A Journey Beyond the Three Seas (,
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.