Sketches of Ceylon and India

Sketches of Ceylon and India: From the Travel Notes of a Russian is the English translation, a long-felt desideratum, of the report originally written in Russian and published in 1878 by Professor Ivan Minayev on his first trip to Ceylon, India and Nepal in 1874-75. 

Of the three foreign trips, the first trip of Ivan Minayev to the East is particularly interesting for Orientalists. This trip was important both for the scholar himself and for the development of Indology as a whole. This report contains not only detailed information on archaeological discoveries and description of architectural and historical monuments but a spate of interesting observations and conclusions related to the daily life of the peoples inhabiting these countries.

Minayev’s personal pieces of evidence of those distant times, based on the stable academic foundation, unlike various contemporary travelogues that abound in distorted judgments and biased observations, are indeed very rare and hence one cannot overestimate their value.