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
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

> > > >
カラー New!IIIFカラー高解像度 白黒高解像度 PDF   日本語 English
0477 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / 477 ページ(カラー画像)

New!引用情報

doi: 10.20676/00000213
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

 

CH. XXV

ARCHITECTURAL CARVINGS   293

The room at the south-west corner of the same house was so deeply buried under a dune that it had preserved its walls and roofing practically intact. The smoke-begrimed plaster of the walls, the two outer ones of which were built of solid stamped clay, and the absence of any opening except a narrow window below the ceiling showed that it was an apartment specially affected as a warm corner during the winter months. It was, perhaps, due to the darkness which prevailed here that I found, lying on the top of the fireplace, a collection of small but perfectly preserved Kharoshthi records on wood, apparently in the main domestic accounts and memos (Fig. 97). Otherwise the room had been cleared completely. But the last occupier evidently forgot to look to the high mantelpiece which he had used as a shelf for petty ` papers.'

From this camp I also revisited the ruin containing that precious rubbish heap (N. xv.) which I had cleared with such rich rewards in 1901. My thoughts had dwelt so often from afar on this small ruin that I was relieved to find that neither the winds nor other destructive agencies had as yet worked any appreciable change. I came back with the special object of looking out for some items from that refuse heap which I remembered with some feeling of shame to have thrown aside in 1901 as valueless. They were small pieces of very hard leather, rounded at one end and peculiarly punched with holes, in which I had since learned to recognize pieces of scale armour.

I found the refuse we had cleared out still lying undisturbed by the side of the room, and my conscience felt relieved when after some careful scraping, done by Ibrahim, my old guide, an expert in such hunting, the missing scales were recovered. Another tramp over the dunes was directed to a spot about a mile northward at which Ibrahim and a companion had, while ` treasure-seeking ' two years before, come upon remains of skeletons, and which they had promptly christened the ` Mazar.' There by the side of an isolated small tamarisk cone I found, indeed, unmistakable indications of an ancient cemetery—not only plentiful human bones scattered over the eroded slopes of a small plateau, but also the bleached