1898.] Annual Address. 67 



the sixth to the eighth centuries, by the civilization of the Nestorian 

 Christian Missionaries, and finally, from the ninth century, by the Arab 

 Muhammadau conquests. 



It can be easily imagined that such a mixture of civilization would 

 betray evidences of its existence in the antiquities recovered from the 

 sand-buried tracts atid towns of the country. Such is really the case. 

 The antique objects which have now accumulated with me, owing 

 principally, as I have already remarked, to the exertions of Mr. 

 Macartney and Captain Godfrey, divide themselves into four classes : 

 manuscripts, coins, terra-cottas, and miscellaneous objects. Some of 

 the manuscripts liave been dug out from old Buddhist ruins near 

 Kuchar, and belong to the most ancient portion of the collection. But 

 all the rest have come from the neighbourhood of Khotan, where, as 

 Mr. Macartney informs me, " these relics are in such abundance that a 

 few persons of that town make a regular livelihood as treasure-seekers. 

 After a sandstorm or a flood they will proceed to such sand-buried 

 localities as seem most promising in the hope of picking up some 

 objects in gold or silver which had been laid bare by the wind or water." 



The manuscripts obtained from Kuchar are the Bower MS., the 

 Weber MSS., and a few of the Macartney MSS. The peculiarity of 

 these is that they are all written in two species of the Indian Brahmi 

 alphabet. One of these is a species which was actually current in 

 North-Western India up to the sixth century A.D. And it follows, 

 therefore, that the manuscripts written in this variety of the Brahmi, 

 — commonly known, in a general way, as the Gupta characters— were 

 either imported from India or written by Indian Buddhists who had 

 settled in Kuchar. It follows further that these manuscripts cannot 

 well be later than the sixth century, though they may be much older. 

 It fact, the Bower MS. probably belongs to the fifth century, and one 

 of the Macartney MSS. which has a still more archaic appearance, to 

 the fourth century A.D. The interest of these manuscripts, apart 

 from their great paleeographic value, principally lies in two points : 

 the direct evidence which they afford of the early existence of 

 Indian Buddhism in Kuchar, and the light which they throw on the 

 history of Indian Medicine. They mainly contain medical treatises, 

 and thus not only prove the very early existence, hitherto much doubted, 

 of the science of medicine in India, but also that the profession of 

 medicine, in those early days, was insepaiable from that of sorcery and 

 astrology, and that, in fact the monkish owner of the manuscripts was a 

 '* medicine-man " rather than a " medical man." 



The Bower Manuscript is written on leaves of birch-bark, while all 

 the other Central Asian manuscripts are written on paper of varying 



