Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 407 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0407	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

a horse. But the frequent representations of Tritons or, to use the more explicit technical
term, of Ichthyo-centaurs, in Gandhāra sculpture, with human busts, wings, horses' legs, and
serpentine fish tails⁹, prove that even more complicated monstrosities directly borrowed from
the classical West were well known to that form of Buddhist art in India which supplied the
models for the art work of old Khotan.

In the same passage (N. xii.) were found several small pieces of a woollen carpet, with
a carefully worked fret pattern in blue and light yellow as described in the list below, as well
as a long stick-like tablet (N. xii. 1) showing columns of Kharoṣṭhi writing. Were all these
miscellaneous objects and fragments thrown into, or dropped in, the passage when the final
clearing of the dwelling took place before its desertion?

A curious feature of this ruined residence was the clearness with which the arrangement Ancient
of the adjoining garden and of two arbours could be traced. The smaller of the latter, situated arbours.
about 80 ft. to the north-east of N. x., has already been referred to, and is seen on the right
of Fig. 40. Its enclosing fence of rushes, forming a square of about 45 ft., had for the greater
part survived, while the bleached trunks of the poplars once growing inside, splendid specimens
most of them, from 40 to 50 ft. long, were lying in heaps as they had fallen. In the other
arbour, just outside the ancient rush fence to the north-west of the building, as shown in the
plan of Plate XXXI, the gaunt trunks of dead poplars still rose 8 to 10 ft. from the original
surface, being thus clearly visible above the drift-sand which lay here to an average depth of
4–5 ft. The trees were planted at regular intervals, which my plan accurately indicates, and
grouped in a rectangular avenue and small square exactly after the fashion in which I found
every well-kept 'Bostān' laid out from Kāshgar to Keriya. Within the squares little tanks
are usually formed, having a platform in the centre, which serves as a convenient place for
festive parties or repose in summer-time. This may have been the arrangement here also,
but there was no time for clearing the ground. The difference between these rows of trunks
still rising in their original positions and the heaps of large fallen trees seen near N. iii and
other ruins was very striking. It suggested that there had been from the beginning considerable
variations in the quantity of sand that covered different portions of the ground, the dead trees
still standing having been kept erect by the early accumulation of high sand around them.

The area immediately to the west and south of the ruined house was found enclosed by Ancient
a rush fence, mostly intact, though completely covered in some parts by the sand. The shrivelled fenced
trunks of fruit trees rising above the latter in small irregular groups showed that this had been orchard and
an orchard and garden. Here, as well as among the remains of other ancient orchards which lane.
could be traced near ruined structures of this site, my diggers had no difficulty in distinguishing
various fruit-trees, such as the peach, apricot, mulberry, Jigda (oleaster), with the wood of which
they were familiar from their own homes. The small specimens of different woods which
Plate CIV reproduces, were collected from the trees found around this ruin. To the south
of the orchard two parallel fences of rushes could be made out for a short distance, marking
a little country lane. At one or two places near the eastern entrance of this lane the wind
had swept away the drift-sand, and here the ground displayed pottery fragments, bits of charcoal,
and well preserved small twigs—the very soil on which the last inhabitants must have trodden.
Searching in the sand at the bottom of the fences close by, my antique walking-stick (from N. viii.)
disturbed rustling dead leaves of Terek and fruit-trees which had found a safe shelter there at
a time when the bleached trunks of the orchard were still living. It was with a strange feeling,

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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

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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
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