Nikita Bichurin

Who was Nikita Bichurin?

Nikita Yakovlevich Bichurin, better known under his monastic name Hyacinth, or Iakinf, was one of the founding fathers of Sinology. He was born to a family of Chuvash priests and studied in the Kazan seminary.

In 1802 he was tonsured with the name Hyacinth and sent to promote Christianity in Beijing, where he spent the next 14 years. The genuine objects of his interest were Chinese history and language. He was forthwith accused of lacking religious zeal, stripped of his abbot's rank and incarcerated in the Valaam Monastery. There he translated a number of ancient and medieval Chinese manuscripts, which had hitherto been unknown in Europe. In succeeding decades he published many volumes on Chinese and Mongolian history, geography, religion, statistics, and agriculture.

It was Bichurin who came up with the idea for the name East Turkestan to replace the term "Chinese Turkestan" in 1829.

In 1837 he opened the first Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire. For his sinological contributions, he was elected to the Russian, German, and French Academies of Sciences.