Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 607 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0607	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

the Russian demand for 'old books', while Islām Ākhūn attended chiefly to the requirements
of British officers and other collectors. Ibrāhīm Mullā, from whom the Russian Armenian
I met on my first arrival at Khotan had purchased his forged birch-bark manuscript, was credited
with some knowledge of Russian, a circumstance which explains the curious resemblance
previously noticed between the characters used in some of the 'block-prints' and the Greek
(*recte* Russian) alphabet ¹¹. Ibrāhīm Mullā gave proof of his 'slimness', as well as his
complicity, by promptly disappearing from Khotan on the first news of Islām Ākhūn's arrest,
and could not be confronted with him.

The first 'old book' produced in this fashion was successfully sold by Islām Ākhūn in
1895 to Munshī Aḥmad Dīn, who was in charge of the Assistant Resident's office at Kāshgar
during the temporary absence of Mr. Macartney ¹². These 'books' were written by hand; and
an attempt had been made, as also in some others of the earliest products of the factory, to
imitate the cursive Brāhmī characters found in fragments of genuine manuscripts which Ibrahim was
said to have secured from Dandān-Uiliq ¹³. Though the forgers never succeeded in producing
a text showing consecutively the characters of any known script, yet their earliest fabrications
were executed with an amount of care and ingenuity which might well deceive for a time even
expert scholars in Europe. This may be seen by referring to the facsimiles which are given
in part ii of Dr. Hoernle's *Report* of Brāhmī letter-groups from 'codices' belonging to the
early output, now deposited, with so many other products of Islām Ākhūn's factory, in the
'forgery' section of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum ¹⁴. The specimen
pages reproduced from the 'Codices Högberg' in M. D. Klementz's Report on the Imperial
Russian Academy's expedition to Turfān ¹⁵, and the facsimile of an 'ancient Khotan manuscript'
which appears in the German edition of Dr. Sven Hedin's *Through Asia*, are conveniently
accessible illustrations of the factory's output in a somewhat later and less careful phase of its
working.

Seeing that remunerative prices could be obtained for such articles at Kāshgar and,
through Badruddīn's somewhat careless mediation, also from Ladak and Kashmir, the efforts
of the forgers were stimulated. As Islām Ākhūn quickly perceived that his 'books' were
readily paid for, though none of the Europeans who bought them could read their characters
or distinguish them from ancient scripts, it became unnecessary to trouble about imitating the
characters of genuine fragments. Thus, apparently each individual factory 'hand' was given
free scope for inventing his 'unknown characters'. This explains the striking diversity of
these queer scripts, of which the analysis of the texts contained in the 'British collection' at
one time revealed at least a dozen—not exactly to the assurance of the Orientalist scholars
who were to help in their decipherment.

The rate of production by the laborious process of handwriting was, however, too slow, and
accordingly the factory took to the more convenient method of producing books by means of

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