A Journey Beyond the Three Seas

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A Journey Beyond the Three Seas (Хожение за три моря, Khozheniye za tri morya) is a Russian literary monument in the form of travel notes, made by a merchant from Tver Afanasiy Nikitin during his journey to India in 1466-1472.

A Journey Beyond the Three Seas was the first Russian literary work to depict a strictly commercial, non-religious trip. The author visited the Caucasus, Persia, India and the Crimea. However, most of the notes are dedicated to India, its political structure, trade, agriculture, customs and ceremonies. The work is full of lyrical digressions and autobiographic passages. Its last page is in Turkic and the broken Arabic language; these are, in fact, typical Muslim prayers, indicating that Nikitin probably converted to Islam while he was in India, although his lapse from Christianity bothered him as he mentions several times in the text.

In 1475, the manuscript made its way to Moscow into the hands of a government official Vasili Mamyrev. Later on, it was incorporated into the annalistic code of 1489, the Sofia Second Chronicle and the Lvov Chronicle.

References

External links

• Full text of A Journey Beyond Three Seas
• English translation of A Journey Beyond Three Seas

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Last updated on Sunday March 02, 2008 at 13:48:09 PST (GMT -0800)
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