National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0017 Ancient Khotan : vol.1
Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / Page 17 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000182
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

INTRODUCTION   xiii

the long series of his earlier publications, will be evident to my readers from every chapter. But in addition I owe a debt of gratitude to M. Chavannes for a service of friendship which, I know, must have cost heavy sacrifices of time and labour. In order to secure in my work that uniformity in the transcription (according to Wade's system) of Chinese names and terms, the want of which in the various publications consulted for Chinese records had often been a sore difficulty to me, and with a view to assuring general correctness in Chinese references, he kindly charged himself with a detailed revision of the latter, both in my MS. and in a final proof.

For my finds of Tibetan MSS. and sgraffiti (Appendix B) I had the good fortune to secure as joint editors two scholars of critical thoroughness, Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the British Museum, and Rev. A. H. FRANCKE, of the Moravian Mission, Ladâk. Dr. Barnett's preliminary notice will have shown to Orientalists how well qualified he was to elucidate the importance of those MS. finds for the history of Tibetan language and literature 12. By his exceptional knowledge of Tibetan rock-carvings and of the colloquial language, the Rev. Mr. Francke has been able to deal successfully with the sgraffiti which would have baffled any Tibetan scholar in Europe. To Mr. F. W. THOMAS, the learned librarian of the India Office, my sincere thanks are due for having kindly supplemented the Tibetan notices of Khotan otherwise accessible to me by the valuable extracts from the Kanjur reproduced in Appendix E. From another and widely distant field of Oriental research has valuable help come to me in the learned analysis which Professor D. S. MARGOLIOUTH has given of the curious Judaeo-Persian document from Dandân-Uiliq reproduced in Appendix C.

The classification of my collection of coins could not have been carried out by more competent scholars than Dr. S. W. BUSHELL, C.M.G., the distinguished Sinologist, and Prof. E. J. RAPSON. Though I had endeavoured, as far as my means of reference would permit, to determine on the spot all coins actually found by me, yet the inventory list in Appendix D, and the plates illustrating it were prepared mainly from the materials which those two friends were kind enough to place at my disposal. To Dr. S. W. Bushell I am still further indebted for the liberality with which he has allowed me to draw upon his store of antiquarian and historical knowledge in questions connected with Chinese lore. To Dr. PERCY GARDNER, Professor of Archaeology at Oxford, I must offer my best thanks for having accorded to me the same favour in regard to objects of classical and semi-classical art contained in my collection.

The two interesting Appendices F, G, in which Professors A. H. CHURCH, E. R. S., and L. DE LdczY have recorded the results of their respective analyses of the stucco materials, and the loess and sand specimens brought back by me from Khotan sites, deserve all the more my grateful acknowledgements, as they clear up questions in which the archaeologist can derive guidance solely from natural science. The same is the case with the important investigations which Prof. J. WIESNER, Director of the Institute for Plant-Physiology, Vienna University, has devoted to the ancient paper materials represented among my antiquarian finds 13. Nor ought I to omit grateful mention here of the valuable assistance I have received in the anthropological field, linking as it were the domains of historical and natural science, from the instructive analysis to which my friend Mr. T. A. JoYCE, of the British Museum, Secretary of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, has subjected the anthropometric materials I collected on my journey 14.

12 See J.R.A.S.,1903, pp. log sqq.; below, pp. 426 sq.

1$ See J. Wiesner, Ein neuer Beitrag zur Geschichte des Papieren, in Sitzungsberichte of the Imperial Academy, Vienna, histor.-philos. Klasse, 1904 ; comp. below, pp.

307 sq., 426.

" See On the physical anthropology of the oases of Kholan and Keriya. By T. A. Joyce, in Journal of the Anthropol. Institute, 1903, pp. 304-24 ; comp. below, pp. 144 sqq.