Innermost Asia : vol.2 / 220 ページ（カラー画像）

0220	Innermost Asia : vol.2
極奥アジア : vol.2

Bundle of
Ephedra
twigs.

The exact significance of this and the other images similarly deposited must remain a subject
for further inquiry. Placed over the breast of the body was found a small bundle, L.S. 03
(Pl. XXVI), done up in a thick woollen fabric and wound tightly round with a cord of straw and
goat's hair. It contained fragments of twigs which Dr. Rendle, Keeper of Botany at the British
Museum, has identified as belonging to the Ephedra shrub, treated by the Parsis as the represen-
tative of the sacred Haoma plant of Zoroastrian cult (see Add. and Corr.).

Burials of
indigenous
population.

The advanced state of decay of the contents of these graves was in striking contrast with the
conditions observed at the cemeteries of L.F. and L.H. Though placed high above the riverine
plain and on a barren Sai, these graves may possibly have been exposed to slight subsoil moisture
penetrating from such occasional drainage as passes down the shallow beds from the hills to the
north. Yet the evidence was sufficient to show that the bodies buried in this little cemetery of
L.S. belonged to the same autochthonous population of herdsmen and hunters sparsely inhabiting
the Lou-lan tract of which we had found remains on the desolate Mesa of L.F. a year before.
Practically all details of the burial customs there observed were represented here also.

Date of
burials at
L.S.

The objects found here once again illustrated how widely these semi-nomadic Lou-lan people
differed in civilization from the Chinese who frequented the high road along what is now the dried-
up river. The same striking contrast would present itself to the archaeologist who many centuries
hence might have to compare relics from the quarters of the present Chinese rulers of the Tārīm
basin with those left by, say, the last generation of the Lopliks, those true successors in manner of
life, though not in race, of the Lou-lan people. Where civilization is comparatively so simple and
necessarily so tenacious in its fashions, it is difficult to mark changes and by them to determine
chronological sequence unless there is ample material. As this is lacking here, it is impossible
to indicate the relative age of the burials at L.S. It must be borne in mind, however, that the
upper portion of the Kuruk-daryā course probably received seasonal floods for some time after
the occupation of the area round the Lou-lan station, L.A., had become impossible. Hence grazing
would very likely have continued longer on the river banks than on the ground of the ancient delta,
just as we observe it now along the terminal course of the Keriya river, while it has ceased on its
dried-up delta.⁸ Thus the graves of L.S. and the neighbouring cemetery L.T. may possibly be of
somewhat later date than those of L.F.⁹

Cemetery
of L.T.

As the examination of the half-dozen graves still left at L.S., some of them on a slightly lower
level, was not likely to add much to the evidence already secured, I took my little working party
on the following day to the burial-ground which on Lāl Singh's plane-table was marked as
'Cemetery No. 2'. We duly found it about five miles to the east of L.S., at a point where the line
of 'coastal' Mesas was broken by great gaps, the glacis on the north sloping down straight to the
gravel 'foreshore'. It occupied the top of a small gravel-covered hillock rising slightly above
the level of the latter. The graves, about twenty-two in all, covered an area of roughly 20 yards
from north to south and 16 yards across. Their position was marked by the tops of narrow boards
emerging, as at L.S., above the surface and forming small palisade-like enclosures. But multiple
rows of posts around these, such as were found about some graves at L.S., were here absent. The
enclosures were on the average 5½ feet long and about 1½ feet across. The narrower or foot end here,
too, always pointed westwards.

Owing, perhaps, to the nature of the soil, which on excavation proved to be soft loess under

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