ABOUT THE BOOK

Ji Xianlin: A Critical Biography reconstructs the academic, professional and personal journey of the doyen of Indology, Buddhism and Orientalism in China. Though his Journey of life remains full of trials and tribulations, emotional world lay buried deep under the familial and professional obligations, nonetheless, true to the evaluation, he remains indispensable as far as China’s translation, comparative literature, Dunhuang-Turfan studies and cultural exchanges are concerned. India runs through his veins throughout this journey, whether it is his path breaking textual research on the dissemination of paper and silk from China to India or the sugar from India to China, or the Indian Literature in China and translation of Ramayana, Panchtantra, Shanakuntla etc. from Sanskrit, or the reminiscences of his visits to India, one and all have been supplemented with credible primary sources from historical records. It is not easy to weave a tapestry of the life and works of a person as versatile as Ji Xianlin, but the authors have done a remarkable job in mirroring Ji Xianlin’s journey through the Qing, Republican and the People’s Republic. I believe this tapestry will be woven uninterrupted, for Ji Xianlin remains a link between the past and the future.

ABOUT Author

Yu Longyu was born in Shanghai on April 3, 1946. He is the Professor and Director of the Centre for Indian Studies, Shenzhen University. He has done extensive research on Indian Literature, China-India comparative literature, China-India cultural relations, Indian studies in China, Chinese studies in India, Indology and Sinology. For his contribution towards Indology, the President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee conferred on his the 2016 “Distinguished Indologist Award”. He is the author of Origin and Development of Sino-Indian Literary Relations, Sino-Indian Comparative Literature, History of Oriental Literature (Chief Editor), Indian Classics and Chinese Texts, Comparative Studies in Sino-Indian Poetics and History of Sino-Indian Literary Exchange. His latest work, the Chinese editions of Ji Xianlin: A Critical Biography was published in 2016.

Zhun Xuan is working as an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Indian Studies, Shenzhen University. She received her Ph.D degree from the Department of South Asian Studies, Peking University in 2013, majoring in Indian Religion, philosophy and Culture. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy, Delhi University in the year 2010-11. Some of her publications include Travelogues if India (2013), Reflections on Indian Culture (2016, and Ji Xianlin: A Critical Biography (Chinese edition, 2016). Besides, she has also participated in compilation, editing and translation of Tan Yunshan (2008), Translation of Oriental Literature in China (2014) and The Heart Rabindranath Tagore Left in China (2013;2014). Presently she is working on a project titled Interpretation and research on Hujwiri’s Kashf al-Mahjub supported by China’s Social Science Foundation.

B.R. Deepak was trained in Chinese history and India-China relations at the Peking University and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and University of Edinburgh, UK. He has been the Nehru and Asia Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. Dr. Deepak’s publications include China’s Global Rebalancing and the New Silk Road (2018), My Tryst with China (2017), India and China: Foreign Policy Approaches and Responses (2016), Indian and China 1904-2004: A Century of Peace and Conflict (2005), India- China Relations in first half of the Twentieth Century (2001), India-China Relations: Future Perspectives (co ed. 2012), India-China Relations: Civilizational Perspectives (co ed. 2012) China: Agriculture, Countryside and Peasants (2010). Some of his translations from Chinese to Hindi and English include: The Four Books (2018); Core Values of Chinese Civilization (2018), The Analects of Confucius (2016), Mencius (2017), My Life with Kotnis (2010) Chinese Poetry: 1100 BC to 1400 AD (2011), a translation of 88 selected classical poems for which he was awarded the 2001 “Special Book Prize of China”.