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0166 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
中央アジア踏査記 : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / 166 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
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in its raised centre, had a square or oblong socket for the
reception of a clay seal. Here, too, a string passed trans-
versely over both tablets and being secured below a clay
seal effectually prevented any unauthorized opening and
reading of what was written on the inner sides of the two
tablets. Fig. 39 shows such a double tablet, which was found
with the string broken but otherwise intact, both before and
after the opening. More frequently the 'envelopes' had be-
come separated from their under tablets either before or
when they were thrown away into this dustbin, an ancient
substitute, I might call it, of the waste-paper basket. But in
the course of the careful examination which all these finds
underwent at the hands of Professor E. J. Rapson, my dis-
tinguished scholar collaborator, first at the British Museum
and subsequently outside it, most of the pairs could be re-
united.

I cannot detail here all the curious observations made in
connexion with this ancient stationery in wood. But mention
should be made of the fact that subsequent discoveries at
ruined sites far away to the east have proved all those ingeni-
ous devices to have originated in China and at a far earlier
period. There, I may add, the invention of paper, dating
from A.D. 105, was causing the use of wooden stationery
gradually to become obsolete during the centuries follow-
ing. But the new writing material, more convenient as it
was, evidently made its way but slowly into distant Central
Asia. For though the Niya site can be proved not to have
been abandoned until the second half of the third century
A.D., yet not a single scrap of paper ever turned up there in
the course of my explorations.

On the other hand, the remarkable series of clay seal-