National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Christ". A stone axe from a grave to the north of the ruins he
is inclined to regard as a survival from neolithic time. The red
clay vessels on his Figs. 2-20 he supposes to have originated
in old times but assumes that they were still in use in the time
of Christ.

I have not examined Mr. Huang's finds. My impressions
are thus formed only from his illustrations. It seems to me as if
Huang has placed these finds in rather late periods. The date
around 500 B.C. for his painted pot appears to be nearer the
truth.

Huang's cylindrical clay vessels as shown on his Figs. 12-17
are very similar to some of Andersson's pots from the Chen-fan region in Kansu
(of the Sha-ching stage) where they occur together with bronze ornaments of the
Ordos style. Andersson dates them around 500 B.C. or somewhat later.

These cylindrical clay vessels have indeed a non-ceramic shape, and Huang's com-
parison between them and a lacquered wooden vessel from Lop-nor is quite correct.
However, this similarity in shape does not necessarily mean a correspondence in
time. The Lop-nor wooden vessel is certainly a Chinese import and can hardly ante-
date the last century B.C. The cylindrical clay vessels may have drawn their form
from much older wooden vessels of non-Chinese origin.

If the cemetery from where Huang excavated both the painted pot and the cy-
lindrical vessels is homogeneous there can be no long interval between these differ-
ent kinds of pottery. We may place both around the middle of the last millenium
B.C. Now my Toqsun sherds are stylistically more degenerate than Huang's painted
pot, but there can hardly exist any pronounced chronological difference.

The finds from the western part of the Turfan Basin thus seem to answer to
Andersson's Sha-ching group, though there is no conformity among the painted
wares from these two regions.


D. THE CHARCHAN VASE.

When in Charchan in August 1928 I acquired from a Chinese merchant the
beautiful earthenware vase shown in Pl. 1. According to his statement it had been
found in the Kohna-shahr bordering the present oasis of Charchan, i. e. a site
which I will discuss in the last part of this volume. It was impossible to get any ab-
solute confirmation as to the exact place of discovery. Every kind of minor articles
of any age which the local people of Charchan offered me for sale was said to ori-
ginate from Kohna-shahr (the Old Town), and in most cases this was true. These
objects were however, of an age not previous to the Han dynasty, mostly from the
Sung and Yüan dynasties. The vase must certainly be considerably older than the

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