National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0463 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / Page 463 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000214
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

The chronological evidence is supplied by Chinese funeral
inscriptions on bricks which were found intact near the
approaches of numerous tombs. As interpreted by Dr. Giles
and Professor Maspero, they record the names of the dead,
with exact dates of the burials and details about their life,
etc. With that evidence agree also the dates found on a mass
of Chinese documents which turned up in certain of the
tombs. Judging from their contents, which deal with petty
matters of official routine, such as records on establishments
of horses kept on postal routes; registers of correspondence;
reports on malpractices of subordinates, etc., they could
have found their way into the tombs only as waste papers.
In fact, in one of the few coffins which had remained un-
opened such a packet of miscellaneous papers was clearly
seen to have been used as a 'filling'.

The dryness of the climate accounts for the remarkable
state of preservation in which most of the bodies and the
objects deposited with them were found. The variety of such
objects was great, and almost all of them help to acquaint
us with many aspects of the daily life led in Turfan at that
period. They included neatly worked models of household
furniture and utensils as well as many painted stucco figur-
ines intended to represent the attendance to be provided
for the dead in another world. Among them were found
carefully modelled figures of ladies showing interesting de-
tails of dress (Fig. 121); armed horsemen in numbers to serve
as a cortège; native servants in characteristic costume.

There were also spirited and well-executed representations
of horses, recalling the elegant type of the present Badakhshi
breed still highly prized on both sides of the Pamirs. Richly
caparisoned, they show us the 'horse millinery' then in use,