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0753 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / 753 ページ(白黒高解像度画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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CH. XLIV STORY OF MAGICAL ELEPHANT 491

elephant's head and body with jewels, and in the equally significant detail of the sacrificial jug carried by the prince to mark the pouring out of the water on the right hand, an Indian symbol of donation distinctly mentioned in the story. Some of the later incidents must have been depicted in the upper frescoes of the north hemicycle ; for M. Foucher's luminous identification enables us to recognize certain characteristic figures, such as the wild animals encountered by Maddi in the jungle, even among the badly injured remnants of the lowest part of the frieze.

With the meaning of the whole fresco once solved I felt doubly eager for a precise interpretation of the two short inscriptions in Kharoshthi already mentioned which appeared on the well-preserved part of the frieze. I had taken careful tracings of them and convinced myself from a few words easily identified on the spot that their language was the same Indian Prakrit in which the documents of Niya, Endere, and the Lop-nor site are written. I had also had my attention attracted by a curious fact about the inscription which was written in black ink over the right thigh of the elephant. It consisted of three short and slightly curving lines ; the neatly painted characters, though only about one-third of an inch high, were particularly legible against the white background of the elephant's skin.

For a record naming the scene or actor represented this inscription seemed too long, and its writing also wanting in that lapidary size and ductus which the other above the palace gate showed. On the other hand, it did not look like a mere sgraite of some passing visitor, especially as the place for it had evidently been selected with care. So by a combination of rather slender arguments I was led at the time to conjecture that this little inscription might possibly prove to contain some conspicuously placed brief record about the painter himself.

To my surprise this guess, almost forgotten by me by the time, was curiously confirmed three years later when the photographs and tracings of this inscription were examined by the Abbé Boyer, the distinguished Paris Indologist, and one of my most competent collaborators on the philological