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

670   THE WESTERNMOST LIMES WALL   [Chap. XVIII

room adjoining westwards came five more Chinese records on wood, also marked T. xII. a. ii, among them one, Doc. No. 593 (Plate XVII), bearing a date which, taken by itself, could safely be read on the spot as corresponding to A. D. I, but about which M. Chavannes has since pointed out a certain chronological difficulty. Besides very numerous fragments of different-coloured silks, a wooden seal case, and other miscellaneous relics the refuse of the passage also yielded the interesting fragment of a document, T. xi'. a. ii. 20 (Plate XXXIX), written on silk and containing nine lines of Kharosthi.

Before considering the questions raised by these important finds of documents in scripts of Western origin, I must briefly refer to the chronological and antiquarian evidence furnished by the Chinese records from this watch-station. Of special interest among them is the completely preserved tablet T. xi'. a. 3, Doc. No. 592 (Plate Xvli). With particular precision in the dating it records the exact length of the service rendered by a certain corporal, a native of the Tun-huang command, in the first and second years of the Ti-huang period of Wang Mang's reign, corresponding to A. D. 20 and 21.4 That this station of the Limes must have been occupied during Wang Mang's usurpation is made equally certain by four more records from T. xi'. a, Doc. Nos. 596, 598, 599 600,

which mention the Kuang-hsin   th company. M. Chavannes points out that the name hsin was
given to the new dynasty which Wang Mang pretended to have founded, and that consequently the designation Kuang-hsin, which means ` [the company] which increases the power of the Hsin [dynasty]', possesses a definite chronological significance. In T. xi'. a. ii. 9, Doc. No. 593 (Plate XVII), we have a clearly written date of the first year of Ygan-shih, which would correspond to A.D. I, and as this takes us very close to Wang Mang's period (A.D. 9-23), I am inclined to accept it, notwithstanding the difficulty which arises from the cyclical designation of the month as recorded in the document, and which M. Chavannes is unable to solve.

In No. 596 we find the Kuang-hsin company spoken of as of Kuan-chi'. I have already had occasion to remark that this local name, which is found also in No. 597, a record from T. xi' relating to the Hsien-ming company, may probably designate the place itself where the two closely adjoining watch-towers T. xi' and T. xII. a are found.5 It is certainly of interest to note that in the two wooden labels, Doc. Nos. 598, 599 (Plate XV, Xvi), which were intended to be affixed to certain cross-bows specified in them, the Kuang-hsin company owning these weapons is designated as ` of Yü-mên', or the Jade Gate. But this local designation by no means obliges us to assume that this famous frontier-station was in Wang Mang's times, or in any other, actually located at T. xII. a itself.. When discussing below the ruins of T. xiv I shall be able to give adequate archaeological and topographical reasons for the belief that this important site marks the position which the headquarters station of the ' Jade Gate ' occupied as long as the western Limes was guarded during Han times. The distance from T. xi'. a to T. xtv is only about five miles, and there could be no difficulty whatever about a detachment posted at the former, a mere outlying station on the wall, being commanded from the ' Jade Gate' headquarters at T. xrv. Exactly in the same way we meet with the name of ' the Tang-ku company of Yii-man ' at T. xIIi, the next watch-tower along the wall eastwards, after having before come across it at T. xi coupled with the local name of Kuan-chi.°

Dated Chinese records from

T. xi'. a.

Post occupied under Wang Mang.

Kuang-hsin company of Kuan-chi.

* The various points of chronological and antiquarian interest presented by this record have been discussed in full detail by M. Chavannes, Documents, pp. I28-31.

ô Cf. above, p. 668.

6 See Doc. No. 401 ; above, p. 668.