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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 |
Citation Information
OCR Text
ing fully 500 feet square proved to be closely occupied by
the timber debris of ancient houses. But as the dunes were
only a few feet high and the ground everywhere greatly
eroded, very little remained of the walls and still less of the
contents of the rooms. Even thus careful search had its
rewards here.
Thus in a detached room of which the floor was covered
by sand only half a foot to one foot deep, there came to
light some fifty tablets of wood besides a variety of house-
hold implements of wood including a mouse-trap, boot-
last, etc. Unfortunately, owing to the inadequate protec-
tion, the majority of these tablets had become withered and
bleached until all trace of writing was lost. Others, though
much warped, still showed their Kharoshthi writing. Lists
of names and account items, which appear on most of these,
pointed to records kept in some office. The extent of clerical
labour once carried on here,—and the occasional incon-
venience of the wooden writing material,—could be estimated
by the size of these tablets, one much effaced piece attaining
the inconvenient length of seven and a half feet!
The slight depth of the sand covering this area permitted
me rapidly to clear here a considerable number of small
houses. These served to acquaint me with the typical
arrangement of the rooms, cattle-sheds, etc., composing
these homesteads. Finds of interest were here scarce, but
I mention in passing that in an outhouse we came upon an
unmistakable ice-pit. A thick bed of ancient poplar leaves,
once used to cover the ice, still survived.
More varied in character and more interesting, too, were
the relics yielded by the excavation of the two large ruined
houses passed on our first approach to the site. The one to
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550
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561
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571
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578
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