Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 605 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0605	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

complete, and my departure near at hand, I was anxious for a personal examination of that
enterprising individual whose productions had engaged so much learned attention in Europe
and India.

Pan Dārin, to whom I confidentially communicated my wish to get hold of Islām Ākhūn, Arrest of
readily granted his assistance. As an attempt on the part of Islām Ākhūn to abscond was by Islām
no means improbable, and as time was getting short, I took care to impress the Mandarin with Ākhūn.
the necessity for prompt and discreet action. Nor did he disappoint me in these respects; for
on the morning of April 25 Islām Ākhūn (see Fig. 71) was duly produced from Chīra, where
he had been practising as a 'Hakīm' during the previous winter. He scarcely anticipated
being 'wanted' now, as when passing through Chīra some three weeks before I had purposely
refrained from making any inquiries about him. The Bēg who escorted him brought also a
motley collection of papers, which had been seized partly in Islām Ākhūn's possession and
partly in his Khotan house, and which on examination proved rather curious. They were sheets
of artificially discoloured paper, covered with impressions of the same elaborate formulas in
'unknown characters' that appeared in some of the last batches of 'ancient block-prints' which
had been sold in Kāshgar ⁵. A manuscript leaf, also in 'unknown characters', had evidently
remained over from the earlier manufacture when the forger was still content to work by mere
writing ⁶.

The examination of this versatile individual proved a protracted affair, and through two First ex-
long days I felt as if breathing the atmosphere of an Indian judicial court. When first arraigned amination
in my improvised 'Cutchery', Islām Ākhūn readily and with contrite mien confessed his guilt of Islām
in having in 1898 obtained money from Badruddin Khān, the Afghān Ak-sakāl, by a forged Ākhūn.
note purporting to be in Captain Deasy's handwriting ⁷. But in the matter of the 'old books'
he for a long time protested complete innocence. He pretended to have acted merely as the
Kāshgar sale agent for certain persons at Khotan, since dead or absconded, who, rightly or
wrongly, told him that they had picked them up in the desert. When he found how much
such 'old books' were appreciated by Europeans he asked those persons to find more. This
they did; whereupon he took their finds to Kāshgar, &c. Now, he lamented, he was left
alone to bear the onus of the fraud—if such it was. Muḥammad Tārī, one of those who
gave the 'books', had previously run away to Yarkand; Muḥammad Ṣiddīq, the Mullā, had
absconded towards Ak-su; and a third of the band had escaped from all trouble by dying.

It was a cleverly devised line of defence, and Islām Ākhūn clung to it with great consistency Prolonged
and with the wariness of a man who has had unpleasant experience of the ways of the law. denials of
I had thought it right to tell him from the first that I was not going to proceed against him guilt.
at the Amban's Ya-mēn in the matter of these happily ended forgeries; for I was aware that
such a step, in accordance with Chinese procedure, might at one stage or other lead to the
application of some effective means of persuasion, i.e. torture. This, of course, I would not
countenance; nor could a confession as its eventual result be to me of any value. Whether
it was from Islām Ākhūn's reliance on these scruples of mine, or from his knowledge that direct
evidence could not easily be produced within the short time available before my departure,
two long cross-examinations, in the interval of which I had Islām Ākhūn's wants hospitably
looked to by my own men, failed to bring a solution. However, in the course of his long

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