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0072 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
中央アジア踏査記 : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / 72 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
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(Figs. 35, 37, 48), remains of well-made household furniture
and implements, objects of decorative art in the shape of
fine wood-carvings (Figs. 41, 43), etc., all attest a highly de-
veloped state of civilization. The products of local indus-
trial arts and crafts clearly show the prevalence of a strong
Hellenistic influence as transmitted from Eastern Iran and
the north-western borders of India.

Finds of objects of Buddhist worship make it quite certain
that Buddhism had by that time already acquired a pre-
dominant position in the religious and intellectual life of the
indigenous population of the Tarim basin. This strong in-
fluence of Indian culture is very strikingly reflected also in
the mass of written records recovered in the ruined dwell-
ings and the refuse-heaps adjoining. At the Niya site I found
by the hundred wooden documents (Fig. 9) comprising
correspondence, mainly official, contracts, accounts, mis-
cellaneous memoranda and the like, all written in that
Sanskritic language and Kharoshthi script which during
the first centuries before and after Christ were used on the
Indian north-west frontier and in the adjacent portions of
Afghanistan.

We are able to reconstruct almost as clearly the physical
aspects of the life once witnessed by these sites. Everything
in the orchards and arbours dead for sixteen centuries but still
clearly recognizable (Figs. 6, 45, 49); in the fences; in the
materials used for buildings, etc., distinctly point to condi-
tions of cultivation and local climate having been essentially
the same as those now observed in oases of the Tarim basin
similarly situated and still occupied.

Just as in the present terminal oases of the Tarim basin,
so cultivation at those sites must have been entirely depend-