IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. xx.] AN UNKNOWN LANGUAGE 309
these and similar documents in cursive Brahmi found in other ruins of Dandan-Uiliq, has been fully borne out by the result of Dr. Hoernle's painstaking researches, as since published in the second part of his " Report on the British Collection of Antiquities from Central Asia " (1902) . The materials upon which that eminent scholar worked comprised a considerable number of well-preserved documents of this type which had been purchased in the years 1895-97 by Mr. Macartney and Captain Godfrey from Badruddin, the Afghan Aksakal of Khotan. Internal evidence, as well as the information secured by me, makes it highly probable that these documents represent chance finds made by Turdi during his earlier visits to Dandan-Uiliq. Their minute analysis has enabled Dr. Hoernle to establish a series of philological facts which are of great interest, and possess considerable importance also from a historical point of view. He has succeeded in determining a number of words, either names, or terms, or numerals, which " seem to prove clearly that the language of the documents is an Indo-Iranian dialect, having affinities both with Persian and the Indian vernaculars, in addition to peculiarities of its own," pointing towards a connection with the so-called Ghalchah dialects of the Pamir region. He has also ascertained the interesting fact that the majority of the complete documents are fully dated, though the key to the chronology has yet to be discovered.
A number of ingenious observations, such as the discovery of
lists of names at the end of certain documents, accompanied by what manifestly are the marks of witnesses, support Dr. Hoernle's
conclusion that we have in them records of official or private
transactions similar in character to the deeds of loan, requisition orders, &c., which are contained in the Chinese documents from
Dandan-Uiliq to be described below. The detailed examination
of my finds of this kind which Dr. Hoernle has very kindly undertaken has not proceeded sufficiently far to throw further light on the interesting questions thus raised. But the certainty which exists as to all circumstances attending the discovery of the documents contained in my collection has already helped us to
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