until September. In the meantime I was free to turn my attention to geographical and other tasks.
For a few days I halted at the great and flourishing oasis of Yarkand to which the Tarim river, where it debouches from the mountains, assures plentiful irrigation, and then proceeded to the foothills of the K`un-lun range to the south. Proofs and other literary tasks connected with the completion of Ancient Khotan, the detailed report on my first expedition, had, alas, to be brought along so far. While busily at work on their final disposal in the peaceful small oasis of Kök-yar, I found my hands full, too, with collecting anthropological measurements and data about the little-known people of Pakhpo (Fig. 22). At first they fought terribly shy of leaving their high valleys, just as if real heads were to be taken instead of mere measurements and photographs with perfectly harmless instruments. But the trouble was amply repaid. The evidence collected showed that this small tribe, though it now speaks only Turki like the rest of the population all through the Tarim basin, had yet in its alpine isolation preserved remarkably well the main physical features of that Homo Alpinus race which in ancient times appears to have extended right through to Khotan and farther east along the southern edge of the Taklamakan. There is reason to believe that its original speech was probably Eastern Iranian, like that which prevails among the closely allied stock of the present Wakhis, Shughnis, etc., on the uppermost Oxus. To this language branch belongs also the old tongue of Khotan, as proved by the documents which have been recovered at sand-buried sites of the Khotan region.
After carrying my plane table survey by a little known
IIIFカラー高解像度
