kazim Abdullaev, Mimar Sinan University
Erdal Kucukyalcin, Boğaziçi University
Emine Gürsoy Naskali, Mamara University
Betül Özbay, Yildiz Technical University
Sehnaz Özcan, Marmara University
Oya Pancaroglu, Boğaziçi University
Münevver Tekcan, Kocaeli University
Isenbike Togan, Boğaziçi University
Zeynep Pinar Can, Yildiz Tech. University
Ibru Zeren, PhD, Istanbul University
Several ideas for working more closely together were were discussed and will be explored further.

India Conference and Exhibition

Susan Whitfield attended the opening on 24 March 2015 of the exhibition ‘Fascinated by the Orient: Life and Works of Sir Aurel Stein’, held at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, in collaboration with the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest (LHAS). Agnes Kelecsényi (pictured top-right at the opening), Keeper of the Oriental Collection at LHAS, curated the exhibition with Radha Banerjee Sarkar (pictured below-right), IGNCA cooordinator. Representatives from the Hungarian Embassy and the Hungarian Cultural Centre in India, leading Indian scholars and many others attended the opening ceremony.
A conference on Aurel Stein followed on 25–26 March at the IGNCA, organised by Radha Banerjee and attracting international participation. Dr Sahay, Curator of the Central Asian Collection at the National Museum (NM) gave an excellent presentation outlining the history of the collections in India and future plans. We hope to publish this in IDP News. The conference proceedings are also due to be published.
Susan Whitfield and Helen Wang, British Museum, also held discussions with the NM about collaboration on IDP. Material from the NM is now becoming available online on the Museum of India website with 997 objects from the Stein collection online as of May 2015.

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IDP UK

People

We are delighted to welcome Dr Hans-Ulrich Seidt as a new IDP patron. Dr Seidt is currently Ambassador and Inspector General of the German Foreign Office.
Dr Seidt attended the launch of IDP Korea during his time as Ambassador there (2009-12). He had previously been Ambassador in Afghanistan (2006-8) and continues an interest in Central Asia and the Silk Road collections worldwide. Last year he contributed a blog post for IDP20.

Feichi Gao (pictured left), a student at Northumbria University studying for an MA in Preventative Conservation, joined IDP UK on a five-week internship in February-March 2015. Feichi gave invaluable help with preparation for the Tangut project (see below) and we hope to welcome him back in the summer. Read his blog post for IDP.

Visitors

Among the recent visitors to IDP at the British Library were Mr Wang Yun of the Dunhuang Culture Promotion Foundation 敦煌文化t弘扬基金会. One of the Foundation’s most recent initiatives is the establishment of an organic vineyard near Dunhuang and Mr Wang brought samples of raisins from his first crop of grapes.
IDP welcomed students for show and tell lectures at the British Library from SOAS, Goldsmiths College, London, King’s College, London and University College London, as well as many readers and other visitors.

Detail from Tangut blockprint, The British Library, Or.12380/224

Conferences and Papers

Sam van Schaik presented at the Critical Silk Road Seminar at Georgetown University in December 2014 and Susan Whitfield in April 2015. In addition, Susan Whitfield gave lectures on IDP and Silk Road research at the following places:
Belgian Institute for Advanced Chinese Studies (BIHCS/ IBHEC), Brussels; Williams College, USA; Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, USA University of California at Berkeley, USA; Conference on Stein, New Delhi, India ( Exhibitions); CEO Silk Road Seminar, Dunhuang, China.

Tangut

IDP signed a Memorandum of Understanding in early February 2015 with Ningxia Archives for a collaborative project to conserve and digitise the Tangut (Xixia) manuscripts and blockprints in the British Library. The project started with the digitisaiton of previously conserved material and the first batch of images became available online and were sent to Ningxia Archives for their readers and for research at the end of May 2015.
The project is employing a digitisation conservator to work on the many fragments requiring conservation and the post was advertised in late May. Work will start on digitising the second batch of images in June.
Funding is being sought for the third stage of the project, for conservation and digitisation of the final set of newly-conserved material in late 2016. We need to find a minimum of £30,000. If you would like to make a donation towards this work then please contact IDP — any contribution will be very gratefully received and acknowledged online.

Through Asia in the Footsteps of Sven Hedin

http://svenhedin.com

THE SVEN HEDIN PROJECT
With the help of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin’s diaries, maps and photos, we will conduct a series of expeditions in his footsteps. It will be a journey through Asia up snow-covered mountain peaks, down wild rivers and through burning deserts. Our objective is to use digital photography to document how the landscape, culture and people in these areas have changed over a century.

IRAN: FROM DAMAVAND TO DESERT 2013
The Iran expedition will take six weeks and start with a ski ascent of Mount Damavand (5 671 meter), the highest peak in the Middle East, successfully ascended by Hedin in 1890. The rest of the expedition will follow Hedin’s route from 1906 by four wheel drive cars from Tehran and south east throughout the country to the border of Pakistan. The route will include a crossing of the central salt desert of Iran.

