Joseph Edkins

Who was Joseph Edkins?

Joseph Edkins was a British Protestant missionary who spent 57 years in China, 30 of them in Beijing. As a Sinologue, he specialized in Chinese religions. He was also a linguist, a translator, and a philologist. Writing prolifically, he penned many books about the Chinese language and the Chinese religions especially Buddhism. In his China's Place in Philology, he tries to show that the languages of Europe and Asia have a common origin by comparing the Chinese and Indo-European vocabulary.