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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

groups of stones. Each group consisted originally of about eight boulders from one
to three feet in diameter arranged in a circle perhaps six feet across."

Owen Lattimore also visited this place, and he saw three monoliths, one of
them being the baba stone of my Pl. IX a. Besides he mentions "five large tumuli
arranged in a line, surrounded by curious broken circles of small boulders on the
bare ground. The disposition of the whole site is a little confused by the mounds
about the shafts giving access to an abandoned k a r e z." (Lattimore 1930, p.
148 f.)

In the Ili valley Lattimore saw not a few monoliths.

As far as I am aware Stein is the first to have recorded a baba stone in Sinkiang.
It is standing in a primitive Kirghiz shrine at Chalkoide in the mountains between
Kelpin and Uch-turfan (Stein 1921, Fig. 341). There the stone effigy was wor-
shipped by the Kirghiz.

As a rule the baba stones are placed on a tomb or in the immediate vicinity of a
tomb. It is hardly likely that the baba found by Stein and the shrine surrounding it
are contemporaneous. Whether the baba was taken to the shrine from its ori-
ginal place or the shrine was erected around the baba is hard to decide. In any
case the combination of shrine and effigy is highly suggestive as a manifestation of
the survival of ancient pre-Mussulman worship.

Von Le Coq tells us about similar worship by the Kirghiz (Le Coq 1928, p.
154). They regard the baba figures either as gods or as memorials of famous an-
cestors.

In Qasaqstan the baba figures are common. Le Coq mentions one along the road
from Semipalatinsk to Sergiopol and another between Sergiopol and Kulja (Le
Coq 1926, p. 160).

In Sergiopol I noticed two babas which had been moved thither from the sur-
rounding neighbourhood, and one is standing at the roadside on the outskirts of
Urdjar. Several baba stones have been taken to the museum in Semipalatinsk. In
the Minusinsk region and in N. Mongolia they are extremely common, and many
specimens are also known from the eastern part of Inner Mongolia, Chakhar and
Ulan-chap, the former discovered by Prof. J. G. Andersson, the latter found by me.

The baba stones are distributed over practically the whole Eurasiatic steppe
region, and seem to belong mainly to the first millenium A. D.

The stones at Ch'ai-o-p'u have nothing to do with the few finds of worked flint re-
covered in the vicinity and discussed on p. 26.

I will revert to the question of the baba figures and hope to be able to treat it
more fully in a forthcoming publication on Inner Mongolian antiquities.

*

Though they have no connection with the monuments above, it ought to be men-
tioned that there are several ruins of ancient watch-towers or signal-towers around
Ch'ai-o-p'u along the Turfan-Urumchi road.

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