1898.] Annual Address. 65 



have called some other Central Asian manuscripts which I received 

 from Captain H. S. Godfrey, Assistant British Resident in Kashmir, the 

 Godfrey Manuscripts. These two gentlemen, Mr. Macartney and 

 Captain Godfrey deserve the greatest credit for the zeal and circumspec- 

 tion V7ith which they have been collecting not only manuscripts but 

 also other antiquities from that part of Central Asia which is known as 

 Chinese or Eastern Turkistan, and assisting me in making a collection 

 worthy of our country. Their efforts are being ably seconded by 

 Colonel Sir Adalbert Talbot, K. C. I. E. the British Resident in Kashmir. 

 Central Asian archaeological exploration is being more and more vigorous- 

 ly conducted every year. France and Russia have been in the field for 

 some years. They have latterly been joijied by Sweden, whose energetic 

 explorer Dr. Sven Hedin has returned from a prolonged tour in Eastern 

 Turkistan with a large collection of antiquities. Feeling that it would 

 not do for Great Britain to be outstripped in these researches, I suggested 

 to the Government of India the desirability of instructing their Political 

 Agents in Kashghar and elsewhere to endeavour to collect Central Asian 

 antiquities. This was in 1893, while I was working at my edition of 

 the Bower Manuscript. My suggestion was heartily seconded by Sir 

 Charles Lyall, K. C. S. I. (then the Home Secretary), and the Government 

 of India, approving it, issued necessary instructions in August 1893, 

 Since then a large number of such antiquities has been secured, and 

 more are coming in. All acquisitions are transmitted to me, under the 

 orders of the Government of India, for examination and report : their 

 final place of deposit is to be the British Museum in London. 



These antiquities consist of terracottas, coins, images and miscel- 

 laneous objects of metal, stone or other material ; but the main portion 

 is formed of manuscripts. A regular, or perhaps I should rather say 

 an irregular, trade in such antiquities seems now to have sprung up. 

 Captain Younghusband, in the interesting account of his travels 

 through The Heart of a Continent, tells us how he advised one of his 

 Musalman guides, whose great ambition was to visit England, to 

 " search about among the old ruined cities of that country and those 

 buried in sand, in order to find old ornaments and books for which large 

 sums of money would be given him in England." Eastern Turkistan 

 which is now to a great extent an arid desert of sand, seems to have 

 been a fairly fertile country about the commencement of our era. Two 

 great trade routes passed through it from China to Western Asia. One 

 skirted the foot of the Tian-Shan mountains, along its northern borders, 

 running by the town of Kuche or Kuchar ; the other passed by the 

 Kuen-lun mountains and the town of Khotan on the south. It is 

 principally from these two towns and the intervening desert coun- 



