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0500 Ancient Khotan : vol.1
Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / Page 500 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000182
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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The hopes of MS. remains which the first afternoon's experimental digging had raised
were amply realized by the numerous finds made in the course of the subsequent excavation.
These finds derive particular interest, not only from the variety of languages and texts repre-
sented among them, but also from the curious conditions in which the numerous MS. portions
were recovered. That the three leaves (E. i. 2) of a Buddhist text in Sanskrit, discovered on
the first day about 1 ft. above the floor of the east side of the central base, had belonged to
a larger Pōthī was at once clear to me, from the pagination numbers on their margins and
the string holes which showed them to be left halves. I was encouraged in my hope for the
recovery of more of this text when on the following morning there turned up towards the
north-east, and also not much above the floor, two more packets of broken folia (E. i. 4, 5),
containing between them 12 left halves and 4 right halves of the identical MS. Finally, when
after excavating the rest of the cella the portion between the east side of the central base
and the entrance could be completely cleared of sand, there were discovered in the cutting
about 2 ft. deep which treasure-seekers had made into the floor of that portion two more packets
of the same text (E. i. 39, 40), containing 8 left and 19 right halves of folia, besides 2 detached
half-leaves (E. i. 41, 43). From a comparison of the total number of left and right half folia,