166 THE PULSE OF ASIA
were at their prayers, the host of Nuktereshid fell upon them and killed them all, including the Imams. Forty, however, came to life again, and returned to Kashgar. They persuaded the king of that country to send some families, who settled Imamla, Sai Bagh, and Nura, which till then had been inhabited only by nomads. Nuktereshid and his people moved on southeastward to Polu, which is said to have been an important post, "because it lies on the Kalmuck road from Yarkand to Cherchen." There they were finally conquered by the Mohammedans.
The whole story is full of fantastic miracles and impossibilities, but the main facts are historically accurate. The miracles, such for instance as the diversion of the Ak-Sai, are chiefly distorted explanations of real facts. The dates are open to question, for while the chronicle gives 1000 A. D. as the time when Nuktereshid ruled, Bellew gives 1095 A. D. Apparently, Choka was a provincial town in a district inhabited by nomads, and rose to importance only during the brief space when it became the capital of the Buddhist kings, whom the Mohammedans expelled from Khotan about 1000 A. D. The abandonment of the town was traditionally a withdrawal of the people without fighting because their water supply failed. Of course the water supply may have been diverted by an enemy, as is said to have been done in the case of the Ak-Sai ; but that does not explain where the water went, or why a town was ever founded with so diminutive a water supply as that now available, unless the climate were different.
The story of the miracles suggested to me to ask whether there were any "jins," the genii of the Arabian Nights, in
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