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0284 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 284 ページ(白黒高解像度画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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in the art of writing, and in that of wood-carving, though
the latter would be hampered for lack of good material.
Other arts decayed in similar fashion, especially agricul-
ture, the greatest of all. Now, in the decadent present, it is
practically extinguished. The simple peasants of Endereh,
undisturbed by war or religious dissension, have reverted
to the pastoral life of their remote predecessors. They build
their small huts of wild poplars and unplastered reeds, here
and there, as the seasons dictate. All arts are unknown to
them save that of spinning the wool of their sheep.

War and the advent of Mohammedanism may explain
part of the changes at Endereh. They cannot explain the
decay of agriculture, nor the diminution from a population
of possibly ten thousand at the beginning of the Christian
era to half as much a few centuries later, and then to no-
thing, nor the mediæval recovery of a rude oasis to a popu-
lation of less than a thousand, and the present state of pas-
toralism and a population of only eighty souls. During the
nineteenth century, the people of the large western oases
of Chinese Turkestan pushed out to find new homes. Ad-
vancing eastward from Keriya, they occupied the oases of
Oi-Toghrak, Yes-Yulghun, and Niya, and then, two hun-
dred miles farther from their old homes, Cherchen, Tatran,
Vash Sheri, and Charklik; but the waters of Endereh
and Yartungaz continued to waste themselves in the sand.
They had become too saline to be aught but lost.

Endereh is insignificant in itself; it is of great importance
as an example of the influence which a change of climate
may have upon the habitability of a country, and upon the
occupations and character of its people. In Kashmir we