IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
i
i
CH. XI RELICS FROM RUINED QUARTERS 181
and the fragment of a well-known Chinese lexicographical work. A great mass of wooden `shavings' showed that here
0 I as elsewhere some officer or clerk, eager to improve his
penmanship, an important matter for Chinese until late years, had used improvised tablets for writing exercises, by paring them down with a knife again and again to obtain a fresh surface.
We must now leave this westernmost section, already
occupied, as we have seen, from the time of the first construction of the Limes, in order to turn to a rapid survey of its remains farther east. Plenty of interesting observations and finds were to be made also along what I may call the marsh sections of the Limes. Before, however, touching upon these I may briefly mention the watch-station T. viii met on the way eastwards. When first seen by us it presented itself as a mere low mound covered with gravel. But its position pointed to a watch-tower having once stood here. On excavation it proved to contain the debris of a brick-built tower which had, perhaps through faulty construction, completely collapsed and in its fall buried the walls and roof of the guard-rooms adjoining.
When these had been cleared there were found among
other curious relics (Fig. 75) a measure in the shape of a bootmaker's foot-rule marked with the inches of the Han period; and wooden seal cases with grooves arranged to hold a fastening string just as on the covers of Kharoshthi tablets from the Niya and Lou-lan sites. There was a wooden label stating that the box or bag to which it was once attached contained a hundred bronze arrow-heads of a specified type
belonging to the Hsien-ming company of the Jade Gate. Of such ancient ammunition for crossbows there were
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