SVEN HEDIN (1865 – 1952) 
Sven Hedin was a Swedish explorer and geographer that devoted his life to exploring Central Asia and Tibet, mapping such a large unexplored territory that it has never been paralleled in history. Hedin made two journeys to Persia and four expeditions to Central Asia, discovering the Transhimalaya, the sources of Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers and long lost cities in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. Sven Hedin (1865 – 1952) was a Swedish explorer and geographer that devoted his life to exploring Central Asia and Tibet. He spent almost 20 years in Asia, mapping such a large unexplored territory that it has never been paralleled in history. The purpose of the present project is to make a series of five expeditions following in the tracks of Hedin, covering his expeditions to Persia, Central Asia and Tibet 1886 – 1935. The plan is to make one expedition each year, starting with Iran in 2013. Our objective is to travel in the footsteps of Hedin, with the help of his maps, diaries and photographs, and follow up on his geographical and ethnographical observations as well as repeating some of his most spectacular adventures. Like Hedin did we will capture the landscape, villages and towns we travel through and the people we meet, but with digital photography and videography. Hedin’s collection of more than 7000 photographs has been buried for over a hundred years in the archives of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. The large undertaking of digitizing these old glass plates have only just begun and we are the first to take full advantage of this unique material. We will search for the exact locations, where Hedin’s photographs were taken, in order to capture new images that precisely match the old ones. This lets us visually document the changes of these areas during the last century. Sven Hedin’s life as an explorer is one of the greatest adventure stories of all time. We will convey our results and Hedin’s story to the public in a groundbreaking new way, with interactive and geographically oriented media powered by Google Earth that will set a new standard for virtual exploration of historical and modern adventures.

Sven Hedin Bibliography

IDP - International Dunhuang Project,  TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015

Sven Hedin Bibliography

COMPILED BY DANIEL C. WAUGH
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON (SEATTLE)

Originally published: 2001, Silk Road Foundation.
Download this document in PDF format (608KB)

Hedin in “disguise” as a Buddhist pilgrim but without his makeup; accompanied by the Buriat Shagdur and Shereb Lama, July 1901.
(Central Asia and Tibet, II, p. 311)

The size and complexity of the famous Swedish explorer Sven Hedin’s bibliography rival the scope of his explorations. His books were excerpted, translated and republished in dozens of locations and languages. For the uninitiated, figuring out which version of a Hedin title may contain something of interest and be different from which other title is very difficult. My purpose is to assist in such efforts, not to provide a scholarly research tool for the specialist. A complete bibliography by Willy Hess is listed in section IV below.
The material here includes primarily his books and in the first instance their English editions. No effort has been made to exhaust the list of non-English editions. However, I devote considerable space to the Swedish and German ones, the former generally being the originals (most published by the firm of Albert Bonnier in Stockholm). His works in German were published almost exclusively by F. A. Brockhaus in Leipzig; the demand for his work in German seems to have been insatiable. Brockhaus often issued full, shorter, and yet shorter versions of the same work, all under the same title, many in popular series for young readers. There were frequent reprints, which I have not attempted to track systematically. Generally I try to identify the first edition; for others, I will cite first of all that which I have been able to examine. I make no attempt to cite, among others, the numerous translations of his work into Japanese or Chinese; it strikes me as even less likely that any readers of this page would prefer their Hedin in Yiddish (yes, such translations do exist!). Reprints of Hedin’s works continue to appear--several relatively inexpensive ones having been published in recent years in South Asia.
For those interested in the numerous photographs and maps Hedin published, unfortunately many of the translations (including some of the standard English ones) and most of these recent reprints are quite inadequate. The best reproductions tend to be in the original Swedish editions and in some of the early “full” translations.
Those wishing an overview of Hedin’s expeditions (at least through 1908) should begin with the summary account in his memoir, My Life as an Explorer. Large sections of the multi-volume accounts of individual expeditions make for dry reading. Hedin was trained in physical geography; I am not sure he figured out or cared how much of his soundings of lakes and measurements of river flow would really interest the average reader. Part of the problem also lies in the nature of much of the exploration--if one floats down the Tarim or slogs across the Tsaidam Plateau in the autumn rains as he did, there is a certain inevitable monotony. It is not always clear how one can best write about that if at the same time one wishes to chronicle the journey.
An additional problem for the modern reader is that our cultural sensitivity is different from Hedin’s. In some ways he is oblivious to many of the aspects of history and culture that so fascinated someone like Aurel Stein. At times Hedin’s European arrogance is more than annoying; in our politically correct age, he would be censured. Finally, today’s reader may respond unsympathetically to the litany of the cost of his expeditions to his pack horses, mules, and camels, not to mention the wildlife: yaks, camels, asses and antelope. Rare was an expedition in which more than a handful of his pack train came back alive. And he managed to lose more than a few of his human staff as well.
Where possible, I have examined the books de visu. I have yet to read more than a fraction of them (we are told his published works amount to more than 30,000 pages!). My annotation in many cases is based on information in library catalogues; I have also drawn upon the at times extended descriptions of the publications in the biography by George Kish listed below. Over time, I hope to add some notes and perhaps expand this bibliography into categories not yet covered. These limitations notwithstanding, I hope the material will provide a reasonably thorough guide for the interested reader who wishes to traverse Asia (and some aspects of twentieth-century politics) with Hedin. Suggestions for corrections and additions would be welcome.
The material is divided into four parts:

