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0353 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / Page 353 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
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carts were still waiting at the Tun-huang Ya-mên; for whole bundles of fine Buddhist rolls of Tang times were in 1914 brought to me there for sale. Similar opportunities for rescuing relics from the great cache offered also at different places on my way to Kan-chou as well as in Chinese Turkestan. So one may well wonder how much of the materials thus carted away actually reached Peking in the end.

On that second visit of mine in 1914 Wang Tao-shih duly produced his public accounts, and these showed all sums he had received from me duly entered for the benefit of the shrine. Proudly he pointed to the pile of new chapels and pilgrims’ quarters which those silver ‘horse-shoes’ had since helped him to erect in front of his cave temple. In view of the official treatment his cherished store of Chinese rolls had suffered, he expressed bitter regret at not having previously had the courage and wisdom to accept the big offer I had made through Chiang Ssü-yeh for the whole collection en bloc.

But when faced with this official spoliation, he had been shrewd enough to put away in a safe place a nest-egg, as it were, of such Chinese manuscripts as he conceived to be of special value. It must have been fairly large in extent, for there remained enough to allow me to carry away, as a fruit of my renewed pilgrimage to the site, five more cases filled with some six hundred Buddhist manuscript rolls—of course, against an adequately increased donation.

Thus has ended on my part the ‘Prieste’s Tale’ from the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. But some account seems due of the results which the study of the abundant and important materials safely brought away thence has yielded.