760 
THROUGH ASIA 
nothing more than a paltry rivulet, the springs by which it 
is fed being then congealed by the winter frost. That 
season’s harvest of antiquities had been already gathered 
in by the inhabitants of Khotan ; for they never fail to 
make their annual search for gold and other treasures. 
Thus I found but few terra-cotta objects myself The col- 
lection which I brought home with me, numbering 523 
items, exclusive of coins and old MSS., was acquired 
partly by purchase in Khotan, partly through employing 
natives to search for me during the time I was making my 
expedition to Lop -nor. My attention was first drawn 
to these antiquities through seeing them in the house of 
Mr. Petrovsky in Kashgar. He had obtained a good many 
of them from West Turkestan merchants who were 
travelling through the city. But he too had also em- 
ployed intelligent natives to collect for him ; and in this 
way was become the owner of a very valuable collection of 
Borasan antiquities, which has been shortly described by 
Mr. Kiseritsky in the Journal of the Imperial Russian 
Archteological Society.* The terra-cotta objects are 
executed with a high degree of artistic skill in fine 
plastic clay, and have been burnt under an intense heat, 
a fact evidenced by their being frequently of a brick-red 
colour and by their extraordinary hardness. 
Broadly speaking, they may be divided into two groups 
— (i.) those which have been fashioned under a naturalistic 
or purely imitative impulse ; and (ii.) such as are the 
products of a more highly developed or inventive artistic 
sense. 
The first class, of which a specimen is depicted on 
p. 761, seldom tell us much, nor do they throw any real 
light upon the period at which they were made. We 
* The observations which I here venture to offer upon this subject must be 
regarded as being of a preliminary and tentative character. I propose to leave 
the detailed description of my collection to a competent specialist. This 
present chapter is based upon Mr. Kiseritsky’s paper, which deals with pre- 
cisely similar objects, derived from precisely the same site, and upon the lucid 
and able work of Griinwedel, entitled Buddhistische Kitnst in Indien. In the 
next few pages I draw so frequently upon both these sources, that I mention 
them here once for all, and with full acknowledgments. 