1. Accounts of his Asian travels and exploration, organized by the dates of the expeditions. I provide a brief indication of where the expedition went, and/or what some of its accomplishments were. References include the “full” (usually multi-volume) texts of his accounts intended for general audiences, condensed variants of the same volumes, and the publications of the “scientific results.”
2. Other writings, including books based on his travels which may cut across the chronological boundaries of single expeditions; contributions by him to the history of exploration; correspondence, even if addressed only to Hedin and not from him. It is possible that some of the books listed here should be connected with a specific expedition listed in part I.
3. Reportage and propaganda not connected with his Asian travels. Hedin was outspoken about Swedish politics and foreign policy and both in World War I and World War II, he sided with the Germans. The listings here cover the most important of the writings reflecting this aspect of his activity; I dwell upon them primarily to identify the titles those who would wish to focus on other issues might prefer to avoid. It is possible that one or two books listed in this category belong in Section II (or vice versa).
4. Works about Hedin. This section is still embryonic and will eventually be supplemented with references to resources other than full books on him. I also expect to add some links to on-line resources.

I. Travels and Exploration.

1885

Travel through Russia, Caucasus, Persia, Iraq, to Istanbul.

• My Life as an Explorer. New York: Boni & Liveright; also, Garden City Pub. Co., 1925 (tr. by Alfhild Huebsch) (repr., Kodansha, 1996, with Prologue and Epilogue by Peter Hopkirk), Ch. 1-5. (One Swedish edition is: Mitt liv som upptäcksresande. 5 v. [in small format]. Stockholm: Åhlen & Åkerlunds, 1930-1931; German tr.: Mein Leben als Entdecker. Leipzig: Brockhaus.)
• Genom Persien, Mesopotamien och Kaukasien. Reseminnen. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1887. His first major travel book.
• Meine erste Reise. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1922. (In series: Reisen und Abenteuer [Travels and Adventures], 20. Most volumes in this popular series run exactly 159 pp. Brockhaus published several of Hedin’s works in long [multi-volume], condensed [350-400 pp.], and these short versions, usually in each case all under the same title.) The subject matter is Persia. I am assuming the title “My First Journey” in fact refers to the 1885 trip.

1890-1891

Istanbul, Persia, Central Asia (Bukhara, Samarkand), Osh, Kashgar, Torugart Pass, L. Issyk-kul, Caucasus, St. Petersburg; initially as a member of a Swedish embassy to Persia; then travelling independently.

• My Life, Ch. 6-14.
• Konung Oscars beskickning till Schahen af Persien, år 1890. Stockholm: Samson & Wallin, 1891. Hedin’s second major book, on the embassy.
• Der Demavend, nach eigener Beobachtung. Halle, 1892. “Inaugural Dissertation,” which fulfilled one of his requirements for the Doctory of Philosophy degree from the University of Halle. He climbed Mt. Demavend in the Elburz range; see My Life, Ch. 9.
• Genom Khorsan och Turkestan: minnen från en resa i Centralasien 1890 och 1891. 2 v. Stockholm: Samson & Wallin, 1892-1893. (Also apparently serialized in 14 issues by Central-Tryckeriet.) Very nicely produced, with photos (of varying quality) and many of his often exquisite sketches. He was a skilled draftsman and artist; some of his best drawings are portraits and panoramas that capture what in a photograph might have been less compelling.

The “Camp of Death” in the Taklamakan, 1894. A later artist’s depiction.
(Through Asia, I, p. 557)

1893-1897

Traveled through Russian Central Asia, crossing the Pamirs through what is today Kyrgyzstan; spent substantial time exploring around one of the major peaks, Mustagh Ata, making several unsuccessful attempts to climb it. He was probably the first person ever to attempt it and did so with no serious mountaineering background. Explored in the Tarim Basin, in the process again showing his impetuosity and at this stage of his career lack of careful planning. In crossing part of the Taklamakan Desert to the Khotan River, only he and two other members of his expedition survived, and that just barely. Was the first Western explorer to see some of the desert ruins later studied by Aurel Stein (notably at Dandan-oilik and Karadong). Artifacts from these and other locations are now in Stockholm; since he himself knew little about what they were, in certain of his works he quotes the observations of the experts who studied them on his return. Crossed the Taklamakan along the Keriya River, began exploring the lower Tarim in the direction of Lop-Nor, and then traveled through previously uncharted areas of the Tsaidam Plateau in Northern Tibet and on to Beijing.

