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Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
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at Mīrān was quite unequal to making full use of this water. Indeed Ibrāhīm Bēg, who from his
prolonged experience as Mīrāb-bēg or 'canal superintendent' of the Chīra oasis and other places
was a very competent authority on such matters, concluded from the data he had been able to
gather that, given conditions of labour similar to those at Chīra, the irrigation supply obtainable
from the Mīrān river would suffice for the maintenance of about 500 families. Yet the actual
number of those cultivating at Mīrān at the time of my visit was put at 30 families, a figure that,
even allowing for men absent with their flocks or on hunting trips, seemed, if anything, over-
estimated.
These facts will help us to understand better the importance that attaches to the ruined site Reoccupa-
to the east, in view of the surviving remains and of the Chinese historical notices relating to it. tion of site
They give additional support to the identification of the site with Yu-ni, 扜 泥, the capital of Lop of Yu-ni.
region in Han times,⁷ and at the same time supply us with a modern illustration of the successive
periods of abandonment and reoccupation that the archaeological evidence obtained in the course
of my explorations of 1907 had led me to assume.⁸ These peripeteias of the old capital of 'Lou-lan
or Shan-shan' have their exact parallel in those I have had occasion to discuss when treating in
Serindia the history of the existing oases of Charchan, Vāsh-shahri and Charkhlik farther west.
It was therefore a source of special satisfaction to me that my renewed visit to Mīrān allowed me
to witness in person this process of resuscitation in the vicinity of that most remote of ancient
sites along the old 'southern route' from Khotan to China.
What had irresistibly drawn me back to the ruins of Mīrān ever since I had left them to their Wall-
solitude seven years earlier, was the thought of the fine paintings I had then been obliged to leave paintings
behind on the inner passage walls of the shrine M. v. The full description given of them in Serindia, of shrine
together with the photographs reproduced there,⁹ will explain the exceptional interest attaching M. v.
to these remains of quasi-Hellenistic pictorial art discovered in a Buddhist shrine on the very con-
fines of China. I have given an account, in the same work, of the serious technical difficulties that
made it impossible for me on my first visit, with the means and time then at my disposal, to attempt
their removal as a whole.¹⁰ The subsequent effort in the spring of 1908 to save the mural paintings,
which had been carefully re-buried, by sending Naik Rām Singh to remove them, was frustrated
by the tragic fate which struck that faithful and capable assistant with blindness at this very place,
while he was preparing for his task.¹¹
According to the concordant statements of the Naik and Ibrāhīm Bēg, the painted wall surfaces Damage
had been found by them in 1908 exactly as when first brought to light, and had, before they left, been done since
protected afresh by the complete filling in of the interior of the temple, as previously effected under first visit
my personal supervision. Unfortunately this safeguard, as I discovered at once on my renewed to site.
visit on January 17th, had failed to secure its object. In the southern hemicycle of the rotunda
passage I found that the outer wall which had shown the fine fresco frieze with the representation
of the Vessantara Jātaka story and, below it, the fascinating cycle of portraits set between festoon-
carrying amorini, had been laid bare and the once painted plaster surface, where not broken off,
had been completely effaced through exposure. The Lopliks of Mīrān asserted that this was the
result of the operations carried out three years earlier by a Japanese traveller (obviously Mr. Tachi-
bana), who coming from the direction of Turfān had spent a few days at the site and carried away
with him to Tun-huang what fragments of painted plaster he succeeded in detaching. Judging
from the large pieces of plaster still adhering to the wall but no longer retaining any traces of their
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