1901.] 
Section III. Manuscripts. 
31 
Findplace. 
eight to M. 9, one to M. 10, and three to G. 1. The remaining’56 "are 
Number and fragments, mostly, from G. 1, and varying in 
Condition size ^ rom m i nu 4e pieces to half sheets. All 
those belonging to Gr. 1 were received by me in 
crumbled lumps of waste paper, and required very careful opening-up 
and flattening-out, as described in the Journal of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal, Yol. XYI (1897), p. 226. 
Regarding their findplace there is some uncertainty. Those belong¬ 
ing to M. 3, M. 9 and M. 10 were procured 
from a Khotan trader Badruddln, who could 
or would give no information respecting their provenance. From the 
same trader the Chinese documents belonging to M. 3 and M. 9 were 
procured. On the other hand, the Brahmi documents belonging to 
G. 1 are said to have been dug up “ near some old buried city in the 
vicinity of Kuchar ” ( Introd ., p. ix) ; and from the same locality are 
said to have come the fragmentary Pothis (Nos. 3 and 5 of Set I, and 
Nos. 4, 5, 6 of Set II) and the two fragments of Chinese documents 
which belong to G. 1. One of those Pothis (No. 6 of Set II) is written 
in the same Brahmi script as the Brahmi documents ; and the whole of 
these documents and Pothis are written on the same kind of paper. 
Seeing that some manuscripts, written on the same kind of paper and 
in the same scripts were dug up by Dr. Stein in Dandan Uiliq, it seems 
not improbable that the whole of the manuscripts above enumerated 
really came from that sand-buried old site. That, in any case, the 
whole of the Brahmi documents came from the same locality, and even 
belonged to the same community, seems to be clearly proved by the fact 
that the same names of persons (see below, p. 33) reappear in different 
documents. 
Most of the complete documents are fully dated (see below, p. 35) ; 
but unfortunately the key to the system of dating is, as yet unknown. 
Hence we are reduced to estimating their age from indirect evidence. 
On paleeographical grounds, as explained ante , p. 15, it is probable 
that the approximate date of the Brahmi 
script, as seen in the documents, is the 8th 
century A.D. This attribution is confirmed by the circumstance that a 
short remark in the same Brahmi script is seen in one of the Chinese 
documents (No. 4), which were found together with the Brahmi 
Documents, while on the other hand two other Chinese documents 
(Nos. 1 and 3), which evidently belong to the same find, are actually 
dated in the latter half of the 8th century (768 and 786 A.D.) It 
seems certain, therefore, that the documents were written about that time, 
and that the species of Brahmi script which is seen in them, was then 
