X 
Dr. HoernTe —Antiquities from Central Asia. [Extra No. I, 
The Macartney MSS., as already stated, were dug out, together with 
the Bower and Weber MSS., from an ancient 
Diseoveiy o e jj^dhist s tupa situated sixteen miles west of 
Macartney MSS. 1 
Kucliar, on some barren rocky hills, close to 
the left hank of the river Shahyar. These manuscripts have had a 
curious history of which I may give a brief account. It is mainly 
based on a Note by MunshI Ahmad Din, kindly procured for me by 
Captain S. H. Godfrey. In a few particulars it corrects the accounts 
previously published by me in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, Yol. LXVI, pp. 238-210, and in the Proceedings for 1898, 
pp. 63, 64. It appears that some time in 1889 some people of Kuchar 
undertook to make an excavation in the stupa in question. Their object 
in digging into the stupa was to find treasure, as it was well known that 
in the time of Yaqub Beg much gold had been discovered in such ancient 
buildings. Whether or not they found any “ treasure,” is not known, 
but what they did find was a large number of manuscripts and detached 
papers together with the bodies of a cow and two foxes standing. The 
hole which they made into the stupa was excavated straight in, level 
with the ground, and the manuscripts, accordingly, would seem to have 
been found, in the centre of the stupa on the ground level, exactly in 
the spot, where the original deposit of relics is usually met with in such 
monuments. The manuscript books and papers were taken to the house 
of the chief Qazi of the town, where a couple of days afterwards they 
were seen by Haji Ghulam Qadir, heaped up in a corner, there being 
“ a big sabad, or ‘ basket,’full of them. On enquiry having been told 
the whole story by the Qazi, he brought away a few of them, and later 
on, early in 1890, he gave one of them, now known as the Bower 
Manuscript, to Major (then Lieut.) Bower. 3 The others he sent to 
his younger brother Dildar Khan in Yarkand. These the latter took 
with him to Leh in 1891. Here he gave one portion of it to tMunshi 
A^mad Din, who in his turn presented his acquisition to Mr. Weber, 
a Moravian Missionary. The latter transmitted it to me in Calcutta, 
where, under the name of the Weber Manuscripts, specimens of it 
were published by me in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 
(Volume LXII, for 1893). The remaining portion, Dildar Khan took 
with him to India, where he left it with a friend of his at Aligarh, a 
certain Faiz Muhammad Khan. On a subsequent visit to India in 
1895, he re-took it from his friend, brought it back to Turkestan, and 
S Major Bower calls Lima “Tnrki” merchant; but he is only such by reason 
of having married a Tnrki woman, and having been settled in Kuchar for nearly 
30 years. Originally he is an Afghan from Ghazni, and elder brother of Dildar 
Khan. 
