xxiv INTRODUCTION
Turkestan lias furthered my labours with enthusiastic devotion. His wide knowledge of ancient Indian art, acquired in his late post as Principal of the School of Art and Curator of the Museum at Lahore, and his own high artistic abilities, have rendered his co-operation in the arrangement and description of my collection of antiquities of the utmost value. He lias never wearied in giving me the full benefit of his expert advice in questions affecting the technical aspects of my finds, and he has spared no trouble to make the illustrations of this book as effective as their number and the available means of reproduction would permit.
Besides drawings and diagrams embodied in these pages I owe to his skill the design reproduced on the cover of this volume and the Black and White drawing for the Vignette which adorns the title-page. This represents a restored yet faithfully conceived enlargement of the figure of Pallas Athene as seen in several of the ancient seal impressions on clay excavated by me from the desert sand. I could scarcely have wished for my narrative to issue under a more felicitous emblem.
Dr. A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, the eminent Indologist, who from the first had shown the warmest interest in my explorations, was kind enough to place at my disposal valuable information in respect of the ancient manuscripts in Brahmi characters, the publication of which lias been undertaken by fini ; he lias further rendered me the great service of reading a revision of this book. I owe a similar debt of gratitude to my friend Mr. E. J. Rapson, of the British Museum, who not only charged himself with the care of my collection while I was absent in India, but lias also allowed me to benefit at all times by the results of the most painstaking researches he lias devoted to the decipherment of the ancient
Kharoslithi documents. To Dr. Percy Gardner, Professor of
Archeology in the University of Oxford, I am indebted for most competent guidance in respect of the objects of classical art contained in my collection, and for niucli kind encouragement besides.
For the interpretation of my important Chinese records I must
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