• My Life, Ch. 15-31.
• Through Asia. 2 v. New York/London: Harper, 1899. (Tr. by J. T. Bealby of En färd genom Asien 1893-1897. 2 v., Stockholm: Bonniers, 1898. German ed.: Durch Asiens Wüsten. [Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China] 2 v. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1899.)Short versions include: Genom Asiens öknar: forskningsresor och äventyr 1893-1897. 2nd ed. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1925; Durch Asiens Wüsten: Drei Jahren auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-Nor und China. 5. Aufl. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1915; in Danish: Gennem Asiens oeventyrlande. Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 1904. Yet shorter popular edition: Durch Asiens Wüsten. Ausgewählt v. Fritz Gansberg. Hamburg: Janssen, 1912; ser.: Wissenschaftliche Volksbücher für Schule und Haus, 21; reprinted as Drei Jahre im innersten Asien. Hamburg: Janssen, 1913; also: Durch Asiens Wüsten. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1920 (series: Reisen und Abenteuer, 2).
  This is one of the better reads among his travel accounts, despite the fact that his descriptive prose at times is floridly Victorian. Although the result is a kind of romanticization of some of the more foolish adventures, here as in other volumes, artists not on the expedition drew illustrations of dramatic moments (Hedin says they worked carefully with him for accuracy though).
• Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien, 1894-1897. Gotha: J. Perthes, 1900 (=Petermanns Mitteilungen, Ergänzungsheft Nr. 131). Scientific reports of the expedition, with contributions by K. Himly et al. As Kish notes in his To the Heart of Asia (pp. 56-57), Hedin’s most significant achievement was in his discussion of the Lop Nor problem and in his list of place names. The accompanying maps were based on his 550 separate sheets drawn from the sketches he made while riding; relatively little involved covering really unexplored territory.

1899-1902

Floated down the Tarim until stopped by ice; explored further around and in the dry Lop-Nor basin, visiting the deserted site of ancient Lou-Lan. This work was important for his confirmation of von Richthofen’s hypothesis about the “movement” of the lake with the shift in water flow out of the Tarim. Spent significant time mapping new areas of Northern Tibet, but failed in his attempt to reach Lhasa rather poorly disguised as a pilgrim. Exited Tibet via India.

• My Life, Ch. 32-46.
• Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa. 2 v. London: Hurst and Blackett; New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1903. (Tr. by J. T. Bealby from: Asien: Tusen mil på okända vägar.) (German ed.: Im Herzen von Asien: zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden. 2 v. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1903; 5. Aufl., 1922. In French: L’Asie inconnue. 2 v. Paris: Juven, 1904; also apparently 1 v. condensation, 1903.Condensed version: Tibetanska äfventyr. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1904; Abenteuer in Tibet. 2. Aufl. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1908; 15. Aufl., 1918. Also, in Russian as: Tarim, Lop-Nor, Tibet: puteshestvie po Azii 1899-1902 g. Shorter German popularization: Abenteuer in Tibet. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1919 (ser.: Reisen und Abenteuer, 1). Also, much abbreviated account of Tibet in 1900: En levnads teckning. Stockholm, Bonniers, 1920. Other editions of one or another version published in Milan, Budapest, Christiana, Prague, and Melbourne.
  He combined the accounts of his Tibetan explorations (esp. the 1899-1902 and 1906-1908 ones) in: A Conquest of Tibet. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1934 (Swedish original: Erövringståg i Tibet. Stockholm, 1934; German tr.: Eroberungszüge in Tibet. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1940; 4. Aufl., 1942.).
• Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia and Tibet 1899-1902. 6 v. text; 2 v. maps. Stockholm, 1904-1908. For a detailed description, see Kish, pp. 66-70.

Lamas drinking tea in the Court of Ceremonies, Tashi-lunpo, Shigatse.
Drawing by Sven Hedin, 1907.
(Transhimalaya, I, ill. 143)

1905-1908

Despite British and Tibetan opposition to his project, managed to sneak into Tibet, and explored extensively in its southern and western regions. Claimed the discovery of a “previously unknown” major mountain system, the “Trans-Himalaya,” and the sources of the major S. Asian rivers, although these claims were then disputed. Explored extensively on and around Lake Manasarovar. Not by his own choice, spent significant time in Shigatse, where he interacted with the Panchen Lama.

