Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 433 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0433	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

about 7⁄16 in. distant from the actual ends, one of these being shaped into a small rounded handle, manifestly intended to mark the top of the slip. As the slip was found blank and manifestly unused, the suggestion here made must, of course, remain conjectural.

There is another question connected with early Chinese writing, for the elucidation of which a close study of the ancient documents on wood brought to light by me may perhaps prove useful. From the texts translated and discussed by M. Chavannes it is clear that Chinese antiquity, apart from slips of bamboo, knew also small wooden boards called fang 方 for writing purposes : these, however, were meant to receive only short documents not exceeding a hundred characters, and appear to have been reserved mainly for official use ¹⁴. They were always rectangular in shape ; but the fact that they are said to have been square or approximately so, as well as their having been used manifestly without a covering, preclude the idea of any special connexion between them and the form of our rectangular Kharoṣṭhī tablets. Whether the latter or any other class of tablets familiar to us from the Niya Site could possibly be connected in their shape with the wooden tablets called tu 牘, to which M. Chavannes refers in a note ¹⁵, I am not in a position to ascertain. But it is noteworthy that the tablets thus designated were primarily destined for letters, whether from the Emperor or private individuals, while the description given of them as being smaller than a fang but larger than the slip (chien) might well agree with a form not unlike that of one or other class of our sealed Kharoṣṭhī tablets, which undoubtedly served for correspondence.

However this may be, we actually possess at least one document on wood bearing a Chinese inscription, which, but for one slight peculiarity, shows in its form complete agreement with the rectangular covering-tablets of Kharoṣṭhī documents. I mean the tablet N. xv. 345, reproduced in Plate CXIV (less clearly also in Plate CV). Its obverse displays the usual seal-cavity, now empty, with the three string-grooves on each side, and above it a row of faded Chinese characters, which have been read by M. Chavannes 善善王 'the king of Shan-shan', with a fourth character to the right which might be read 詔 'edict' ¹⁶. The reverse is blank, but curiously enough has its centre portion slightly raised with a narrow lower margin all round. This raised portion has the appearance of having been cut to fit a corresponding opening in an under-tablet. But the latter has not been found, and there thus remains the possibility of this interesting tablet having served as a lid to a small box ¹⁷. In any case there can be no doubt that the arrangement of sealing and fastening was here identical with that observed in all rectangular Kharoṣṭhī documents.

In the absence of other evidence, this use of an identical method of fastening is of considerable interest. Seeing how conservative Chinese fashion has always been in matters concerning the forms of written record ¹⁸, it seems far more probable that the ingenious methods of fastening and authentication which are so amply illustrated by our Kharoṣṭhī documents on wood, wedge-shaped and rectangular, were originally derived from China, than that the Chinese chancellerie of the ruler of Shan-shan, a state south of Lop-Nor, and thus relatively close to the border

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