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0364 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 / Page 364 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000234
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312   DISCOVERY OF DATED DOCUMENTS [CHAP. XX.

conjunction with three Chinese documents which Mr. Macartney had obtained in 1898 through Badruddin, and which have been published in Dr. Hoernle's Second Report already quoted, it makes it possible to fix with great probability the name of the settlement represented by the ruins of Dandan-Uiliq, as well as the Chinese administrative division to which it belonged.

The three documents I refer to in general appearance and style of writing closely resemble those excavated by me at DandanUiliq, and are, like the latter, official records of a public or private character. The translations with which Mr. Macartney kindly supplied me at 1.ashgar show that the first of them, dated in the third year of the Ta-li period, corresponding to A.D. 768, contains the draft of a report from the officer in charge of Li-sieh (Li-tsa) on a petition from the people of that locality. The report recommends a postponement of the collection of miscellaneous taxes in view of the distress caused by the depredations of robbers. Another document, dated only by month and day, is a military requisition sent from the Li-sieh camp to a civil authority for a skin to re-cover a drum and for feathers to re-fit arrows. The third, dated in the seventh year of the Chien-Chung period, corresponding to A.D. 786, records the issue of a loan of 15,000 cash on the security of a house in a village (name not deciphered), belonging to Li-sieh.

In view of the close agreement shown by the dates and contents of these documents with those of the Chinese papers which I discovered in various ruined buildings at Dandan-Uiliq, it appears to me practically certain that they represent some of the finds of Chinese manuscripts which Turdi well remembered to have made on a visit to the site some years previously, and which with other " old things " he had sold to Badruddin, his usual employer at Khotan. It is possible that these particular documents came from one of those rooms in the ruined house D.V. which I found already thoroughly searched, or from some other ruins that had similarly been " explored " before by Turdi's parties. In any case .their comparison with the first Chinese document I unearthed at the site, the petition (D.V. 6) already referred to, leaves no reasonable