1899.] 
Introduction. 
xxvii 
ably on account of this comparatively modern date that we possess a 
detailed account of the catastrophe. It may be seen in Mirza Muham¬ 
mad Haidar’s Tarikh-i-Rashidl (English Translation by N. Elias, 
p. 10 ff.,) written between 1541 and 1546 A.D. That writer thus 
describes the condition of the desert in his time ( ibidem , p. 295): “ To 
the east and south of Kashghar and Khotan are deserts which consist 
of nothing but heaps of shifting sands, impenetrable jungles, waste 
lands and salt-deserts. In ancient times there were large towns in 
these wastes, and the names of two of them have been preserved, name¬ 
ly Lob and Katak; but of the rest no name or trace remains : all are 
buried under the sand. Hunters who go there after wild animals, 
relate that sometimes the foundations of cities are visible, and that 
they have recognized noble buildings, such as castles, minarets, mosques 
and colleges, but that when they returned a short time afterwards, no 
trace of these was to be found ; for the sand had again overwhelmed 
them.” This fact of the recurrent disappearance and reappearance of 
sand-buried sites and ruins naturally follows from the action, above 
.described, of the winds on the sands, and has also been noticed by 
modern travellers. 21 It also forms a welcome occasion for the visits of 
treasure-seekers, especially in Khotan, where, as Mr. Macartney informs 
us, they make a regular livelihood of that occupation, being in the 
habit of visiting, after a sandstorm or a flood, such localities as seem 
most promising, in the hope of picking up some objects in gold or silver 
which have been laid bare by the wind or water. As an example of 
such a visit the itinerary of Islam Khan has been given above. 
As already stated the process of submergence of the ancient civili¬ 
zation of Eastern Turkestan under the advancing sands of the desert had 
already commenced long before the Muhammadan period. It was already 
in full operation at the time of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Hiuen 
Tsiang, in the seventh century A.D., when Buddhism was still the 
prevailing religion and culture of Khotan and the rest of Eastern 
Turkestan. On his return from India to China, in the year 644 A.D., 
he took the southern route passing through Khotan and Pima to 
Charchan: tbe northern route, by which he had travelled from China 
to India, passed through Kuchar and Kashghar. In those days Pima 
was a comparatively new settlement, lying on the outskirts of the Takla 
Makan desert, and it still existed for many centuries afterwards, for in 
1274 A.D. Marco Polo saw it on his way to China. At the present day 
it has disappeared in the sands, and its exact site is not known. Ac¬ 
cording to the data furnished by Hiuen Tsiang’s itinerary, it must have 
21 See, e.g., Dr. Bellew’s observations on the subject in the Report of a Mission, 
to Yarkand in 1873, pp. 28, 29, 37, 38. 
