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| 0360 |
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 |
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pious worshipper. On the larger and better preserved of these
panels, which measures 18 by 4 inches, there appears seated
between two attendants a half-length human figure with the head of
a rat, and wearing a diadem. It was only long afterwards, when
the little painting had been cleaned of its adhering layer of sand in
the British Museum, and examined by the trained eye of my friend,
Mr. F. H. Andrews, that I realised the peculiar shape of the figure
and its true significance. It is manifestly meant to represent the
king of those holy rats which, according to the local legend
related by Hiuen Tsiang and already referred to, in connection
with the Kaptar-Mazar (p. 195), were worshipped at the western
border of the Khotan oasis for having saved the kingdom from a
barbarian invasion. The sacred character of the rat-headed figure
is sufficiently marked by the semi-elliptical vesica or halo which
encloses it, and by the worshipping attitude of the attendant figure
on the left, which carries in one hand a long-stemmed, leaf-shaped
fan or punkah.
In a corner of the temple-cella, close to the floor, there turned up
two scraps of thin water-lined paper, showing writing on one side
only, and that in characters which I could at once recognise as
belonging to that peculiar cursive form of Brahmi already known to
us from certain ancient documents in a non-Sanskritic language
that had reached Dr. Hoernle's collection through purchase from
Khotan. On clearing the largest of the rooms in the ruined
dwelling-house adjoining the shrine, I found several small sheets of
the same coarse paper and with similar writing, either crumpled up
or folded into narrow rolls, just like the Chinese documents I subse-
quently unearthed at this site. It was no easy task to open out
these flimsy papers with fingers half-benumbed with cold, and the
more delicate part of such work was accomplished only in the
British Museum. But the cursory examination that was possible
on the spot showed that these more or less fragmentary sheets
could not have belonged to manuscript books or 'Pothis,' but
evidently contained detached records of some kind.
The impression I had gained from the outward appearance of
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