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

all these the engraved lines show a uniform brownish colour, while over the middle of the stone
and to the left of the Stūpa, there appear much shallower graffiti of Arabic writing, easily dis-
tinguished by their light colour. This difference of colouring and the fact of the graffito in the
middle running across the central part of the Stūpa leave no doubt that these graffiti are of relatively
far more recent date. In addition to these graffiti there appears between the top of the Stūpa
and the Tibetan inscription the rough sketch of a horse and rider, showing a colouring similar
to that of the former. The surface immediately below the Stūpa base has suffered by peeling,
but retains traces of a flower or fruit-like design, also old. The roughly scratched figures of four-
horned animals, evidently meant for mountain sheep, which are to be seen on the left side of the
stone between the graffiti in Arabic characters, seemed to have been exposed to weathering some-
what longer than the latter.

Design of
Stūpa. The Stūpa design (Pl. 1) is very peculiar, but the inverted bowl on its top, surmounted
by what is manifestly meant for a chhattra, suffices to establish its character. The two lowest
steps of the base and the much higher member above them certainly recall the threefold base of
the Stūpa engraved on the boulder of Charrun in Mastūj which Fig. 6 and Pl. 2 of Serindia
reproduce.⁸ᵃ But the cross-like design intervening between the shaft and the inverted bowl bears
but a very distant resemblance to the projecting plinth and the drum that the rock-engraved
representations of Stūpas at Charrun and Pakhtōrīdinī both display in a corresponding position
below the dome. Peculiar, too, is the substitution of an inverted bowl for the hemispherical dome
of the Stūpa, though Buddhist tradition has from an early date sought to recognize in this dome
a symbolic representation of Buddha's pātra or begging bowl.⁹ With the curious presentation of
the pedestal or supports meant to carry the ' Chhattra ' may be fitly compared the equally coarse
design which the Pakhtōrīdinī rock-carving shows in the same place. Finally, poor as the
drawing of the umbrella at the top is, there can be no doubt what it is intended to signify.

Tibetan
inscription. Dr. A. H. Francke, to whom I submitted photographs of the rock-engraving together with
carefully drawn copies of the Tibetan characters, was kind enough to furnish me, in a letter dated
September 15, 1921, with a note on them reproduced in Appendix L. From this it is seen that
the inscription names a certain Lirnidor together with his family or clan designation rMe-'or,
probably taken from a locality, as the donor of a Stūpa. The fact of the personal name being
put in the genitive is taken by Dr. Francke as an indication of the early date of the inscription,
and this is in harmony with the palaeographic character of the letters, which, in that scholar's
opinion, ' show the characteristic marks of the Tibetan script of the eighth and ninth centuries '.
From the relative position of the two, it is obvious that the representation of a Stūpa is con-
temporary with, if not older than, the Tibetan inscription. This chronological indication has
its special archaeological interest with regard to the peculiar cruciform type of Stūpas which
Dr. Francke has noted before among Ladākh rock-carvings.

Tibetan
invasion of Local tradition, so far as it goes back, knows nothing of Tibetans having ever established
Gilgit. their rule or their Buddhist worship in Yāsīn. Hence all the more interest attaches to the statement
in Dr. Francke's note that a Tibetan text mentions the conquest of the Gilgit region as having
taken place under a Tibetan ruler of the eighth century. In view of this collateral evidence one is
tempted to connect the Buddhist rock-carving on the Darkōt with that short-lived Tibetan advance
on the uppermost Oxus which the T'ang Annals record towards the close of the second quarter
of the eighth century and which Kao Hsien-chih's adventurous expedition successfully arrested.

Graffiti in
Arabic The difference in the weathering shows that the graffiti in Arabic characters must be con-
characters. siderably later than the Tibetan inscription. They consist of the Shīāh invocation, Yā Allah