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

The few sherds of glazed wares, on the other hand, are certainly importations from China, and more precisely from Honan. There are pieces from dark greenish-blue Chün bowls and from Celadon and Ying-ch'ing wares ranging in colours from light greenish brown, light bluish-green to whitish green. A small sherd with green glaze must be labelled as T'ang ware. The others can safely be attributed to either the Sung or the Yüan dynasty. STEIN'S collection contains about the same kind of wares.

The coarse, unglazed pottery is very similar to that from Charchan. Only sherds were found, no complete vessels. Of a certain interest are the potsherds bearing a Tibetan character carelessly incised with some coarse tool, Pl. 36 : 9—io. In a way they form a part of the decoration, which otherwise consists of incised bands made with a dentated instrument. These bands are in the shape of arcs or garlands, as well as horizontal ribbons, Pl. 36 : I. They apparently originate from the time when the Tibetans ruled the Tarim Basin, as do the similar Charchan sherds.

Other potsherds have ornaments slightly resembling Tibetan characters, but as all are fragmentary we cannot be absolutely sure as to what is meant, Pl. 36 : 2 and 6.

The potsherd Pl. 37 : 6 is unique. It is made of a whitish clay and has a moulded ornamentation in high relief. Except in the colour of the ware it may be paralleled with the Khotan terra-cotta vessels, but these usually have their ornaments applied on the plain wall.

Pl. 36 : 8 is from the shoulder of a largish jar of coarse earthenware, decorated with horizontal wave-lines incised with a dentated tool. A raised oval, of no particular use, somewhat recalls a cowrie.

Impressed circles occur on the rim and the neck of Pl. 36 : 3, from a large jar. Similar ornaments are seen on Pl. 36 : 4. Pl. 37 : 5 has an incised wave-pattern.

Most of the handles are loop-shaped, and some of them have impressed ornaments. There are also lugs.

A lot of spindle whorls are made of potsherds; they denote that spinning formed an important part of the household activities here.

A small fragmentary tile, Pl. 32 : 8, is hard to reconstruct. I have sometimes wondered if it could have been used as a support for the small conical smelting pots of which there is a specimen in my collection (K. 13346 : 112) only 45 mm. high. From the Sung and Yüan ruins at Edsen-gol in Mongolia I collected several smelting pots of this diminutive size. The occurrence of refuse from bronze smelting is further evidence of local bronze casting.

A fragmentary mace-head of stone, Pl. 37 : Io, has two parallels amongst the Lop-nor objects, as already pointed out. All three seem to have been intended as mace-heads and not weights or the like.

Three wooden combs call for some attention. They are all double-teethed. Pl. 38 : 20 and 22 are very similar and have concave sides, whereas Pl. 38 : 19 has convex sides. It is rather likely that they originate from destroyed tombs. STEIN

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