THE UNEXPLORED SALT DESERT OF LOP 245
temples. These establishments appear to have been kept up after the prosperity of the town had vanished, as I infer from the extremely flimsy nature of the repairs superposed upon the solid structure of the older part of the fort.
Ancient Miran, in its prime, must have required a water supply many times as large as that now available. It is reasonable to suppose that, being the most important place for hundreds of miles, from both a religious and a military point of view, Miran had an irrigation system as good as the country afforded. The water at first came from an old river-channel east of the town, and later, apparently, from the present channel on the west. The dams and canals are preserved as at Vash Sheri, and do not differ from those of to-day. The main older dam is composed of tamarisks and small boulders thrown loosely together; and there is said to be another, which I could not find, composed of boulders alone. The canals are either simple ditches, or are raised a few feet upon dykes. In every case, the material is that which happened to lie close at hand. On the upper Miran River there are no inhabitants, and no opportunity for the diversion of part of the water. The present supply, sufficient for fifteen or twenty families, is all that the river is capable of furnishing under the system of irrigation which prevails now, and was in vogue in Buddhist times a millennium or more ago. If the rainfall were increased, say, by half, the amount of water reaching Miran would be multiplied in far larger proportion. Being confined to a single channel, the water would scarcely suffer more loss from evaporation and from sinking into the ground than it now does, and all the extra supply would be available at Miran. The diffi-
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