Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 400 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0400	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

used as a storage-room, became evident when in succession there emerged from it a bow of
roughly-carved tamarisk wood, about 3 ft. long; a curved piece of willow-wood, 3 ft. long and
about 6 in. broad in the middle, which looks as if it had once formed a section of an oblong shield;
a donkey's saddle-tree; and, besides other broken shafts, a stout walking-stick of apple-wood.
The photograph reproduced in Plate IX shows these objects with other ancient wooden implements
from ruins subsequently excavated at this site.
Arms and The bow was still crisp and capable of use. The wood of what I take to be the section
implements
from N. viii. of an oblong shield was remarkably light and tough, about half an inch thick for about 2 feet of
its length, and then thickening to 1¾ in. in the top part, where it curves inwards so as to offer
better protection against downward strokes. Along the inner side edge it bore holes, no doubt
meant for fastenings that joined it to another section. The donkey's saddle-tree, made of
mulberry-wood, is in excellent preservation, and of practically the same pattern as that still in use
throughout Eastern Turkestān. Of the two inscribed tablets found here one is the covering-
tablet or envelope of a rectangular document, while the other (N. viii. 1) resembles a label and
shows three columns, each with five short lines of Kharoṣṭhī which end with numerical figures
and evidently contain some list. All the rooms so far described formed a small block by
themselves, separated from the rest of the extant portions of the house by a passage about
4 feet broad. An arrangement similar to this is seen in the ground-plans of the dwellings
N. IV and N. VII (see Plates XXXI, XXXII), and may be found reproduced with some modi-
fications in modern residences of the country².

Clearing of Next to this block, but south of the passage, lay the room marked N. vii., which formed
room N. vii.
a kind of ante-chamber to the central hall. It measured 20 ft. square, and showed a raised
platform of plaster 3 ft. 8 in. broad and 13 in. high along its north and west sides. By a door
2 ft. 9 in. broad and 6 ft. 4 in. high, which is seen in the photograph (Plate VII), it communicated
with the hall. Another door, slightly wider, but only 5 ft. 4 in. high, formed the entrance from
the passage westwards. The single wooden leaf which once closed it was found in good pre-
servation, and still on its hinges, leaning against the south wall of N. vii., just as when it had
been last opened. Its top is just visible in the photograph (Plate VII). A little to the east
of the centre of the room two round posts were found, 10 ft. high, which had probably supported
a raised portion of the roof serving as a skylight; for just between the two posts the floor
showed a small oblong area sunk 6 in. below the general surface, which had undoubtedly been
used as a fireplace. The smoke rising from the latter would thus find above a convenient
exit. Within this fireplace lay several small torn pieces of the same fine coloured rug, which
I shall have to describe presently in connexion with the central hall. On the west platform,
and close to the door, were found the under-tablet of a rectangular document, broken into two
pieces but otherwise well preserved, and a carefully-turned stick, probably of sandal-wood, about
11½ in. long, bearing an ivory ferule at one end and fitted also at the other for a ferule or
knob of some kind. The small hole bored through the stick below the ferule does not help
to indicate its original purpose.

Central hall The central hall, the excavation of which had cost so much time and labour, was found
of N. III.
to have been cleared completely by the last dwellers or visitors of any movable objects of
practical value it might have once contained. Yet the architectural and decorative details
revealed in it formed some compensation for the trouble taken. I have referred already to
the four massive beams which stretched over the longer side of the hall and once supported

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