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

Badly decayed wall fragments of a second small structure in hard-burnt bricks, half-hidden below
a tamarisk-cone, were traced not far from the one described in Serindia. The bricks here measured
18 inches by 9 with a thickness of 3 inches. Near the north-east edge of the site an area over 200
yards in width proved to be thickly covered with remains of skeletons ; the position of those
to which tamarisk-cones had offered some protection suggested that the bodies here buried were
not those of Muhammadans. On a ' witness ' about six feet high in the midst of this area I found
a wall fragment some 15 feet long ; it still rose to a height of over 8 feet and may have belonged
to an enclosure of graves. Its sun-dried bricks were somewhat larger (18″×9″×4½″) than those
found in the ruined dwellings described in Serindia.

Among the small objects in glass, pottery, and metal which were picked up from among the ' Tati '
' Tati ' debris covering the bare wind-eroded ground among the tamarisk-cones, special mention remains
may be made of the fragments of grey porcellaneous stoneware, glazed chiefly in greenish blue from Vāsh-
(V.S. 015, 018, 019, Pl. LI) or else with slightly crackled surface (V.S. 014).¹⁶ They correspond shahri.
closely in character to specimens previously collected by me from this site and recognized by
Mr. R. L. Hobson as dating from the period of the Sung dynasty.¹⁶ᵃ Other fragments of fine stone-
ware, glazed dark black-brown (V.S. 07–12), show close resemblance to ceramic products ascribed
to the T'ang period. The only coin obtained from the site was a Chinese 'cash' of the Ch'ung-ning
period (A. D. 1102–7). Its date confirms the conclusion I had drawn from numismatic evidence
obtained on my former visit that the site was occupied down to the twelfth century A. D.¹⁷

In Serindia I have already discussed the evidence that the site of Vāsh-shahri marks the Hsin-ch'êng
position of Hsin-ch'êng 新城, ' the New Town ', which an itinerary of the T'ang Annals mentions located at
as having been settled by K'ang Yen-tien, a chief of Sogdian origin ; a similar mention in a Chinese Vāsh-shahri.
geographical text of A. D. 885, recovered by me from the caves of the ' Thousand Buddhas ' of
Tun-huang, permits us to ascribe its foundation to the period A. D. 627–49.¹⁸ I have also recorded
in the same work the impressions I formed on my first visit regarding the intermittent growth of
the little oasis that since the Chinese reconquest of the Tārim basin, after the last Muhammadan
rebellion, had been established about five miles to the east of the old site.¹⁹

My renewed visit under Rōze Bēg's intelligent guidance, brief as it was, allowed me to make Increase in
some interesting observations as to the development that had taken place there since 1906. We cultivation
reached the western edge of land newly brought under cultivation immediately after crossing of Vāsh-
the summer flood-bed, known as Kōne-daryā (the ' old river '), and found well-tilled fields with shahri.
young plantations of poplars and fruit trees extending for fully a mile and a half eastwards, and
stretching even farther from south to north. Instead of the few tumble-down huts that I had
previously seen near a small granary and official rest-house, I now found at the central hamlet
quite a number of substantial dwellings, including the Bēg's own spacious house and a fine mosque.
In all these buildings the timber was wild poplar, but well carved. The concourse of prosperous-
looking cultivators whom I met there offered a striking contrast to the few roving men pretending
to be settlers who were present in 1906. It showed that Rōze Bēg's assertion that his colony had
grown in the interval from 20 to about 127 householders could not be very far from the truth.

On the morning of January 7 I followed the much-improved main canal, which accounted Irrigation
for the great extension of cultivated ground, to its head about two miles south of Rōze Bēg's house. resources
Being 14 feet wide and 2 feet deep it fully bore out his statement that a volume of about four ' Tāsh ' of Vāsh-
or millstones was at all times available in the river, while the increased volume of about 15 ' Tāsh ' shahri.