IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
614 POPULATION OF EAST TURKESTAN.
Thus Ak-su, Utsch-turfan, Kutschar (Kara-schahr), Korla, Baj, Lop, and the whole of the course of the Tarim are not included. But, as it happens, incomparably the larger number of villages belong to Kaschgar; consequently the estimate 850,000 is too low. With regard to Chotan, Grenard arrives at precisely the same result as Pjevtsoff, and puts the number of households for the whole oasis at 30,000, or 130,000 inhabitants, while to Sava and Kara-kasch together be assigns 30,000. The small difference between Grenard and Pjevtsoff may be due to the fact that Pjevtsoff has not taken the towns into account. With regard to the density of the population Pjevtsoff calculates it as 6,37o inhabitants per geographical square mile '.for the oasis of Chotan, and in the oasis of Jarkent at 12,500 for each square mile. ' Thus the density in the latter is twice as great as in the former. According to Pjevtsoff the oasis of Jarkent possesses 150,000 inhabitants; and to these he adds 30,000 for the town of Jarkent and 15,000 for the Chinese town (Jangi-schahr). *. For the oasis of Ak-su he estimates 140,000 inhabitants, of whom he assigns 6,000 to the town itself. In the same oasis Prschevalskij found 56,00o families, as against Kuropatkin's 30,000. I have stated above, that the Mohammedan natives of Chotan reported the population of the oasis to be 524,000. Prschevalskij obtained from the same source the total 65o,o0o, which he justly regarded as considerably exaggerated. Other natives informed him, that an estimate of the population which was made in Jakub Bek's time put it at 237,000. With regard to this Prschevalskij says: — »This last total is no doubt nearer to the truth, though below the real figure. It seemed to me that the present population of the whole of the Khotan oasis may be estimated at about 300,000 souls.» **
These then are the various totals: —
Kuropatkin I ,200,000
Petrovskij 2,000,000
Pjevtsoff 2,000,000
Matussovskij 1,500,000
Forsyth 1 ,000,000
The mean of these is 1,540,000; while the mean of the first three, which are the most trustworthy, is 1,700,000. In default of later and more thorough estimates, I • will therefore content myself with observing, that the total population of East Turkestan probably does not exceed 2,000,000, and probably does exceed I,800,000; and the latter I regard as being the safer estimate.
The primary, indeed the exclusive, object of my journey being to make geographical investigations, I had neither time nor opportunity to institute inquiries of an ethnological, ethnographical, anthropological or administrative character; and these studies I found myself able to omit with all the better conscience, seeing that we already. possessed Grenard's excellent work Le. Turkestan Chinois et ses Habitants, forming the second volume of his Mission Scientafique Mans la Haute Asie, a work
* Trudij etc., pp. 8i, 82, and 1i4.
** At fi jachtij na istoki Scholtoj Reki, p. 455•
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