G8 Dr. Hoernle —Antiquities from Central Asia. [Extra No. I, 
a point of great importance ; for it is a guarantee of the genuineness of 
the text. Whatever degree of suspicion may attach to some of the 
books, they can only be forgeries in a modified sense. Their paper and 
the actual print may be modern, but their impressions must have been 
taken from ancient blocks. For, as I have shown, the blocks from 
which the books and the pSthi are printed, show identical sizes and 
facsimile types. It is almost demonstrable, therefore, that a set of 
ancient blocks of type must have been found, from which the books, if 
any are really modern fabrications, have been printed. The three 
blocks (for recensions Ic, Id, Ie, or the formulas A, C, E) from which the 
PSthi was printed, must certainly have been found. It may be 
suggested that, with the help of these three blocks, the blocks for the 
other recensions might have been fabricated. But this would not account 
for the existence of the formulas B and D (lines 6, 7 and 15, 16) in 
recension la. It is very improbable that a forger, though he might have 
omitted portions of an existing text, would have gone beyond his pattern 
and invented new lines of type. The probabilities, therefore, decidedly 
are for the genuineness of the block of recension la. The preparation 
of facsimile blocks, from existing patterns, is not at all beyond the 
capabilities of a clever imitator; and the genuineness of the blocks for 
the recensions 16, If, I g and I h, which are only differentiated from those 
for la, Ic, Id and Ie by the omission of certain lines of type, might, 
therefore, be questioned ; but the occurrence of the recensions I g and I h 
on one page of book No. VIII of the Fifth Set (see Plate XI) renders the 
hypothesis extremely improbable. Such a solitary and casual insertion 
of an alien text in a book entirely devoted to a different text would 
hardly have occurred to a forger. Moreover the state of preservation 
of that book seems to stamp it as genuinely antique. On this point, 
however, further evidence is required. If once the writing is decip¬ 
hered, and its purport understood, that knowledge may very possibly 
decide the question of genuineness. If it should be found that by the 
omission of a portion of it, the text is rendered unintelligible, that 
result might seem to prove that the blocks for the mutilated texts 16, 
If, Ig, I h are the work of an ignorant forger ; for, at the present day, 
neither the writing nor the language of these block-prints is under¬ 
stood in Khotan. On the other hand, it must be remembered that 
there is good reason to suppose that some of the books were not intend¬ 
ed for intelligent reading, but merely for mechanical use. 
As regards the determination of the question of what is the 
beginning and the end of the text, there is some indication given by 
the arrangement of the text in Book No. I. This book shows two 
columns on each page (see Woodcut No. 11), each column consisting 
