October 17, 1907] 



NA TURE 



619 



ANCIENT KHOTAN.'- 



DR. M. A. STEIN'S promised scientific publication 

 of the material g:athered by him during the 

 course of his first expedition to Chinese Turkestan 

 has now appeared, and has been awarded the distinc- 

 tion of being published by the Clarendon Press, and 

 so under the auspices of the University of Oxford ; 

 and worthily: for the importance of Dr. Stein's 

 archaeological discoveries is great. The significance 

 of his finds will be found fully explained in two articles 

 which appeared in Nature on the occasions of the 

 publication of Dr. Stein's first " Preliminary Report " 

 (igoi) and of his popular book, "Sand-buried Ruins 

 of Khotan " (1903). which gave so good a general 

 account of his work. It is therefore unnecessary to 

 go over the same ground ag^in now, and we can 

 confine ourselves to a consideration of the fine volumes 

 before us. 



■ The Clarendon- Press has produced thr book in 

 sumptuous style. 

 The form of the 

 broad page and 

 the size of the 

 type are both good 

 and pleasant to 

 read. The title- 

 page is quite a 

 work of art ; as a 

 specimen of a 

 modern title-page 

 with good type, 

 well sized and well 

 spaced, it is worth 

 seeing. The only 

 fault we can find 

 in the general get- 

 up of the book is 

 that the. photo- 

 graphs in the first 

 volume are printed 

 on paper that is 

 somewhat too thin 

 and flimsy, with 

 the result that the 

 half-tone blocks 

 have a somewhat 

 cheap appearance 

 which does not 

 agree well with 

 the fine appear- 

 ance of the rest of 

 the book. 



The same may 

 be said of the first 

 eighteen plates 

 of the second volume, which contains the great body 

 of the illustrations. In one of these also (plate iii.) 

 the upper picture has been printed upside down, which 

 is a pity. But to the rest of the plates nothing but 

 unqualified praise can be given ; the coloured ones 

 are very good, especially those reproducing textiles. 



From these plates the remarkable character of the 

 art of Niya, Yotkan, and Dandan-Uiliq, having the 

 chief "find-spots" in their chronological order, can. 

 easily be grasped. Especially interesting are the 

 wooden remains from N'iya, and the potter) and little 

 clay genre figures from Yotkan. The strength of the 

 classical tradition which came from Greece to India, 

 and thence to Chinese Turkestan, is verv evident to us 

 as we turn over these pictures. Plate Ixx., too, shows 

 wooden chair-legs in the shape of the foreparts of- 



1_ " Ancient Khotan; Detailed Report of Archseological Explorations in 

 Chinese Turkestan, carried out and described under the Orders of H. M. 

 Indian Government." By M. Aurel Srein. Two vols. ; text and plates. Pp.- 

 .\xiv+62i ; pp. vii + 119. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.) Price 5/. 5.J. 



sphinxes, with a headdress that reminds us of the 

 triple horn above the heads of .Assyrian bulls. Why 

 not? Niva's art came from Gandhara, and Gand- 

 hara's from Seleucia on the Tigris. The analogy of 

 these excavations to those of Egypt is well shown in 

 such a plate as No. Ixxiii., which presents to us 

 antiquities in. the shape of musical instruments, card- 

 ing combs, brooms, hoes, &c., of the same kind as 

 those that may be found on an Eg\'ptian site. In 

 both countries the dryness of the soil preserves objects 

 that elsewhere would long since have perished. . 



The Kharoshthi letters on wooden boards, and 

 the Chinese written slips found with them, also 

 have a very Egyptian look, and we have a strange 

 note of connection in the Judaeo-Persian document 

 written on paper, which was found at Dandan-UHiq, 

 but which, so far as its language ahd: appear- 

 rmce are concerned, might just as well have 

 b .n fi'ind :;t ():;vrrh\nchus ! .\fler all, Tabari- 



of dwelling completely eroded ; Niya site. Fri 



* Ancient Khota 



NO. TQ«I, 



/OL. 76] 



Stan, where it was written, is not so much farther 

 from the banks of the Nile than from those of the 

 Tarim. And in the reign of Trajan, long before this 

 document was written, the great Chinese general, 

 Pan-ch.'ao, advancing ever westwards from Ch'angan 

 (Si-ngan-fu, then the capital of China), had reached 

 the Caspian, and tried to open up relations with the 

 Romans. So that many a merchant may even in 

 the first century a.d. have known the banks of the 

 Nile, Tigris, Oxus, and TarIm equally well, and 

 we can well comprehend how classical art influenced 

 that of China by way of the civilisation of which Dr. 

 Stein has discovered the remains in Turkestan. 



Dr. Stein's letterpress is very copious, since he 

 includes in. his work long dissertations on Chinese 

 and other literarv evidence as to the identification and 

 historv of the ancient places which he has found. 

 When we sav that his success, and that of his co- 

 adjutors, in this interesting work has been striking, 

 we do not err; and, on the other handj several of 



