1899.] 
Introduction. 
XXIX 
shrine of ‘All Arslan IQian and the graves of his 300 fellow martyrs. 
Another is about three miles south-west of that town at Chucham Padshah 
where there is a “vast cemetery consecrated to the dust of 10,000 
warrior martyrs.” 23 Possibly Qara Qol Mazar may be a similar ancient 
Muhammadan cemetery; but all the available indications rather point 
to the sites of the finds being ancient Buddhist “ graveyards.” Kok 
Gumbaz, where the skull with the pillow of manuscripts was dug out, is 
said to be “seemingly an old graveyard.” Qara Yantaq, clearly, is a 
similar place, where also a skull with a bag of manuscripts was dug out 
from the top of a circular mound. In Yabu Qum, the manuscripts, 
M. 2, Set III, were found “mixed up with human bones, lying on some 
partially exposed boards of a wooden coffin.” Mr. Hogberg says with 
reference to the “ books,” purchased from him by Mr. Macartney and 
comprised in M. 6, that he believes “ they were all discovered in the 
sands or buried in coffins with the dead, in ancient graveyards in the 
neighbourhood of Khotan, probably not more than a day or two’s 
journey from the town.” One of these places, Aq Sapil, Mr. Hogberg 
visited himself; and the “ two elevated circular stands,” which he 
describes as having been seen by him, curiously suggest themselves as 
being the surviving bases of two stupas erected in the closest propin¬ 
quity: apparently twin-stupas built on slightly dififering levels. Bud¬ 
dhist stupas, as is well-known, used to stand on a series of circular, con¬ 
centric basements or terraces, decreasing upwards in diameter, the 
basements thus forming steps to the uppermost platform, on which the 
stupa or cylindrical dome itself was erected. These stupas were mostly 
relic-towers, and the relics used to be placed in a small chamber made 
in the top-most platform, immediately below the cylindrical dome This 
exactly agrees with Mr. Hogberg’s description of the “ circular stands.” 
The “ slight hollow ” on the top-most platform would be the remains 
of the relic-chamber, from which, e.g., the skull with its bag of manu¬ 
scripts was dug out at Kok Gumbaz. Occasionally a Buddhist stupa 
contained several deposits of relics placed at different levels, one above 
the other. This would seem to have been the case at Qara Yantaq. 
There, it is said, “the two images of horsemen (in M. 2, Set I) were 
dug up from the interior of the mound,” on the top of which the skull 
was discovered “ partially buried.” The skull, clearly, had been placed 
in a chamber, near the surface of the top-most terrace, while the 
horsemen had been deposited at a lower level, perhaps near the surface 
of a lower terrace. It w r ould seem that in all the cases reported, the 
stupa proper or the cylindrical dome, has disappeared, the circular 
25 See tlie Report of a Mission to Yarkand in 1873, at pp. 37, 129. 
