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0265 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 265 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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evidence it afforded. From Chinese historical records,
interpreted by M. Chavannes, including the fine Chinese
inscription of the year 894 A.D. in one of the southernmost
of the 'Thousand Buddhas' grottoes, I knew that the
territory of Tun-huang, along with a great portion of Kan-
su, had been conquered by the Tibetans about 759 A.D.
But scarcely a century later, in 850 A.D., Chang I-ch'ao, the
hereditary governor of Tun-huang, broke with the Tibetan
power, and making his submission to the Emperor allowed
the Chinese to re-establish a sort of suzerainty over these
westernmost Marches. This must have ceased again dur-
ing the troubles which followed the downfall of the T'ang
dynasty at the beginning of the tenth century. When a
Chinese envoy to Khotan about 938 A.D. passed through
the territories corresponding to An-hsi and Tun-huang,
he found them under Tibetan dependence, though the
population remained mainly Chinese and the administra-
tion in the hands of a chief belonging to the great local
family of the Ts'ao.

This Tibetan predominance at Tun-huang must have
been at its height from the middle of the eighth to that of
the ninth century, which is exactly the period when Tibet
was a great power in Asia, holding in subjection vast
tracts of Kan-su and even Central China. It was by way
of Tun-huang that the Tibetans from about 766 A.D.
onwards gradually overran the territories of Eastern
Turkestan, and finally in 790 A.D. overwhelmed the
isolated Chinese garrisons which had long struggled to
maintain the imperial protectorate in the distant lands
north and south of the T'ien-shan. Though the expansive
strength of Tibet had largely spent itself by the latter part
of the ninth century, its influence in the Tun-huang region
evidently continued a good deal longer, and this political
connection, directly attested for two centuries or so, made
it easy to understand why Tibetan Buddhism was so
amply represented among the literary remains of the
walled-up cave.

But not from the Tibetan south alone had the old
temple library received its foreign additions. Considering
how flourishing Buddhism was throughout the powerful