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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| 0415 |
Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
| 極奥アジア : vol.1 |
引用情報
OCR読み取り結果
Chinese wayfarers must have held these repellent belts of salt-coated terraces and the equally
trying sea-bed between them.
That the name *Po-lung-tui* was applied also to an area much wider than that actually covered
by those 'dragon-shaped' white terraces was rightly recognized by M. Chavannes when dis-
cussing the mention made of them in the *Wei lio*, though the absence of adequate geographical
data would not allow him to locate them correctly. This wider application is proved by the passage
quoted by him from the Former Han Annals, which says: 'straight to the west of Tun-huang,
outside the barriers (*kuan*) [of Yü-mên and Yang] there is the *Po-lung-tui* desert 白 龍 堆 沙
and the lake *P'u-ch'ang* 蒲 昌 海'.²⁴ The reference shows that the geographical knowledge of
Han times placed side by side, as they are in reality, the two areas, corresponding to the dried-up
portion of the old sea-bed and to that still containing marshes. But by itself the passage would not
help us to locate the 'White Dragon Mounds', and as it is the only other reference to them that
I am able to trace in the texts accessible to me, we may turn now to the antiquarian question still
left open, viz. as to where exactly the 'route of the centre' is likely to have passed through the
*Po-lung-tui*.
This question, which the textual references do not help to settle, is equally incapable at present
of definite solution by the available archaeological evidence. But if we carefully compare the
latter with the topographical facts as our surveys recorded in Map No. 32 show them, we may,
I think, arrive at certain conclusions considerably restricting the limits within which the line
of the ancient route is to be looked for. Good fortune—or was it, perhaps, more than that ?—had
made us come upon unmistakable relics of ancient traffic just at those points where the route coming
from Lou-lan entered the western belt of salt-coated terraces and again where it passed out of the
eastern belt. I refer to the finds of Han coins, the dagger and other small objects at the Mesa to
the east of Camp ci, and to our discoveries where we emerged from the Yārdang belt on the eastern
side of the dried-up sea and approached Camp civ.
Looking at the configuration of both Yārdang belts on either side of the sea-bed, as our survey
shows them in Map No. 32. B, C. 3, it is easy to realize that if we had continued on our eastern
course from the above-mentioned Mesa to the edge of the Yārdang belt and had thence struck
across the sea-bed with a bearing approximately south-by-east, we should have been moving on
a line which would have brought us straight to the place of the first coin find on the eastern side.
On this line, the edge of the opposite Yārdang-belt with its far easier going could be reached by
a crossing of the difficult expanse of hard salt only a couple of miles longer than our actual crossing
between Camps cii and ciii. At the same time the total marching distance would be greatly reduced
as compared with our circuitous route farther north. This saving is obvious from the map and could
scarcely be less than fifteen miles. On the other hand, a course from the same assumed starting-
point with a more southerly bearing would certainly have considerably lengthened the extent of
that trying surface of salt crust which travellers by the ancient route had to cover. For our survey
shows that the eastern belt of 'Dragon Mounds', with the far softer *shôr* between them, ends close
to the south of the line previously indicated, and that beyond it the salt-encrusted sea-bed steadily
widens.
It would have been quite impossible for me, for obvious practical reasons, to turn back from
Camp civ in order to search for traces of the ancient route where it was likely to have entered the
Yārdang belt to the west or north-west of our last coin finds. But when a year later the opportunity
offered of letting Afrāz-gul carry out supplementary surveys to the east and south-east of the once
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61
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129
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150
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277
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298
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308
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318
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329
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339
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349
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359
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369
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379
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389
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399
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411
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417
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421
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432
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443
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453
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463
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473
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483
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494
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504
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515
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525
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536
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546
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556
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566
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577
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587
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597
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607
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617
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627
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637
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647
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657
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667
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677
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684
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