• My Life, Chs. 47-64.
• Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet. 3 v. New York/London: Macmillan, 1909, 1913. (Translation of Transhimalaya: upptäckter och äfventyr i Tibet. 3 v. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1909, 1912; Ger. ed.: Transhimalaya. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet. 3 v. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1909, 1912; also 2. Aufl., first two vols., 1910.) The third volume appeared as a supplement, hence some libraries record this as a two-volume edition.Short English account: To the Forbidden Land: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet. Lucknow, 1986. Popular condensation from the 3 vol. German ed.: Transhimalaja: neue Abenteuer in Tibet. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1929; in series: Reisen und Abenteuer, 2. Another very short condensation, primarily the parts containing his stay in Shigatse, is Wildes heileges Tibet. Leipzig: Reclam, 1944 (Tr. from Swedish by Theodor Flade). Not clear from title whether short Fr. ed., Le Tibet dévoilé (Paris: Hachette, 1910), concerns this expedition or the preceding one. Other eds. in Amsterdam, Paris, Helsinki, Budapest, Prague, Milan. See also notation above for A Conquest of Tibet.
• Overland to India. 2 v. London: Macmillan, 1910; repr., New York: Greenwood, 1968. (Tr. of Öfver land till Indien genom Persien, Seistan och Belutjistan. 2 v. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1910; German ed. Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien, Seistan, Belutschistan. 2 v. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1910.) Popular short German ed.: Zu Land nach Indien. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1921; in series: Reisen und Abenteuer, 8. Travel through Persia, on his way to the Tibetan explorations of 1906-8. As Kish notes (pp. 78-79), the book “faithfully mirrors [the] monotony… of a dreary, prolonged journey across an empty landscape.”
• Southern Tibet: Discoveries in Former Times compared with my Own Researches in 1906-1908. 9 v. text; 3 v. atlas. Stockholm, 1916-1922 (repr. Delhi, B.R. Pub. Corp., 1991). Includes: v. 1. Atlas of Tibetan Panoramas; v. 2-3 Atlas of maps; v. 1-2: Lake Manasarovar and sources of the great Indian Rivers; v. 3. Transhimalaya; v. 4. Karakorum and Chang-tang; v. 5. Petrographie und geologie (von Anders Henning); v. 6, in 5 pts. with separate titles; v. 7. History of explorations in the Kara-korum Mountains; v. 8 in 4 pts. with separate titles; v. 9 in 4 parts with separate titles and pt. 5, General index. While clearly he has an agenda here, to emphasize the significance of his own contribution, there is much of value in his extensive review of earlier travels and maps; one of the more interesting volumes (Vol. 8) contains an extensive treatment (in German) of early Chinese and East Turki maps, written by orientalists Albert Herrmann and Albert von le Coq. The atlas volumes enable one to compare his numerous panoramas with the finished maps and see details identifying the places at which he made precise observations. A detailed description of this edition is in Kish, pp. 99-104.
• Eine Routenaufnahme durch Ost-Persien. 2 v. text; 1 v. atlas. Stockholm: Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, 1918-1927. The illustrations and cartographic results of his journey through Persia to India. Included are his photographs, panoramas and detailed maps along with larger summary maps in the atlas.

1923

In November and December travelled from Peking to Moscow: by Dodge automobile through Mongolia (including Urga--the present-day Ulan Baatar) to Verkhne-Udinsk on the Trans-Siberian RR, and then by train to Moscow (and eventually through St. Petersburg and back home).

• Från Peking till Moskva. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1924. (Ger. ed.: Von Peking nach Moskau. Leipzig: Brockhaus.) Some interesting photos illustrate the difficulties of motor travel in Mongolia, and towns along the way. He met the famous Russian explorer Kozlov there. The last third or so of the book is a description of Moscow and various aspects of Russian history and culture, including art and architecture; the final chapter is on St. Petersburg. He had some interest in describing what things were like under the still young Bolshevik regime.

1927-1935

The most elaborately equipped of Hedin’s expeditions--an army of scholars and others, whose main geographical focus was in Mongolia and the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. At the outset experienced difficulties with the Chinese authorities, who were beginning to resist Western incursions in China (the matter was solved by adding Chinese scholars to the group); later became a captive during the Dungan rebellion in Xinjiang. One of the sponsors of the expedition was Lufthansa, which was hoping to open air routes across Inner Asia to China; some of the exploration was avowedly with the idea of re-opening the Silk Road by determining the best routes for motor traffic.
Was able to prove convincingly his theories about the “movement” of Lop-Nor, since the rivers fed by the Tarim had changed course in 1921; the lake was now back in its northern basin. Explored by motor vehicle the routes through the mountains west from Dunhuang, showing that one branch of the historic Silk Road undoubtedly had run in that direction and to Lop Nor in its northern location until the rivers shifted course. The various specialists in his team often worked on separate itineraries; this was the first of his expeditions which had scholars properly trained to carry out archaeological work.
The initial volumes concerning the expedition were published piecemeal, as it was going on, with the result being some updating between the appearance of one edition and its translation and a certain amount of overlap in contents.

