Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 144 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0144	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

on the south-east from another equally large loess area which bears the villages of the Mokuila
tract administratively united with Gūma.

Irrigation of Both the Gūma and Mokuila oases owe their fertility to the water brought down by the
Gūma. river of Kilian. Where the latter emerges at the foot of the hills on to the Dasht glacis, it
divides into a number of channels, partly natural, partly artificial. As these diverge a kind of
delta is formed, with its base extending from Chōlak-Langar in the north-west to Kakshal-Tati
in the south-east, a direct distance of about 32 miles. But the distribution and importance
of these channels is very unequal. To the west of Gūma they are few, and the limited quantity
of flood-water they carry for brief periods would not suffice for regular cultivation of such
loess soil as may be available between the Dasht and the moving dunes of the desert.
Gūma itself enjoys an abundant supply of water from a number of 'Ūstangs' or canals; and
the surplus, together with the occasional summer floods which pour down in broad torrent beds
(sīl) on both the west and the east of the oasis, has in recent years led to the creation of
several detached settlements within the area of sandy jungle to the north-east of the oasis.

Mokuila The tract of Mokuila is less favoured by facilities for irrigation. The water obtainable from
tract. the easternmost channels fed by the Kilian river is not sufficient to fertilize more than a small
portion of the loess ground which stretches eastwards of the flood-water bed marked as 'Tazgun R.'
on the map³. Consequently we find here strips of fertile village-lands, like those of Aramelle,
Chōtla, Kakshal, broken by stretches where the naturally arable loess soil either lies bare and
is undergoing erosion, or else is slowly being overrun by low dunes of fine drift-'sand'. We
shall see hereafter that this drifting 'sand', highly productive wherever brought under irrigation,
is itself composed largely of disintegrated loess⁴.

The physical features here outlined will help to give the right 'setting' to the antiquarian
observations which I have had occasion to make about Gūma. These observations were at first of
a quasi-negative character; but this, as subsequent experience showed, scarcely detracts from
their interest. In my Personal Narrative I have indicated the reasons which induced me to
make a halt at Gūma on the 5th of October for the purpose of antiquarian inquiries. Among
the purchases of Central-Asian antiquities made for the Indian Government by Mr. Macartney
and Captain (now Major) S. H. Godfrey, paper MSS. and 'block-prints', all in 'unknown
characters', had since 1895 turned up more and more frequently and in increasing bulk. These,
and similar acquisitions which had reached public collections at St. Petersburg, London, Paris,
and probably elsewhere through European collectors at Kāshgar, were all supposed to have
been discovered at sand-buried sites about Khotan⁵.

Inquiries Islām Ākhūn, the Khotan 'treasure-seeker', from whom most of these strange texts were
for Islām acquired, had, in statements recorded at Kāshgar by Mr. Macartney, and reproduced in Dr. Hoernle's
Ākhūn's
'find-places.' Report on the 'British Collection of Central-Asian Antiquities', specified a series of localities from
which his finds were alleged to have been obtained. Islām Ākhūn described these places as
old sites in the desert north of the caravan route between Gūma and Khotan, and furnished

国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

引用情報

OCR読み取り結果

国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト 『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

引用情報

OCR読み取り結果

国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