1898.] Annual Address. 69 



With reference fco the characters and the language in which these 

 mapnscripts are written I am not yet in a position to make any definite 

 statement, as I have had no leisure to make niore than a very cursory 

 examination of them. There certainly seem to be at least seven distinct 

 scripts, and from sixteen to twenty varieties. The scripts are all of old 

 types and appear to be Armenian, Kliarosthi, Pahlavi, Turki, Uigur (or 

 Nestorian), Chinese, and two others as yet quite unassignable. Of 

 course, a script is not any necessary indication of the language in which 

 the book may be written ; and so long as t\\e scripts have not been 

 definitely deciphered, it is not possible to determine the number of 

 languages that may be represented in the manuscripts. I may note, 

 however, that in one instance, the manuscript (one of the sealed docu- 

 ments) shows two scripts side by side, a circumstance which may 

 possibly afford a key to the decipherment. Similar help may perliaps 

 be given by another manuscript (one of the Turk!) which seems to 

 contain sketches of seals or coins. 



Besides manuscripts, ray collection of Central Asian antiquities 

 contains, as I have already stated, a large number of coins (about 300). 

 These, it may be hoped, will prove of great value for the purpose of 

 determining the age of the sand-buried cities. They extend over a 

 considerable space of time, though they are all ^ very old. • Some are 

 Chinese, and go back to about the first century B.C. ; others are Sassa- 

 nian of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. Otliers again belong to some 

 of the earlier Muhammadan dynasties. Among the earliest coins there 

 are a few of very peculiar interest, because they are bilingnal, showing 

 Chinese legends on one side and Kharosthi on the other. TheKharosthi 

 legend, according to Dr. Bloch who has kindly examined them for me, 

 appears to refer tliese coins to Gondophares in the first century A.D. 



Among the terra-cottas in my collection, there are a number of 

 pieces of pottery which show Graeco-Bnddhist designs of that kind 

 which was current in Gandhara, a portion of modern Afghanistan, in the 

 earliest centuries of our era. Mr. Havell, the Principal of the Calcutta 

 School of Art, has been very helpful to me in re-constructing some very 

 fine vases of this kind from a few detached fragments. There are also 

 numerous full figures of monkeys, from 1 to 3 inches high, in all 

 sorts of postures, rather well made, some playing on the well-known 

 Greek reed instrument, the syrinx, like satyrs. Very curious is one 

 piece which shows an ornamental design peculiar to Assyria. Another 

 piece bears a lighty incised inscription in ancient Brahmi characters of 

 the fifth century A.D. All this points to an extension, in those early 

 ages, of the Grecian culture of "Western Asia into Eastern Turkistau, — a 

 fact which was until now quite unsuspected. 