• Across the Gobi Desert. London: Routledge, [1931]; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1933. (Tr. by H. J. Cant from German ed.: Auf grosser Fahrt: meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927-1928. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1929; 6. Aufl., 1930; Swed. ed.: Åter till Asien. Min expedition 1927-1928 med svenskar, tyskar och kineser genom öknen Gobi. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1928.) Covers 1927-1928 explorations, with addition in the English ed. of chapter “Lop-Nor, the Wandering Lake,” pp. 360-392, and a note from July 1931 on further Lop Nor exploration in early 1931. Mentions a film by Paul Lieberenz, who accompanied the expedition: “With Sven Hedin Across the Deserts of Asia.”
• Riddles of the Gobi Desert. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1933. (Tr. by Elizabeth Sprigge & Claude Napier from Swedish ed., with added chapter “The Discovery of New Lop Nor,” by Nils G. Hörner, pp. 341-376. In Swedish: Gobiöknens gåtor, Stockholm: Bonniers, 1930; 2nd ed., 1931; German ed.: Rätsel der Gobi: die Fortsetzung der grossen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928-1930. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1931.) Sequel to Across the Gobi Desert. It was Hörner and Parker Chen who carried out the definitive survey around the new Lop Nor.
• Jehol, City of Emperors. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1933 (Tr. by E. G. Nash from Swedish: Jehol, kejsarstaden. Skildringar från de stora mandschukejsarnas hov. Stockholm: Hökerbergs, 1931; Ger. ed.: Jehol, die Kaiserstadt. 7. Aufl. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1942.) A copy of the main Buddhist temple in Jehol (Chengde) was built as an exhibition for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago; Hedin was involved in the project.
• The Silk Road. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1938. (Tr. from Swedish: Sidenvägen. En bilfärd genom Centralasien. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1936.; German ed.: Die Seidenstrasse. 10. Aufl. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1942.) Covers events from departing Beijing, October 1933, through return to Xian in February 1935.
• The Wandering Lake. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1940. (Tr. by F. H. Lyon from Swedish: Den vandrande sjön. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1937; German ed.: Der wandernde See. 9. Aufl. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1942; Chinese translation pub. in Taipei, 1955. Also, in Swedish there is a title: Mot Lop-Nor. En flodfärd på Tarim. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1954.) One of the more interesting volumes in this series on the 1927-35 expedition: observations on the changing ecology with the movement of the rivers and the lake and a discussion of what previous geographers and mappers had written. Hedin rather repetitiously proclaims his solving of the riddle of Lop Nor as one of his most important achievements. The shift in the river flow which led to the re-establishment of the lake in its former (northern) location occurred in 1921.
• The Flight of “Big Horse”: The Trail of War in Central Asia. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1936. (Tr. by F. H. Lyon; Swed. ed.: Stora hästens flykt. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1935; German ed.: Die Flucht des Grossen Pferdes. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1935; 6. Aufl., 1939.). Hedin was caught up in the Dungan rebellion led by Ma Chung-ying, the “Big Horse” of the title. Those events also figure in the well-known account by Peter Fleming, News from Tartary.
• History of the Expedition in Asia 1927-1935. 4 v. Stockholm, 1943. Parts 1-3 written in collaboration with Folke Bergman: I. 1927-1928; II. 1928-1933; III. 1933-1935. Pt. IV. General Reports of Travels and Fieldwork, by Folke Bergman, Gerhard Bexell, Birger Bohlin, Gösta Montell. (=Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the North-Western Provinces of China under the Leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin--The Sino-Swedish Expedition. Publications 23-26). This is the descriptive summary of the expedition, part of a projected 55 volumes of scientific reports authored by the various specialists on the expedition and published in various subseries.
• Central Asia Atlas. 5 v. Stockholm: Statens etnografiska museum, 1966-1982. (Reports..., Publications 47, 48, 49, 50, 54).

II. Other books connected with Hedin’s explorations; correspondence.

A. Varia, on his travels; popular books on explorations, etc.

• From Pole to Pole, a Book for Young People. London: Macmillan, 1914. (407 p. abridgement from Swedish: Från Pol till pol, 2 vols.) German ed. by Brockhaus: Von Pol zu Pol. 3 v.: 1. Vom Nord Pol zum Äquator; 2. Rund um Asien; 3. Durch Amerika zum Südpol. A well illustrated introduction to world geography, which became a bestseller. The 1921 German edition was the 18th.
• Till Jerusalem. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1917 (German eds: Jerusalem. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1918; in both long and condensed versions.)
• Bagdad, Babylon, Nineve. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1917. (Ger. eds.: Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1917 [apparently a short preprint]; 1918 [long, but apparently condensed] eds.) Original, 806 pp. with many illustrations. Fr. anthology of what it labels German propaganda includes excerpts from this (see below). It seems that Hedin expressed criticisms of British imperial policy in the Middle East, an area on which Germany also had designs. This and the preceding title were based on his travel through the Middle East in 1916.
• Mount Everest och andra asiatiska problem. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1922. (German ed.: Mount Everest. Liepzig: Brockhaus, 1923; 2nd ed. 1926.) On 1922 British Everest expedition.
• Grand Canyon. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1925 (in Swedish). (German tr.: Gran Cañon: Mein Besuch in amerikanischen Wunderland. Lepizig: Brockhaus, 1926.) With his sister Alma, he traveled extensively in the U.S. on lecture tours in 1923. The book is illustrated with his sketches and water colors.
• Ander Schwelle Innerasiens. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1927. (Ser.: Reisen und Abenteuer). Material taken from Durch Asiens Wüsten and Im Herzen von Asien.
• Zajagan: Menschen und Götter in der Mongolei. Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 193? On the stay in Shigatse during 1906-8 exped.?
• Tsangpo Lamas vallfärd. 2 v. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1920-1922: I. Pilgrimerna, II. Nomaderna. (German ed.: Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt. 2 v. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1922-1923.) Fiction, which Kish glowingly describes (p. 106) as “not a novel. Rather it is a series of magnificent vignettes of the people, the animals, and the nature of Mongolia and Tibet.”
• Mina hundar i Asien. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1952 (German tr. by Lothar Tobias: Meine Hunde in Asien. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1953.) Hedin’s many canine traveling companions.
• Karavan och Tarantass. Med häster genom Asien. Stockholm, 1953. On his horses during his Asian explorations.

