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0272 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 272 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
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and the tamarisks are largely dead, although a few still sur-
vive on mounds thirty feet high; and finally, from the area
of finely comminuted pottery to and beyond the mealing-
stones the poplars are mere stumps five or six feet high, or
have been broken off by the wind even with the ground, and
the tamarisks have practically all perished, after in some
cases forming mounds fifty or sixty feet high.
The desiccation of the Niya ruins, like that of the Chira
group, cannot be explained by the encroachment of sand,
the diversion of tributaries, or the lowering of the level
of ground-water by erosion. There is not the slightest evi-
dence that the ancient irrigation system was better than,
or different from, that of to-day. Here, just as at Dandan-
Uilik, it would be the height of folly to carry water seventy
miles into the desert, when it might be employed to vastly
greater advantage where it is now used at modern Niya.
The growth of the present town cannot possibly have caused
the abandonment of the ancient site; for it has grown up
within a century, while the old town was abandoned six-
teen centuries ago. Furthermore, as modern Niya is barely
half as large as the old Buddhist oasis, and as it uses all
the water available, its water supply would manifestly be
scarcely half enough for a town such as that of antiquity.
Indeed, even if modern Niya were non-existent, a river of
the present size could not so much as reach, much less irri-
gate, the main ruins. At least, it did not reach them when it
was free to do so if it could. Up to about 1840, the popula-
tion of Niya amounted to only a dozen or fifteen families at
most, and the consumption of water was negligible. The
river ran freely as far as it would; but even so, it did not