Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 329 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0329	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

they had left behind there. The second document (B), dated only by month and day, contains
a military requisition from the Li-hsieh garrison, addressed by Yang Chin-ch'ing, commandant
of the place, to the civil magistrate, asking for skins to re-cover drums and for quail's feathers
to refit arrows. The third, dated in the seventh month of the seventh year Chien-chung (786 A.D.),
records the issue of a loan of 15,000 pieces of money on certain conditions to a person who
appears to have been of Li-hsieh; for a note subsequently added and dated in the tenth month
of the same year records that 10,000 pieces of money have been repaid on account of that
sum by an inhabitant of Li-hsieh.

With the records just described the Chinese documents excavated by me in D. v and in Character of
three other ruins of Dandān-Uiliq (D. vii, viii, ix), show the closest agreement, not only in Chinese
general appearance, paper, and style of writing, but also in character of contents and in dates. documents
A comparison of these documents, as translated by M. Chavannes in Appendix A, conclusively excavated.
shows that they are all formal records of public or private transactions. Records of loans,
exactly resembling in their terms and provisions the third of the above documents (C), are
the most frequent. On the other hand, we see that their dates, ranging from A.D. 781 to 790,
fall within, or quite close to, the period covered by the two dated ones among Dr. Hoernle's
previously discussed documents.

In view of this complete agreement of contents, dates, and palaeographic evidence, it seems
practically certain that the latter represent some of the finds of 'Khitai khats', i.e. papers with
Chinese writing which Turdi well remembered to have made on a visit to the site some years
previously, and which with other 'old things' he had sold to Badruddin Khān, his usual
employer at Khotan. It is impossible now to ascertain whether these particular documents,
which had all three been transmitted to Mr. Macartney in one batch from Khotan⁷, came from
one of those rooms in the ruined house (D. v) which I found to have been roughly searched,
or from some of the other ruins that had similarly been 'explored' before by Turdi's parties.
But even without such specific information the comparison of D. v. 6, the first Chinese document
I unearthed at the site, makes it clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Li-hsieh, the locality
all these documents name, must be identified with the settlement or small tract to which the
ruined shrines and dwellings of Dandān-Uiliq belonged.

M. Chavannes, in his first note on the document A, points out that the reading of the Li-hsieh,
name 歛謝 Li-hsieh is rendered uncertain by the first character not being found in Chinese name of
dictionaries⁸. The doubt as to its true sound could be removed only by the discovery of the ancient
local name in a printed Chinese text, or else, perhaps, by its identification in one of the Brāhmī settlement.
documents from Dandān-Uiliq. Fortunately no obscurity can attach to the interpretation of
the term 六城 Liu-ch'êng 'Six Cities', given in D. v. 6 as well as in the document A, as the
designation of the administrative division to which Li-hsieh belonged. Already, on my return
journey through Kāshgar, when Mr. Macartney and his Chinese literatus Sun Ssŭ-yeh kindly
furnished me with transcripts and preliminary translations of the Chinese documents brought
back by me, I had ascertained that the term 'Six Cities' is still well known by Chinese
officials in the 'New Dominions' as an old designation of the Khotan territory. In a note

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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