88 
WESTERN CULTURE IN ANCIENT 
CATHAY.1 
N the two magnificent volumes before us, Dr. 
| Stein, the pioneer explorer of the now famous 
antiquities of the Central Asian deserts, gives us 
the personal narrative and general results of his 
last great expedition of 1906-08 to the more 
eastern deserts of Turkestan and north-western 
China. 
The results achieved far surpass in importance 
and interest even those of his own former expedi- 
tion in Western Turkestan, as well as those sent 
out in the interval by more than one European 
Government, attracted to that important historical 
field by Dr. Stein’s great discoveries. For again 
Dr. Stein has been the first to explore systemati- 
caliy the ruins of the ancient settlements along a 
fresh section of the old-world highway between 
NATURE 
| by 
[Marcu 28, 1912 
Buddhism from the Greco- 
Bactrian provinces of Gandhara (Peshawar), 
Afghanistan, Swat, &c., to the north of India, 
in which Buddhism had become established as the 
State religion by the successors of Alexander’s 
satraps. This school of Greco-Buddhist art, 
saturated with Western ideals, and known as 
ee Gandhara,”’ after one of its chief centres above- 
named, is represented in many of our museums 
its fine friezes and statues obtained from the 
northern frontier of India. It is now found by 
Dr. Stein to have extended in the early centuries 
A.D. nearly two thousand miles further eastwards 
to the very threshold of China. At Niya, in Turke- 
stan, the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun- 
huang in Western Kansu, and elsewhere, on the 
border of the Gobi Desert, Dr. Stein found a rich 
statuary had grown up and flourished, which faith- 
fully reproduced the style 
of our era with 
Fic. 1,—Ruin of ancient dwelling at southern end of Niya site, in course of excavation. From ‘* 
Cathay.” 
China and the Ancient West. His unequalled 
knowledge and equipment for this research, com- 
bined with his previous practical experience gained 
in those deserts, have enabled him to nneatn 
from the protecting sand an astonishing amount 
of material for reconstructing several lost chapters 
in the history of the world’s early culture. The 
sites excavated and otherwise explored proved to 
be connecting links between ancient Chinese 
civilisation and the classic West, and have 
revealed a remarkable intrusion of Western 
elements into the art and mythology of Ancient 
China. 
Amongst these Western elements the Grecian 
influences are conspicuously prominent. They 
were obviously introduced about the first century 
1 “Ruins of Desert Cathay.'’’ Personal narrative of Explorations in 
Central Asia and Westernmost China. By Dr. M. Aurel Stein. Vol. i., 
Ppp. Xxxvili+546+plates+map. Vol. ii., pp. xxi+517-+plates+maps. 
(London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1912.) Two vols., 42s. net. 
NO. VOL. 89| 
ADI. 
| actual frescoes and mural paintings, 
| now safely deposited in admirable preservation in 
and motive of the Gand- 
hara, and was even more 
purely classical Hellenist- 
Transitional stages in the 
process of naturalisation 
on Chinese soil of those 
exotic influences are also 
represented, and connect 
the ancient types with pic- 
torial and decorative art 
in medieval and modern 
China, and through the 
latter with Japan. Indi- 
genous Indian Buddhist art 
is also present. 
One of the most drama- 
tic and fruitful incidents in 
the history of archeologi- 
cal discovery occurred at 
the temples of the ‘ Thous- 
and Buddhas,” where the 
piety of early times had 
honeycombed the rocks 
with hundreds of cave- 
temples, richly decorated 
with frescoes and stucco 
sculptures. Here our 
author had the good fortune to gain access to 
a great deposit of ancient MSS. and art relics 
which had lain hidden and perfectly protected in a 
walled-up rock chapel for about nine hundred 
Ruins of Desert 
years. Most of these treasures are now deposited 
| by Dr. Stein in the British Museum and India 
Office, and the remainder was subsequently 
gleaned thoroughly by M. Pelliot. 
The treasures of ancient art and industry re- 
covered during the expedition include some of the 
which are 
the British Museum. The infinite pains necessary 
for the successful transpert of these fragile objects 
may be imagined when it is remembered that the 
author’s caravan had to traverse the most difficult 
country in the world, and covered an actual dis- 
tance by land of close on ten thousand miles. 
Of the several thousands of ancient MSS. and 
