54 
Dr. Hoernle —Antiquities from Central Asia. [Extra No. 1, 
Orientation of the 
Texts and Scripts. 
and formulas, of course, it is impossible to venture to express any 
opinion, before some advance has been made in their decipherment. 
Some of the block-prints are furnished with guards which show 
in their ornaments a curious resemblance to a 
Age and Conservation certain coin of one of the Urtuqis of Maridin. 
of the Block-prints. . D1 , ¥ ir £ , n 
they may be seen on Jrlate IV, ngs. 1-9 ; 
the coin also on Plate I, fig. 20. The coin is ascribed to 1232 A. D., 
see the Section on Coins, p. 31. If the resemblance is not desceptive, 
it will fix the upper date of the block-prints in question. They could 
not be older than the middle of the 13th century A.D. There is reason 
to believe, however, that some of the block-prints must be several cen¬ 
turies older. That there is nothing in the physical conditions of Eastern 
Turkistan to render such a long period of conservation impossible, I 
have already remarked in the Introduction, p. xxviii. 
The question of what is top and bottom, right and left, of the text, 
or of the formulas composing the text, is a 
puzzling one. The determination of it would 
help to determine the further question of how 
the script of the texts is to be read, whether from the left to the right 
in the European fashion, or from the right to the left as in Semitic 
writing, or from top to bottom as in Chinese. I have not, as yet, come 
across any absolutely decisive evidence. In some books regularly 
recurring partial impressions of formulas are met with,—cases in which 
only a portion (one-half or one-third) of the formula, divided either hori¬ 
zontally or vertically or both ways, is met with. Want of sufficient 
space on the page is always seen to be the reason for such partial im¬ 
pressions. In such cases it may very plausibly be argued that, when 
the printer had not sufficient space to print the w'hole formula, he 
would preferably print the initial portion of it on the available space. 
On this assumption we should have an indication of what is the beginning 
or the end of a formula. Thus let a b c d in the marginal diagram 
represent such a complete formula, in which the lines 
of writing run parallel with a b (as e.g. on Plate XII). 
If a b g e, that is, the formula horizontally divided, be 
the only portion printed, this may indicate that it is 
the initial portion of the formula. Similarly if a f Ji d, 
or the formula vertically divided, were only printed, 
this would show that portion to be the initial one. If 
further, both portions a b g e and ajhd were found regularly printed 
in certain delimited places, we should know for certain that the portion 
A contains the beginning of the formula, and that, its reading must 
commence in the corner a, and proceed from a to b. It would still 
a 
f 
d 
A 
B 
D 
C 
9 
h 
