国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
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0405 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / 405 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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CH. XXI WIND EROSION AND SAND-CONES 249

head branches to rise higher and higher. The sand, the smothering embrace of which they tried to escape, naturally followed this rise, and the cones formed by it thus grew correspondingly in height and size.

The time taken over this building-up process was brought home to me with quasi-chronological exactness by an interesting observation made at the edge of a small area of open eroded ground about half-way between Khadalik and Balawaste. Here a few fragments of small relievos in hard stucco were seen emerging from the slope of eroded loess soil immediately at the foot of a big tamarisk-covered sand-cone. Such excavation into the side of the hillock as the masses of sand sliding down permitted us to make, brought to light more stucco fragments originally forming part of the relievo decoration of some big halo in a Buddhist shrine, which undoubtedly belonged to the same period as the temples of Khadalik.

The abraded condition of the relievo pieces representing small standing Buddhas and floral borders, left no doubt that they had been exposed for centuries to ` grinding ' by driven sand, until the expansion of a neighbouring sand-cone came to provide protection for these humble remnants of a shrine otherwise completely destroyed by erosion. The level on which they were found was about three feet higher than the top of the nearest ` witnesses,' while the latter themselves rose six to ten feet above the bottom of the eroded depressions adjoining them. This difference of about three feet manifestly represents the progress made by erosion since the relievo fragments came to be buried beneath the slope of the sand-cone. This itself rose now fully sixteen feet above the level indicated by this débris.

Like the explorations over neighbouring ground just referred to, the careful packing of all relics capable of removal, the photographing of others which had to be left behind and reburied, the filling up of all ground excavated, etc., had to be effected simultaneously with the general clearing of the main ruins. It was only by such constant and varied exertions that I was able by the morning of October 3rd to leave Khadalik, where, in spite of