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| 0142 |
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 |
Citation Information
OCR Text
reached the oasis and town of Keriya. The latter is a fairly
large place and the headquarters of a district which ex-
tended at that time over nearly five degrees of longitude,
needless to say almost all desert. Its jovial Chinese magis-
trate gave me a very kindly reception.
Keriya is not an old place, and the 'treasure-seeking' pro-
fession does not flourish there as in Khotan. But on the first
day after my arrival an old and respectable villager came
to tell me of ancient houses half-buried in sand which he
had seen ten years earlier well beyond the famous pilgrim-
age place of Imam Ja'far Sadik in the desert north of Niya.
Others, too, had heard stories of this 'old town' (kōna-shahr),
to use the term which the people of the Tarim basin are
accustomed to apply to every kind of ruin, even the smallest.
So I set out for Niya on January 18 and, after a four days'
journey along the line where the bare gravel glacis of the
K'un-lun skirts the Taklamakan, reached the small oasis.
During the day's halt which regard for the due celebra-
tion of the Ramadan, the end of the Muhammadan month
of fasting, obliged me to make there, I was greatly cheered
by receiving unexpected proof of the great age of the ruined
site I was bound for. Hassan Akhun, my sharp-witted young
camelman, who was subsequently to share every one of my
expeditions, had come across a villager possessing two in-
scribed tablets brought away from the site. When they were
produced before me, I discovered to my joyful surprise that
they contained writing in that ancient script of the extreme
north-west of India known as Kharoshthi, and of a type
which closely agreed with that prevailing during the first
centuries of our era.
The man who brought me the tablets had picked them
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550
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561
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571
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578
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