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0244 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / Page 244 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
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140

AT ANCIENT LOU-LAN

CH. VIII

far-off Sogdiana, the region of the present Samarkand and Bukhara.

The interpretation of the Chinese records recovered was accomplished by my lamented great Sinologue friend, M.

Chavannes, in a masterly publication issued at the Oxford University Press and including all Chinese documents from

my second collection. Their contents, like those previously

found by Dr. Hedin, conclusively prove that the site was that of a station designated as Lou-lan from the ancient name

of the whole territory. This formed the western bridge-head, as it were, on the earliest route which the Chinese had opened towards the close of the second century B.C. into the Tarim basin.

The great majority of the dated documents belong to the years between A.D. 263 and 270, and thus coincide with the

reign of the Emperor Wu-ti of the Chin dynasty, who, after the downfall of the Later Han, reasserted Chinese supremacy in the `Western Countries'. The latest document is of

the year A.D. 330. Its date is expressed in a regnal period that in China had come to a close fully fourteen years before.

It is thus evident that the little station must have been completely cut off from intercourse with the central authorities of the empire. The final abandonment of the site, and of the desert route for which it had served as a terminal station, was by that time obviously very near.

Small as the station was and limited the local resources of

the whole tract, yet there is enough evidence in the Chinese documents (Fig. 47) to show the importance of the traffic

it saw as long as the route remained open. There are fragments of reports emanating from or directly addressed to the `Commander-in-Chief of the Western Regions'; and of