| 摘要 | The account of Khotan in the early Ming period, which occupies the latter part of the Treatise on Yü T’ien in the Ming Shih, was based, as has already been noticed by Dr. E. Bretschneider in his Mediaeval Researches, on the Shih Hsi Yü Chi 使西域記, or the Record of an Embassy to the Western Countries, which was written and presented to the court by Ch’ên Ch’eng 陳誠 on his return from his visit to Herat, Samarkand and fifteen other western countries, in the course of his first embassy to the west from 1414 to 1416. Scholars have long been aware that the Shih Hsi Yü Chi, which became known to the world on its inclusion in the Hsüeh Hai Lei Pien 學海類編, is not the text of the work as submitted by Ch’ên Ch’eng to the court but was taken from the Huang Ming Shih Lu 皇明實録, the Ming archives. However, when in 1944 the Peking Library bought the collection of Mr. Li of Tientsin, it was found that the collection included Ming manuscript copies of a Hsi Yü Hsing Ch’êng Chi 西域行程記, a Record of a Journey to the Western Countries and a Hsi Yü Fan Kuo Chih 西域番國志, an Account of the Foreign Countries of the West, by Ch’ên Ch’eng and Li Hsien 李暹. The latter is considered to be the text of the Shih Hsi Yü Chi, by Ch’ên Ch’'eng, which is included in the Hsüeh.Hai Lei Pien.
When we reexamine the latter part of the Treatise on the Yü T’ien in the Ming Shih in the light of this Hsi Yü Fan Kuo Chih, it becomes clear that the account in the Ming Shih was not directly based on the Hsi Yü Fan Kuo Chih, but was taken at second hand from the Huang Ming Ssŭ I K’ao 皇明四夷考, the Study of Foreign Peoples in the Ming Period, by Cheng Hsiao鄭曉 (1499-1566). Moreover, when we compare the accounts given in the Huang Ming Ssŭ I K’ao and the Hsi Yü Fan Kuo Chih (the copy of this work in the Peking Library was once in the possession of Cheng Hsiao), considerations both of content and wording, make it clear that the entries, in the former, which purport to relate to Khotan, relate, in fact, to Bi Shi Ba Li 別失八里, i. e. Moghulistan, at the begining of the 14th century, and that Ch’ên Ch’eng never went to Khotan in the course of his first embassy to the west.
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