Section II.—Bloch Prints . 
61 
1899.] 
Backlund may have been part of the result of this attempt. Mr. Bendall 
wrote to me on the 15th July, 1898, “I have been comparing your 
pamphlet about the xylographs from Central Asia 6 with a block-print 
recently acquired by the British Museum from Lieut. Cobhold. What 
is curious is that it is a duplicate of the hook figured on your first 
Plate, but does not contain the writing between the two columns of 
print to which you call attention.” This observation of Mr. Bendall 
very possibly gives the key to the situation. If there exist any 
forgeries, they are, in all probability, duplicates of genuine books that 
have been discovered. The preparation of a duplicate is probably well 
within the capability of a modern Khotanese forger, but the hypothesis 
that he is capable of inventing not only one hut several scripts, and 
of intricate, but self-consistent systems of their arrangement in books, 
and finally of binding them after a method, quite unknown in Khotan 
at the present day, contains more elements of improbability than the 
hypothesis of the genuinenesses of the hooks. 
The manufacture of duplicate block-prints postulates the existence 
of old blocks from which new ones may have been prepared, and from 
which (or from their new facsimiles) the modern reprints (if there 
are any) must have been made. I have shown in the description of 
the First and Second Sets, how utterly improbable it is that the blocks 
of type can have been invented by the forger. The overwhelming 
probability is that sets of old blocks of type have been discovered in the 
Takla Makan, and from these reprints may have been made. But 
moreover, actual old books printed from those blocks and representing 
each of the nine Sets must have been found. For the systems of print¬ 
ing and binding which are used in the books are unknown in Khotan 
in the present day, and imitations could not have been made, unless 
models had been found. 7 Add to this not only that most of the books, 
though printed (as I believe) on Khotanese paper, are printed on 
varieties of it (viz., Ilia b c) which are not known in Khotan at the 
present day ; but also that there are others (as those in the Eighth and 
Ninth Sets) which are printed on paper of a kind which is not Khotanese 
at all. That some of the block-print books are printed on paper of the 
variety Hid is quite true; but this fact, by itself, does not prove forgery; 
for it cannot be doubted (considering Oriental conservative habits) 
6 Published in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 1898. 
7 An alternative hypothesis would be that no blocks have been found, but only 
books ; and that from these books new blocks have been prepared, and then employed 
to print new books. The prints, however, as shown by measurements, are so 
accurate facsimiles, that considering the inveterate inaccuracy of Orientals this 
hypothesis of the imitation of new blocks from old prints seems excluded. 
