{"collection":"earth","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/earth/fu/fu02.htm","path":"earth/fu/fu02.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/earth/fu/fu02.htm","text":"CARL FRIEDRICH NEUMANN, the author of the subjoined memoir on the presumed early discovery of America by Buddhist monks, was of Jewish family, and born December 22, 1798, near Bamberg, Bavaria. He was intended for commerce, but having studied history at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich, determined to devote his life to letters. Having become a Protestant, he was appointed professor in 1822 at the Gymnasium of Speier, whence he was dismissed in 1825 for Liberal opinions in politics. He subsequently lived for several years in Venice, Paris, and London, occupied with the study of Oriental languages. Having distinguished himself as a sinologist, he went. in 1829 to China, where he remained nearly two years, occupied in collecting Chinese books. In Canton he obtained a valuable library of 10,000 volumes, which, after his return, were ceded to the Bavarian Government. In 1838 he received an appointment as professor of the Chinese and Armenian languages at the University of Munich, where he also read lectures on mathematics\nand modern history, which were very popular with the students. Having known him well, both in public and private, and pursued studies under his special guidance, I venture to speak with confidence and respect of his enormous learning, as well as his sound judgment in matters of scholarship.\nProfessor Neumann was the author of a number of works in Latin, French, and English, as well as German, two of which received prizes from the Academies of Copenhagen and Paris. His principal books are the following:\nRerum Cretaricum Specimen. G\u00f6ttingen, 1820.\nUeber die Staatsverfassung der Florentiner, von Leonardus Aretinus. Frankfurt, 1822.\nHistorische Versuche. Heidelberg, 1825.\nM\u00e9moires sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de David, philosophe Armenien du cinqui\u00e8me si\u00e8cle de notre \u00e9re, et principalement sur ses traductions de quelques \u00e9crits \u00e0 Aristote. Paris, 1829.\nThe History of Vartan, and of the Battle of the Armenians, containing an account of the religious wars between the Persians and Armenians. By Elis\u00e6us; translated by C. F. Neumann. London, 1831.\nThe Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of Buddha in China. Translated from the Chinese, with notes and illustrations. London, 1831.\nHistory of the Pirates who infested the Chinese Seas from 1807 to 1810. Translated from the Chinese original, with notes and illustrations. London, 1831.\nGeschichte der Armenischen Literatur. Leipzig, 1833-36.\nGeschichte der Uebersiedlung von 40,000 Armeniern. Leipzig, 1834.\nRussland und die Tcherkessen. Stuttgart, 1840.\nGeschichte des Englisch-Chinesischen Kriegs. Leipzig, 1846. In this comprehensive work, one division is entitled, \"Nord Amerika und Frankreich in China,\" in which the present and future relations of Western America and Eastern Asia are developed with great sagacity. A few years before his death, Iskander (Alexander Herzen) wrote to me--\"The Pacific will yet be the Mediterranean of the future.\" Those who look forward to such developments of civilisation and commerce will find this book of Professor Neumann's very interesting.\nDie V\u00f6lker des S\u00fcdlichen Russland in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Leipzig, 1847. To this work was awarded the prize of the Royal Institute of Paris.\nDie Reisen des Venetianers Marco Polo, Deutsch von August B\u00fcrk. Nebst Zus\u00e4tzen und Verbesserungen von C. F. Neumann. Leipzig, 1845.\nBeitr\u00e4ge zur Armenischen Literatur. Leipzig, 1849.\nGeschichte des Englischen Reichs in Asien. Leipzig, 1857.\nProfessor Neumann was one of the directors of the German Oriental Association, and published in the first number of their magazine a biography of Dr Morrison, the celebrated Protestant missionary to China.\nI sincerely trust that the additions which I have made to this work, in elucidation or in illustration of the idea advanced, will be found to the purpose. They are the result of much research,--I may honestly say, of far more than appears in this volume, as the subject, from its obscurity, yielded only the proverbial grain of wheat to the wearisome bushel of chaff. I also hope that it is free from either reckless hypothesis or easy credulity, and that nothing will be understood to be advanced as being more than probable.","title":"Fusang: Memoir of Professor Carl Friedrich Neumann","type":"page"}