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

expedition to Sinkiang in 1927-30, travelled, in 1930, to the northern part of the Lop-nor basin. There he located a ruined station and several structures at one of the three northernmost freshwater bays of the present lake Lop-nor. From the context of some Chinese records on wood bearing the dates B. C. 49 and B. C. I2-9, which were excavated by HUANG, he has stated the name of the ruin to be T'u-ken (Huang 1930). HUANG'S discoveries here are of outstanding importance for the chronology of the Lou-lan settlements as his dated manuscripts are the oldest known from the whole area.

HÖRNER and CHEN, in 1931, passed HUANG'S place T'u-ken, and it is thanks to their mapping that the position of the ruin has been fixed. According to HÖRNER (1931, p. 371) there are ruins of one big house with partly standing timber posts from the walls, and one smaller, more solidly built structure. Probably there were formerly still more buildings.

HÖRNER and CHEN found the upper part of the iron knife Pl. 3o : 10 and the bronze tube Pl. 3o: 5 in these ruins. The knife is of a Chinese Han dynasty type, and was at least 30 cm. long when complete. It may be labelled as a weapon. The bronze tube is the upper part of a hooked socket which protected the end of a wooden rod in a canopy (cf. p. 168). Its nearest parallel is from the tomb of WANG KUANG in Korea (Oba and Kayamoto, Pl. 84), which is also of the Han dynasty.

B. HORNER'S AND CHEN'S COLLECTIONS FROM THE LOU-LAN

STATION.

The main site of the whole Lop-nor region, and its once military centre, is the ruined station of Lou-lan which Dr. HEDIN was fortunate enough to discover in March 1901, and from which he brought away a certain number of Chinese records on wood and paper besides various other finds. The manuscripts and the small finds were published by CONRADY in 192o, and after another fifteen years the woodcarvings were described by me together with a fuller treatment of all the small finds.

The ruins have been searched twice by STEIN, and also visited by HUNTINGTON, TACHIBANA, HÖRNER and CHEN. The latter is the only Chinese to have seen, in our days, what is left of this Chinese outpost on the Silk Road. He has visited the site thrice, which is more than any of the others have done.

The joint visit of HÖRNER and CHEN resulted in a collection of various small articles (listed as No. K. 13378 below), and CHEN'S visits in 1934 gave an addition to this collection (No. 32 in the list).

Coins.

Of WANG MANG'S issues Huo-ch'üan and Ta-ch'üan-wu-shih there were found two, and one specimens respectively, and of the normal Han dynasty Wu-ch'u

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