National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

K. 13440 : 4-5. Two small potsherds of reddish K. 13445 : 3-4. Two small iron fragm. with a hole.

ware. —: 5 has a black line painted K. 13445 : 5. Iron buckle. An oval ring with a on a dark-red slip. Found at the graves between

the fortress and the brook.   projecting hook instead of a tongue.

25X23 mm.

K. 13445 : 6-7. Two small iron fragm., probably

Shor-tsaghan, tomb excavated by Norm   from rings.

in the region S of lake Baghrash-köl.   K. 13445 : 8. A few fragm. from a much-decayed

K. 13445 : 1-2. Two fragm. of an iron bridle, which   iron sheet with two perforations.

has had a joint at the centre and a   Br. 55 mm.

ring at each end.   K. 13445:9. Human incisor.

5. RUINS IN THE QARA-SHAHR REGION.

A. MING-6I.

In the early autum of 1928 I travelled from Charkhliq to Quruq-tagh. As the ferry-place near Ying-p'an was difficult to traverse with camels because of the high water in Qum-darya I followed the main road from Tikenliq to Korla. From there I paid a short visit to the imposing ruins of the once Buddhist monastery which is now called Ming-öi and situated near to the west of the road between Korla and Qara-shahr. On the other side of the road and a little further to the north lies the ruined town of Baghdad-shahri, which I also visited.

I had not planned to undertake any excavation at either place, as the first one was well known through the intensive work by OLDENBURG, GRÜNWEDEL and STEIN, and the latter had proved to STEIN to be very unpromising.

From one of the central ruins in Ming-öi I brought away the two Buddhistic stucco heads Pl. 32 : 9 and 11, and a few trifling objects were collected from the ground. One of these was apparently lost by STEIN, as it bears his site marks. The heads are very close to those found by STEIN in this eighth century monastry.

B. BAGHDAD-SHAHRI.

After having left Ming-öi I paid a flying visit to the ruined town called Baghdadshahri. All that remains of it is the decayed walls. At the large mound in the interior some local treasure-seekers were digging, but they had made no interesting finds. We found a fragmentary Chinese coin on the ground, most likely a K'ai-yüan issue of T'ang period.

STEIN has identified this site with the old capital of Yen-ch'i, which the T'ang annals place at the right side of Khaidu-gol.1 STEIN'S identification is rendered less certain by my discovery of the ruined walls of another city very near to Baghdadshahri which I made six years after my visit to this place.

1 This is the spelling usually applied to the Mongol name of the Qara-shahr-darya. I have never heard it pronounced by any Mongol. According to Mr. UNKRIG it must be a corruption of Khoitu-gol, i. e. The river in the rear, or to the north.

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