B. Works on Explorers and the History of Exploration.

• General Prschevalskij’s forskningsresor i Centralasien. Efter de ryska, tyska och franska originalupplagorna. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1891. (German ed.: General Prschewalskij in Innerasien. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1925; 1928--a condensation in series Reisen und Abenteuer, 19.) The original edition is a 455 p. collection of excerpts translated from the famous Russian explorer Przhevalskii’s accounts of his four expeditions, with 90 pp. of commentary by Hedin.
• Resare-Bengt: en levnadsteckning. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1921. (German ed.: Verwehte Spuren: Orientfahrten des ReiseBengt und Andere Reisenden in 17. Jahrhundert. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1923.) On Bengt Bengtsson, Freiherr von Oxenstierna, 1591-1643, who traveled in Persia. To a considerable degree Hedin’s book is “more of an anthology of Renaissance travel and travelers than a true biography” (Kish, p. 105).
• Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. En levnadsbeskrivning. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1926. Famous explorer and cartographer.
• Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. Minnesteckning. Uppsala, 1926. An obituary. For various explorers including Nordenskiöld, see also Hedin’s Stormän och kungar in sec. C.

C. Correspondence; memoirs; drawings.

• Meister und Schüler. Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen an Sven Hedin. Mit einer Einleitung und Erläuterungen von Sven Hedin. Zur 100. Wiederkehr des Geburtstages von Ferdinand von Richthofen im Namen des im Ferdinand von Richthofen-Tag vereinigten Schülerkreises, hrsg. v. Ernst Tiessen. Berlin: D. Reimer, 1933. Letters of famous German geographer von Richthofen (who coined term “Silk Road”) to his one-time student at the University of Berlin, Sven Hedin.
• Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1942. Correspondence with his long-time German publisher.
• Alma Hedin, Min bror Sven: brev och minnen. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1926. (Ger. eds.: Mein Bruder Sven Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1925; abbreviated popular eds. with same title, 1926, 1927.) Alma was very close to her brother and among his most vigorous advocates.
• Stormän och kungar. 2 v. Stockholm: Fahlcrantz & Gumaelius, 1950. German translation by Lothar Tobias: Grosse Männer denen ich begegnete. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1951 (1 v. ed.); 1952 (2 v. ed.).A long series of short sketches of famous men he met, based on materials in his diaries and often illustrated with quotations of their letters to him. Some were explorers (e.g., Vambéry, Nansen, Richthofen, Amundsen), many statesmen or rulers (e.g., Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Shah of Persia Nasr-ed-Din, Emir of Bukhara Seid Abdul Ahad, Emperor Franz Josef, President Theodore Roosevelt, Hindenburg, Lord Curzon, Lord Kitchener), and some distinguished for other reasons (e.g., Rabindranath Tagore, Henry Ford). Kish (p. 142) says “it is a more candid and far less pretentious autobiography than those Hedin had written earlier,” although “he only represents the thread that binds this array of imposing and different personages together.”
• Försvarsstriden, 1912-1914. Stockholm, 1951. A “political memoir” on the Swedish defense crisis of 1912-1914.
• Life and Letters. Stockholm: Statens etnografiska museum, 1962. Published by the Sven Hedin Foundation.
• Gösta Montell, Sven Hedin as Artist. For the centenary of Sven Hedin’s birth. Stockholm: Gen. Stabenslitogr. Anst., 1964. (Also in Swedish as: Sven Hedin som tecknare; Ger. tr.: Mein Leben als Zeichner. Zum 100. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1965.) Includes some 240 of his drawings.

