270 



NA TURE 



[July 2 i, 1904 



of Islam, who were now overrunning his kingdom, but 

 Kao-tsong refused to attack the Arabs. Firuz, a son 

 of Yazdijird, fled to the Chinese court at Si-ngan-fu, 

 and Kao-tsong proclaimed him King of Persia after 

 the murder of Yazdijird. He was, however, never able 

 to enter into possession of his kingdom, the Arab 

 conquerors of which sent a formal embassy to the 

 Chinese Emperor four years later (a.d. 655). 



Thus Chinese Turkestan served as a bridge between 

 east and west in the days of the great T'ang. 



Since the period of the T'ang, Kashgaria has always 

 remained nominally subject to China, and, despite the 

 victory of the western religion of Muhammad over 

 Buddhism, Chinese civilisation has always retained it 

 in its Kulturkreis ; the Chinese authority has always 

 stood for order and for civilisation, and whenever, as in 

 the years of independence under Yakub Beg during 

 the 'seventies of the nineteenth century, Islam has 

 succeeded in ousting the infidel rulers of the land, utter 

 anarchy and barbarism has resulted. The defeat of 

 the Muhammedans by the Chinese general Liu 

 Kin-tang in 1878 was a victory for civilisation. 

 To-day Chinese authority is more in evidence in Kash- 

 garia and more firmly upheld than at any time since 

 the days of the T'ang. The whole story of the reten- 

 tion of Kashgaria, not merely as an outpost of Chinese 

 civilisation, but actually as a Chinese possession, 

 throughout history, is an interesting testimony to the 

 real civilised energy and organising power of the 

 Chinese, as well as to their dogged persistence in 

 pursuing their ends. 



Chinese Turkestan is, then, a land of remarkable 

 historical interest. Further, it is, like Egypt, a land 

 in which archsological e.xcavation wouldbe likelv to 

 reap rich harvests, for here, as in Egypt, we have 'two 

 factors which are of inestimable service in preserving 

 the relics of the past intact — dryness and desert sand. 

 The sand covers and protects, the dryness preserves. 

 Hence it is that systematic e.xcavations in the 

 Egyptian manner, now for the first time essayed 

 in Turkestan, have yielded such important results 

 to Dr. Stein. Sven Hedin had already reported 

 the existence of ancient remains in the Takla- 

 makan, and Dr. Stein has explored and excavated 

 them, bringing back with him an invaluable collection 

 of relics of the early civilisation of this strange land, 

 the_ bridge between' west and east. His finds belong 

 mainly to two distinctly marked periods, the third and 

 eighth centuries a.d. The most important of the 

 earlier sites is that in the desert north of Niya, away 

 to the east of Khotan. Here was excavated a regular 

 town of wooden buildings half buried in the sand, with 

 the remains of the trees of its ancient orchards still 

 standing around it. The date of the settlement is 

 given by a document of the reign of the Emperor Tsin 

 Wu-ti, of the Later Tsin (a.d. 265-290). .Among the 

 inhabitants Chinese officials were probably included, 

 but the majority seems to have been of Indian origin. 

 This is shown by the discovery of numbers of wooden 

 tablets and parchments inscribed with Indian 

 Kharoshthi writing. These are chiefly reports to the 

 Indian rajas who governed the country. From this 

 we see that the tradition of an Indian conquest of 

 Kashgaria in remote days is founded on fact. That 

 this Indian kingdom formed a road by which the 

 culture of the west penetrated to the east there is no 

 doubt. At Niya, indeed, has been found a striking 

 confirmation of this; five hundred years after Alex- 

 ander, we find in Turkestan an Indian letter sealed 

 with a Chinese and with a Greek seal side by side ! 

 Greek intagli were in common request in this remote 

 Chinese dependency, and the influence of the art of 

 Gandhara on that of Khotan is very evident from the 

 numerous small objects collected by Dr. Stein on the 

 NO 18 1 2, VOL, 70] , 



site of Yotkan, the ancient representative of Khotan- 

 town. The question as to how far Chinese art is really 

 indebted, through the medium of Khotan and Gand- 

 hara, to that of Greece has, apparently, yet to be 

 worked out. 



The other excavated sites are later in date. The 

 miscellaneous antiquities from Yotkan partly bridge 

 over the gap between the period of Niya and the period 

 of Dandan-Uiliq, the most important of the later 

 sites; and the great Rawak Stupa in the Yurung-kash 

 district, which has yielded to Dr. Stein material of 

 the most important kind for the history of early 

 Buddhist art, belongs to the intermediate period. 

 Ranged along the base of this stupa is a series of 

 I'olossal stucco figures in alto-rilievo, representing 

 Buddhas or Bodhisattvas (Fig. i), and attendant 

 .\rhats, these last sometimes represented as grouped in 



vo Statue of Bodhi^attva on South-west Wall, Rawak Scup 

 i^ourt. From " Sand-buried Ruins of Khot.irj." 



the halo of a great Buddha. These remarkable ex- 

 amples of Buddhist art were mostly too bulky and 

 delicate to be removed, and so were re-buried by the 

 explorer after a complete series of photographs had 

 been taken of them. Many of these are published as 

 illustrations to chapter xxx. of Dr. Stein's book. 



Dandan-Uiliq is a site outwardly much resembling 

 Niva, v\hich Dr. Stein afterwards excavated, and has 

 yielded, like Niya, many written records, but of course 

 of later date and written in different languages and 

 scripts. In some cases these are still of Indian origin. 

 When the script is Brahmi, the language is sometimes 

 Sanskrit, sometimes an unknown tongue, no doubt the 

 native Indo-Scythic of Turkestan, the language of 

 the Yue-tchi. The writing is usually upon paper, less 

 usually on wood. The contents of the Brahmi docu- 

 ments are religious. Civil records, analogous to the 

 Kharoshthi tablets of Niya, are chiefly Chinese. The 

 settlement was, in fact, a Chinese Buddhist monastery, 



