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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 |
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exceptionally favorable location, I was told that cultivation
had been carried on irregularly for twelve years, but in
most for only two or three. It would to-day be impossible
to establish a permanent agricultural village below Niya,
just as below Keriya.
In ancient times conditions were very different. Fifty-
seven miles due north of Niya, and seven miles from the
shrine, at the point where the largest floods disappear in the
sand and the most northern living poplars are found, we
came upon the southern houses of an ancient town. Stein
believes it to have been abandoned about 300 A. D. The rem-
nants of the town consist of sites strewn with pottery, the
remains of orchards full of fruit trees and the white poplar,
a "stupa" or Buddhist shrine of sun-dried brick, and the
beams and lower walls of ancient houses, of which I counted
a hundred and sixteen. The town was large and prosperous.
It was inhabited for a long time, as appears from the nature
of the ruins and the size of the trees. Its date is known from
coins, and from many documents in the Kharosthi tongue.
These are written upon wood, and are found in the various
forms shown in the illustrations. Accounts, official orders,
memoranda, and letters were written upon strips of wood of
various carefully defined shapes. Data to be kept for future
reference were recorded on strips like A, E, G, I, and L,
which were filed away in rows, or were hung upon strings run
through the holes at the pointed ends. The most interesting
specimens which I found are C and D, parts of two letters.
The communication was written upon the concave side of
a strip such as C; and upon the convex side of a comple-
mentary strip of exactly the same size. The two were then
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