National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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CHAPTER XXXIII
SURVEY OF THE ANCIENT STATION
ON December i gth, in the bitter cold of the early morning,.
work was started with the clearing of a fairly well preserved
ruin some sixty yards to the south-west of what we called
the ` Ya-mên.' Neither the dimensions of the dozen
rooms still traceable nor the size of the timber pieces
were large here. But drift sand had accumulated within
the broken walls to a height of three or four feet, and this,
together with the familiar look of the ground plan and the
wattle and timber construction, exactly as at the Niya
site, raised hopes. They were not disappointed. It is
true the first room, evidently intended with its thick walls
of stamped clay, big fireplace, and broad sitting-platforms
for use as a warm corner in the winter, yielded only small
pieces of a carpet of well-woven ingrain material, and
showing a delicate floral pattern in colours still vivid.
But in a passage dividing this from a larger room
westwards we carne upon three large rectangular tablets
complete with their wooden covers and seal-sockets, and
still retaining most of their Kharoshthi writing in excellent
preservation. Two of them lay wrapped up in a piece of
well-woven brown fabric, with about three feet of sand
below them, having manifestly fallen into this position
from some receptacle higher up on the wall. Except for
the wood, which was of Toghrak instead of the cultivated
poplar, these documents conformed in all details of
arrangement, script, etc., to the features made so familiar
by my Niya finds. As official records these rectangular
tablets were sure to show a date in their opening portion,
and as I looked for this eagerly I soon convinced myself
VOL. I 385 2 C
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