III. Reportage, political pamphlets, propaganda, etc.

• Sverige och den stora östern. Stockholm, 1905.
• Svar på “tal.” Stockholm: Bonniers, 1910. Pamphlet criticising Strindberg’s “Tal till svenska nationen” for its arguments about Sweden’s imperial past and Swedish contributions to exploration.
• Ett varningsord af Sven Hedin. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1912. 70 pp. pamphlet on the need to bolster Swedish defense in the face of the Russian threat. (German ed.: Ein Warnungsruf. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1912.) Printed in one million copies. See also Försvarsstriden, 1912-1914, listed in preceding section.
• Andra varningen. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1914. A new booklet analogous in content to the preceding.
• Tredje varningen: storhögerns hemliga programpunkt. 2nd ed. Göteborg: Holmqvist, 1914. 23 p. pamphlet.
• Ett ord till Norges folk. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1914. 32 p. pamphlet.
• Tal till ungdemokrater, borgare och bönder. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1914.
• Sveriges öde. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1918. Swedish politics and WWI.
• With the German Armies in the West. London/New York: Lane, 1915. (Tr. by H. G. de Walterstorff and condensed from 800-p. Swedish original: Från fronten i väster september-november, 1914. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1915.) (In Ger.: Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1915. Short version of book by same name published in same year.) Reportage from western front, with rebuttal of Allied claims of German atrocities and maltreatment of prisoners.
• Kriget mot Ryssland. Minnen från fronten i öster mars-augusti 1915. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1915. (In Ger.: Nach Osten! Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1916. Short version of longer longer German rendering published in same year.) 900 pp. of reportage from Eastern front.
• Les chefs-d’oeuvre de la propagande allemagne. Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1919. On pp. 118-243, excerpts from Hedin’s Un peuple en armes, Vers l’Est, Bagdad-Babylone-Nineve.
• Persien und Mesopotamien: zwei asiatische Probleme. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1923. A 67 p. pamphlet on British policy vis-à-vis Persia.
• Ossendowski und die Wahrheit. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1925. Something to do with a work by Ferdinand Ossendowski, “Beasts, Men and Gods.”
• Germany and World Peace. London: Hutchinson, 1937. (Tr. from German by Gerald Griffin) (In Swedish: Tyskland och världsfreden. 3rd ed. Stockholm: Medens, 1937; German ed., Deutschland und der Weltfriede, typeset by Brockhaus, but Nazis cancelled publication. According to Hedin, in his war diary, the reason was his refusal to alter a few mildly critical comments.)
• Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1938. (In Swedish: Femto år Tyskland. Malmo: Dagens, 1939.)
• Chiang Kai-shek, Marshal of China. New York: John Day, ca. 1940. (Tr. by Bernard Norbelie from Swedish: Chiang Kai-Shek, marskalk av Kina. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1939.)
• På svensk mark. Resor och minnen. Redigerad av Gösta Montell. 1944.
• Amerika im Kampfe der Kontinente. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1943. Intended for publication in U.S. prior to American entry into World War II, in order to forestall that event. Indicts Roosevelt as the one responsible for the War. In his diary (see below), quotes approving letter from Hitler, to whom he sent a personally dedicated copy.
• Sven Hedin’s German Diary. 1935-1942. Dublin: Euphorion Books, 1951 (Tr. Joan Bulman). (Swedish original: Utan uppdrag i Berlin; German tr.: Ohne Auftrag in Berlin: Begegnungen mit Mächtigendes 3. Reiches, first published under emigré Nazi auspices in Buenos Aires in 1949.) His dealings with Goering, Hess, Hitler et al., with ample quotation from their admiring letters to him. One of Hedin’s underlying concerns was Soviet expansion (the threat was very real during the “Winter War” with Finland); in part his trips to Germany were a kind of personal diplomacy to curry Nazi guarantees for neutral Sweden. Hedin apparently had genuine admiration for German culture and despaired at the destruction caused by Allied bombings. He was deliberately blind as to the real war guilt, and he mentions only in passing Hitler’s vicious anti-Semitism. One can read from the book either naivete or arrogance; in any event Hedin largely condemns himself in his own words.

IV. Works about Hedin.

• For the Centenary of Sven Hedin’s Birth. Stockholm: Statens etnografiska museum, 1965 (ser: Ethnos, 30).
• Willy Hess, Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses (=Sven Hedin--Life and Letters, Vol. I). Stockholm, 1962. Also, Erster Nachtrag. Stockholm, 1965 (mimeographed). A complete bibliography of Hedin’s works.
• George Kish, To the Heart of Asia: The Life of Sven Hedin. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr., 1984. Well informed but uncritical regarding some of the more controversial aspects of Hedin’s career. The only full treatment of Hedin in English.
• Eric Wennerholm, Sven Hedin. En biografi. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1978. As Hedin’s lawyer and financial adviser, the author has a privileged insider’s prespective.
• Detlef Brennecke, Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bulddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1991. “Brief but useful” (Meyer and Brysac, p. 604).
• Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Amherst: UMass. Pr., 1984. Ch. 4. A readable overview by the best-selling guru of the “Great Game.”
• Charles Allen, A Mountain in Tibet: The Search for Mount Kailas and the Sources of the Great Rivers of India. London: Deutsch, 1982. Chs. 9 and 10 are a description of the contretemps between Hedin and members of the Royal Geographical Society in 1909, and a careful critique of Hedin’s claims about finding the sources of the rivers.
• Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. Washington, D. C.: Counterpoint, 1999. Esp. Chs. 13, 21. Follows the lead of Allen, introduces some new material on Hedin’s relations with the British geographers, and provides an acute and highly unflattering assessment of his character. The emphasis on the negative at times relies on somewhat unfair selectivity of evidence; Hedin suffers from the implicit comparison/contrast with Aurel Stein, who is treated in Chs. 14-15. One consequence is a failure really to resolve the question of what Hedin’s contributions may have been. Nonetheless, this discussion is a refreshing antidote to Kish’s rosy-hued treatment.See also references under II.C.