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. xxx.] AFFINITY TO GRIECO-BUDDHIST ART 465
But more important and fascinating than any such details was
the very close affinity in style and most details of execution which every single find revealed with the so-called Grœco-Buddhist sculptures of the Peshawar valley and the neighbouring region. Whether that sculptural art, mainly of classical origin, had been brought direct from the Indus or from Bactria, there can be no further doubt, in view of these discoveries, that at an early date it found a true home and flourished in Khotan. The close study of this wealth of sculpture is a task of great historical and artistic interest. I hope that it will be possible to facilitate it by the publication of adequate reproductions of all my photographs.
Our data for the chronology of Græco-Buddhist art in India are
as yet too scanty to permit any safe conclusion as to the date of the Rawak relievos. No epigraphical finds of any kind were made in that part of the ruins which could be cleared, but I was fortunate enough to secure in situ numismatic evidence of distinct value. While cleaning the pedestals of various statues along different portions of the enclosure as well as while examining the wall where the wooden gate had once been fixed, we came again and again upon Chinese copper coins bearing the ' Wu-tchu ' symbols and belonging to issues of the Han dynasty, just like the coins I had discovered below mouldings at the foot of the great Stupa. These coins were invariably found within small cavities or interstices of the plaster or brickwork, into which they must have been slipped
as votive offerings. Subsequently, when a detached base only eight
feet square, probably once surmounted by a small votive Stupa, was excavated near the inner south corner of the quadrangle, many more coins of the same type carne to light between the masonry of the base and a much-decayed wooden boarding which encased it.
With this discovery the total number of such coins rose to close on a hundred. Most of them are in good preservation and do not show any marks of long circulation. Only current coins are likely to have been used for such humble votive gifts, and as no finds of a later date were made, there is good reason to believe that the latest known date of these issues marks the lowest chronological limit for
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