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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

1462   NOTES ON SIR AUREL STEIN'S COLLECTION OF   [App. G

As regards local names, we find a great number of them. The greater part seem to refer to districts or settlements in Turkestan and Tibet., Other countries do not seem to be referred to so often. The word rgya, in

connexion with weights, may refer to India as well as China. We read of Bod-bre and rGya-bre in the documents.

Whilst the word Rod-bre certainly refers to Tibetan weights, we do not yet know whether rGya-bre means ` weights of China ' (rGya-nag) or ` weights of India ' (rGya-gar). Other foreign countries mentioned in the

documents are the following : Hirad may be Herat in Persia ; sNa-nam is the name of Samarkand, according to Jäschke ; Sog-po would refer to Mongolia ; Ho-peng may be in China ; Mon is the Tibetan name of the Himalayan districts of India. The latter name is found in several personal names, as, for instance, Mon-clzzzng, Mon-khyigi-chung.

Looking at names referring to Turkestan, the most important identification has been that by Dr. Stein of Nob with Lob or Lop. He says in his letter of October 19, 1910: Nob—then," Great Nob ", was probably the

name of the Tibetan station at Mirän. Topographical and archaeological reasons compel me to believe that Nob

is the Tibetan attempt at reproducing an ancient local name. The same name is spelt Na fu po by Hsüan-tsang, while Marco Polo writes Lop. Nob-cluing," Little Nob", may be identical with Charkhlik (about fifty miles W.S.W.

of Mirân).' 4   . Let me add that still another name referring to Nob is found in the documents ; it is the name

Nob-shod, or Lower Nob '. Three castles of Nob ' are occasionally mentioned, and the name of a castle situated in Little Nob was Nob-chung-ngugYung-drung-rtse.

Another local name which may be connected with Turkestan is Li. According to the dictionaries, Li is the Tibetan name of Khotan. I suppose that in the documents it refers to a larger tract of country. This name is

not often found singly ; in most cases we find it connected with other, probably often personal names. Such compound names are : Li-snang, Li-mngan, Li-bu-god, Li-g-os-de, Li-shir-de, Li-hir-bod, Li gchiç clzad, Li-rjc, Li-sa-bdad. The Tibetan name Hor, for Turkestan, is also found in the Stein Collection.

Tibetan local names which have become known from Tibetan geography occur also among the documents. The following may be mentioned : rGod tsang, 1Ho-brag, Nag-shod, Klzams, 'aBrom, dBus, Chog-ro, Bu-srang-

gi-sde (perhaps identical with Bu-prangs, modern Purang), Nang-gong (Baltistan), sTong-sde (perhaps in Zangs-

dkar), Gle (very probably the capital of Ladakh, Leh—in the old chapters of the chronicles the spelling Gle as well as Me is used for Leh). mNgaris seems to be used as a name of the western parts of Tibet. In the old

parts of the chronicles it is used as a name of the West Tibetan Empire. Byang-po is the name of the 1Ha-sa district. 'A-zha, a name found often in the Padmasambhava literature, is supposed to be identical with the present Gar-zha or Ga-zlza, Lahul. In the Stein documents 'A-zlza is once called rGya-la gtogs pa, belonging to rGya. The village of rGya seems to have been the capital of Western Tibet (rGya-sde) in ancient times... .

Fairly often local and personal names are found combined, and experience has shown me that in such cases the first name is always the local, and the second the personal name. The first local name is to be taken as the birth-place of the person mentioned thereafter. Lang-myi-sde-zlzims-stag means `7.hims-stag of the province of Lang-myi'. 'A-zha yang-bre means Yang-bre of 'A-zha'.

Lakes and rivers do not often seem to be mentioned. I have noticed the following : mKhar-'athso probably stands for mKhar-mthso, lake of the castle ; AI-ye-long, mirror, is apparently the name of a lake, also sPrulgyimye-long, enchanting mirror ; Khyung-byi-tsa-mthso gong means ` upper lake of K hyung-byi-tsa'. The expression Sho-rtsang-'agrauz-du means ` on the shore (bank) of Sho-rtsang'.

The documents of the Stein Collection contain a great number of dates. Although they generally give. the numbers of days and months and the name of the year, they arc not o4 much use to the historian, for

the names of the year invariably refer to the cycle of twelve years only. All the same, the documents furnish us with material to prove the veracity of the Tibetan (Ladakhi) chronicles, where we find a statement to the effect that the Chinese calendar was introduced into Tibet under Srong-btsan-sgam-po (seventh century). The cycle of twelve years was apparently all that became known to the Tibetans of those days, and we cannot help feeling suspicious when a Tibetan chronicle, in describing the times between A D. 6co and loco, makes use of the cycle-of sixty years. This is the case in particular in the chronicles of Central Tibet, whilst the chronicles of Ladakh use the twelve years' cycle down to the fifteenth century. It is well known that the dates of reigns given in the sixty years' cycles of Central Tibetan chronicles are not in agreement with the dates given by Chinese historians

4 [For a rectification of this view, which was formed at a time when the materials available were not complete, see now above, pp. 468 Sq.—STEIN.,