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

expedition to Sinkiang in 1927—30, travelled, in 1930, to the northern part of the
Lop-nor basin. There he located a ruined station and several structures at one of the
three northernmost freshwater bays of the present lake Lop-nor. From the context
of some Chinese records on wood bearing the dates B. C. 49 and B. C. 12—9, which
were excavated by Huang, he has stated the name of the ruin to be T'u-ken
(Huang 1930). Huang's discoveries here are of outstanding importance for the
chronology of the Lou-lan settlements as his dated manuscripts are the oldest
known from the whole area.
Hörner and Chen, in 1931, passed Huang's place T'u-ken, and it is thanks to
their mapping that the position of the ruin has been fixed. According to Hörner
(1931, p. 371) there are ruins of one big house with partly standing timber posts
from the walls, and one smaller, more solidly built structure. Probably there were
formerly still more buildings.
Hörner and Chen found the upper part of the iron knife Pl. 30: 10 and the bronze
tube Pl. 30: 5 in these ruins. The knife is of a Chinese Han dynasty type, and was
at least 30 cm. long when complete. It may be labelled as a weapon. The bronze tube
is the upper part of a hooked socket which protected the end of a wooden rod in a
canopy (cf. p. 168). Its nearest parallel is from the tomb of Wang Kuang in Korea
(Oba and Kayamoto, Pl. 84), which is also of the Han dynasty.


B. HÖRNER'S AND CHEN'S COLLECTIONS FROM THE LOU-LAN
STATION.

The main site of the whole Lop-nor region, and its once military centre, is the
ruined station of Lou-lan which Dr. Hedin was fortunate enough to discover in
March 1901, and from which he brought away a certain number of Chinese records
on wood and paper besides various other finds. The manuscripts and the small finds
were published by Conrady in 1920, and after another fifteen years the wood-
carvings were described by me together with a fuller treatment of all the small finds.
The ruins have been searched twice by Stein, and also visited by Huntington,
Tachibana, Hörner and Chen. The latter is the only Chinese to have seen, in our
days, what is left of this Chinese outpost on the Silk Road. He has visited the site
thrice, which is more than any of the others have done.
The joint visit of Hörner and Chen resulted in a collection of various small
articles (listed as No. K. 13378 below), and Chen's visits in 1934 gave an addition
to this collection (No. 32 in the list).

Coins.

Of Wang Mang's issues Huo-ch'üan and Ta-ch'üan-wu-shih there were found
two, and one specimens respectively, and of the normal Han dynasty Wu-ch'u

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