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0077	Innermost Asia : vol.1
極奥アジア : vol.1

art, are of a type that, like that of the Darēl wood-carvings to be presently mentioned, though of
early origin, may have persisted unchanged for centuries. Of the approximate date when Muham-
madanism was established in Darēl I was unable to learn any reliable tradition. No clear *terminus
ad quem* can therefore be fixed for these remains ; judging from what is known about the introduc-
tion of Islām in Gilgit and the neighbouring tracts,¹³ I think it unlikely to have been much earlier
than the fifteenth to sixteenth century. The local greybeards with me knew that the spot had
been sacred to the ' Kāfirs ', and told of a large carved stone slab which had been carried away
from here years ago to the mosque of Chaturkand village and which was supposed to have been
once worshipped as a ' Būt '. But they did not remember whether it was found at the burial-
place itself or among the debris of a large structure the square walls of which could be traced on
a terrace immediately below.

That traditions of pre-Muhammadan times still linger in Darēl was proved by a piece of
folk-lore connected with a ' site ' that I passed on my way down to Chaturkand. About a mile
to the south-east of Bojō-kōt and not far from the little village of Shigebal ensconced among the
fruit trees, I was shown a stretch of waste ground covered with shapeless stone-heaps and known
as Matalōt. It is supposed to mark the site of a village destroyed in ancient times by a hail of
stones and boulders, owing to the anger of a snake-shaped divinity. Only one old woman and her
daughter, who on that day had brought the divinity its appointed food offering, escaped the
destruction of the night of punishment. It is clear that we have here a story of the revengeful
Nāga so common to Indian lore of Buddhist times. The form which his revenge is supposed
to have taken at once brought to my mind the old legend recorded by Kalhaṇa of the destruction
of the town of Narapura, which Kashmīr tradition locates near Vij*brōr (Vijayeśvara) and ascribes
to the Nāga Suśravas.¹⁴ In that legend of the origin of the stone-waste of Ramaṇyāṭavi (Rem-
byār*) ¹⁵ we have a close parallel to the interpretation which Darēl folk-lore has put upon the
boulder-buried stretch of ground of Matalōt.

A walk of half a mile to the east brought me to Chaturkand ; this and Rashmāl, a mile or
so farther north, are the largest of the Mankiāl villages.¹⁶ Within a rough enclosure I found a
thick cluster of relatively large houses, with rubble walls and gabled roofs in timber (Fig. 35).
Chaturkand was said to number some two hundred families and presented quite the appearance
of a small town, though many of its inhabitants were away in summer quarters near their holdings
or on grazing grounds. The large stone slab from Bojō-kōt which I went to see at the mosque had
been built into the open hearth of a kind of guest room adjoining the place of prayer and could not
be fully examined. The exposed surface, nearly five feet in length, showed no carving. But in
the timber ceiling above the hearth I was interested to note exactly the same arrangement of
successively reduced squares which I had occasion to observe, in the course of my second journey,
in the architecture of old Chitrāl and Mastūj dwellings and of which we find the prototype preserved
in stone in the ceilings of temples both in Gandhāra and Kashmīr.¹⁷

The pillars supporting the ceiling showed rough but vigorous relievo decoration, of which I
subsequently found numerous examples elsewhere, in the ornamental wood-carving of mosques,

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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

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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
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