IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
58 DISCOVERY OF HAN RECORDS CH. LV
was a relatively well preserved enclosure, about 107 feet square, of which the tower itself formed the north-west corner. Its walls, built of rough bricks and clay, with layers of tamarisk brushwood at intervals, still rose in one place to eight feet.
Whether this enclosure was coeval with the tower and the wall line it was meant to guard, I was unable to decide ;
for the accumulations of refuse found within its east face, and partly covering the floor and decayed walls of some rooms, yielded nothing but plentiful reed straw, cut brushwood, and dung of horses and camels. A large refuse heap some ten yards outside the south wall proved of similar composition. But here we came upon a fine jar, intact but for its mouth, and in shape resembling an amphora (Fig. 172, 5). Its height was nearly one foot, and its material a very hard dark brown stone-ware, with a mat slip burnt in. Within, traces of an oily substance survived. Small pieces of fine pottery, made of a very hard paste and with highly glazed surface, were picked up in plenty both within and around the enclosure. The glaze colours varied greatly ; celadon green, ivory white, fine browns and black, an exquisite turquoise blue with several mottled tints, being all represented.
I was still wondering how to account for this un-
expected abundance of superior pottery débris such as I had not yet come upon elsewhere in this region, when the clearing of a small ruined cella, previously noticed about fifty yards to the west, brought another surprise. It measured only eleven by thirteen feet outside, and with its entrance on the narrower side faced to the south. The walls, about two feet thick and built of fairly hard sun-dried bricks, rose nowhere above four to five feet. The interior was filled with débris of broken bricks, charred timber, and plastered reed wattle. When it was being cleared we came upon a platform built of bricks and running round all sides but that of the entrance. From the débris covering the platform to the north there came to light numerous
fragments of stucco sculpture that unmistakably had once adorned a Buddhist shrine.
The fragments were all badly broken, but showed in
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