Section III. Manuscripts. 
23 
1901.] 
All the manuscripts appear to be official documents of a public or 
_ ^ , _ , private character. They seem to have belonged 
Purport and Date. f \ , . . . 
'■ to the registry ot some local or sub-provincial 
office of the Chinese Government of the province of the “ Six Cities ” or 
Eastern Turkestan. Thus one of the complete documents (No. 1) is a 
letter from a local officer to his Superior, requesting instructions re¬ 
garding the collection of certain taxes : it is dated in the 3rd year of the 
Tali period, i.e ., in 768 A.D. It is not the original dispatch, but merely 
the office copy or draft, as shown by the large office stamp imprinted on 
it. This circumstance may account for the absence of any seal, which 
would probably be borne by the original. Another (No. 2) is a requisi¬ 
tion order to a military officer for the supply of certain articles. This is 
not fully dated ; the year is not mentioned, but only the day and month. 
The third complete document (No. 3) records a private transaction, being 
the deed of a loan of money, and is fully dated in the 7th year of the Chin- 
chung period, i.e., m 786 A.D. This, as well as the Tali period, belong 
to the reign of the "Tang dynasty, which extended from 618 to 907 A.D. 
The fragments appear to be official receipts of taxes paid, or requisition 
orders for the supply of various articles. In one of the fragments (No. 
4) there occur some letters of the cursive Brahmi script, in which the 
.Brahmi documents of Set I, of the Second Class are written. This circum¬ 
stance proves that the latter set and the Chinese set of documents belong 
to the same period of time, viz., the second half of the 8 th century A.D. 
The material on which the documents are written, is water-lined 
paper of the same quality as that of the Pothis 
Paper. Nos. 5 and g 0 f g e ^ u . an( j a g Tee s 
with the circumstance that on palasographic grounds Pothi No. 6 
must be referred to the 8 th century A.D. (seepage 15). It is a very 
thin, coarse paper, of uneven texture, and whitish color. The water- 
lines form a network, being 13 or 14 to an inch in one direction, 
crossed at right angles by others in intervals of from § to 1". Evidently, 
the paper was made in a mould with a network bottom. On this an 
imperfectly prepared pulp was laid rather unevenly ; for the paper shows 
great inequalities, thicker patches alternating with thin ones. In the 
thick patches, long fibres of the material can be clearly distinguished. 
What this material was, I am unable to say : specimens have been sub¬ 
mitted, for determination, to Hofrath Professor J. Wiesner in Vienna. 
According to him loading with starch was used in the manufacture of 
the paper . 4 To judge from the dimensions of the documents, the size of 
the mould, and accordingly of a full sheet of paper, appears to have been 
4 The dated documents show au appreciable amount of starch ; in some of the 
fragments no starch could be discovered. 
