Innermost Asia : vol.1 / 21 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0021	Innermost Asia : vol.1
極奥アジア : vol.1

M. Maspero's labours have been greatly facilitated by the transcripts which my valued friend Help of
Chiang Ssŭ-yeh (Mr. Chiang Hsiao-yüan 蒋孝琬), the Chinese secretary of my second ex- Chiang Saŭ-
yeh.
pedition, had prepared of numerous documents during my stay at Kāshgar in June, 1915. He
had bestowed upon this task the same thorough critical care that had made him during my former
journey the best of scholarly helpmates.¹⁴ Regard for his state of health had obliged me, to my great
regret, to forgo his services on my third journey ; but even from afar this devoted Chinese assistant
continued to prove his keen interest in my labours until his lamented death in 1922.

My heartiest thanks are due to Dr. L. Giles, Deputy Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Collabora-
Manuscripts, British Museum, for his very valuable assistance in undertaking the difficult task tion of Dr.
Giles.
of translating and interpreting the sepulchral inscriptions from Astāna, available only in photo-
graphs, as well as the records on ancient textiles (see Appendix I). The work of cataloguing the
great collection of Chinese manuscripts recovered in 1907 from the Thousand Buddhas of Tun-
huang, upon which he has been engaged for a number of years past, will, I hope, be extended to the
abundant supplementary materials brought back from my third expedition. In addition I feel
deeply indebted to Dr. L. Giles for the unfailing kindness with which he has at all times been
ready to assist me from his store of Sinologue knowledge. To Mr. L. C. Hopkins, I.S.O., my
thanks are due for the decipherment of certain Chinese seals, as well as for the verification of Chinese
characters and transcripts in some of the proof-sheets.

It was a source of special satisfaction to me when the late Mr. F. E. Pargiter, I.C.S. (ret.), Inventory
was kind enough to undertake in 1920 the preparation of an Inventory List of manuscript remains, Lists of
MSS. in
mainly in Sanskrit. His former collaboration with the late Dr. A. F. R. Hoernle and his own pains- Brāhmī
taking care made him the right successor to a task which that true pioneer of Central-Asian philo- script.
logical researches might have claimed, had he survived. Appendix E shows the great amount of
unsparing scholarly labour that Mr. Pargiter has devoted to the task, even where the fragmentary
state of the materials rendered it far from attractive. Professor Sten Konow, the distinguished
Indologist of Oslo University, who has made the language of ancient Khotan the subject of special
studies, honoured me by offering to examine the manuscript remains in that tongue. If the In
ventory List contributed by him in Appendix F also includes text fragments in Sanskrit and Ku-
chean, this is due to the difficulty experienced after my departure from England in 1920 in securing
an exact classification of the smaller materials in Brāhmī script.

As regards the Kharoṣṭhī documents recovered from the sites of Niya and Lou-lan (Chap. IV, Collabora-
VI, VII), it is gratifying to know that their decipherment, undertaken by Professor E. J. Rapson tion on
Kharoṣṭhī,
with the assistance of Mr. P. S. Noble, will before long permit the completion of the important Kuchean,
publication, comprising all Kharoṣṭhī records discovered on my journeys, to which Professor and Sogdian
records.
Rapson and in association with him M. Émile Senart and Abbé Boyer have devoted so much
scholarly effort for close on twenty-five years.¹⁴ᵃ These materials are the oldest surviving original
documents in Indian script and language, of an administrative, legal, or private character. Their
complete edition, together with a full Index, will, I hope, stimulate studies which are bound to throw
interesting light on the conditions of life prevailing in the Tārīm basin during the early centuries
of our era. To my old friend M. Sylvain Lévi, the great French Indologist, I am indebted for
the interpretation of the fragments of texts and records in Kuchean, reproduced in Appendix G,
while his pupil M. E. Benveniste has furnished welcome notes (Appendix H) on manuscript

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