BORASAN 
765 
do learn from them however, that the people who anciently 
dwelt in Borasan, like their successors the modern in- 
habitants of Khotan, used the Bactrian or two-humped 
camel, as well as the horse, both for riding and as a beast 
of burden. The dromedary was equally unknown to them 
as to the present population of Khotan. The proper home 
of the latter is Persia : it is there that its geographical 
range touches the geographical range of the Bactrian 
camel. The camels in the illustration which carry neither 
rider nor burden, and are unprovided with reins, can hardly 
be meant to represent wild camels ; for I have leason to 
believe that the wild camel, which now exists in the 
deserts to the north of Khotan, is the descendant of tame 
camels which lapsed into the wild state at a date sub- 
sequent to the flourishing period of Borasan art. On the 
other hand, a Chinese chronicle states, that in the year 
746 A.D., i.e. in the time of the Thang dynasty, ambas- 
sadors came from Khotan to the Emperor of^ China, 
bringing amongst other gifts “a wild camel, which was 
as fleet of foot as the wind.” 
Nevertheless the naturalistic group is not altogether 
without importance. Certain of its characteristic objects 
tell us whence the men came who made them. This 
applies more particularly to the representations of human 
beings and apes. At the foot of the illustration on 
p. 764 we see the head of an ape, which has plainly served 
as the neck of a pitcher or jar, and resembles the ape 
Macacvs rhesiis, which ranges over India up to the 
southern base of the Himalayas. My collection contains 
about forty images of apes, many of them represented 
as playing the guitar. But these are exceeded in interest 
by the heads of human beings, which from certain in- 
dications (which it would take too long to particularize 
here) are easily distinguishable from the heads of Buddha. 
The greater portion of them, which are about two niches 
high, have belonged to statuettes, and exhibit the charac- 
teristic features of women, the manner of weai mg t e 
hair being displayed with extreme minuteness of detail. 
A single glance is enough to show that the type of feature 
