1897.] 
Central Asian Manuscripts. 
007 
AO ( 
III. The Macartney Manuscripts. 
(Plates XV-XXVI). 
These manuscripts were sent to me by the Foreign Office, with 
their D. O. letter, dated the 14th December, 1896. They were obtained 
by Mr. G. Macartney, the Special Assistant for Chinese Affairs at Kashgar 
to Lt.-Colonel Sir A. C. Talbot, K. C. I. E., British Resident in Ka 9 mir. 
On that, account, following the precedent hitherto observed, I have 
named them “ the Macartney MSS.” 
When I received the manuscripts, they were carefully arranged in 
six distinct sets. This arrangement had been made by Mr. Macartney. 
It has only reference to the circumstances in which they reached him. 
It has no intrinsic value, as will be seen in the sequence. But, for the 
present, it has been found convenient to retain it, with reference to the 
facsimile plates XY to XXYI. 
In a letter, dated the 12th October, 1896, and addressed by Mr. 
Macartney to the Resident in Ka 9 mir, he gives the following account of 
the circumstances under which the manuscripts were discovered and 
given to him. 
“ Set, Xo. 1. This is a manuscript presented by Dildar Khan, 
an Afghan merchant in Yarkand. It appears that when the Bovver 
MS. was found in Kuchar, two others were at the same time and 
under the same circumstances discovered. Dildar Khan obtained 
possession of the latter and took them to Leh in 1891. He gave one 
to Munshl Ahmad Din, who in his turn presented his acquisition to 
Mr. Weber, Moravian Missionary. Hence the origin of the Weber 
Manuscripts. The other manuscript in Dildar Khan’s possession 
was taken by him to India and left with a friend of bis at Aligarh, 
a certain Faiz Muhammad Khan. Dildar Khan brought it back 
to Turkistan last year and presented it to me. 
Set, No. 2. Munshl Ahmad Din purchased these leaves during 
my absence from Kashgar. They were found by a certain Islam 
Akhun Khotani. This person was sent to Kashgar with them in 
July last [1896] by the Afghan Aksakal in Khotan, to whom I had 
written desiring him to obtain ancient manuscripts for me. Islam 
Akhun gave me the following particulars regarding his discovery. 
The manuscripts were found at Aksufil, an uninhabited place in the 
desert, situated at about three marches N. E. of Khotan. His 
attention was first attracted by the presence on the sand of a few 
pieces of charcoal, near which was a piece of woollen cloth, with the 
lower portion of it buried in the ground. In digging this cloth out, 
J. 1 . 31 
