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0545 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 545 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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On November 18th I divided my party, sending off Lal
Singh for survey work along the foot of the main range,
and Chiang with Ibrahim Beg to Turfan to secure for
us quarters and fresh transport. I myself commenced a
series of rapid excursions which was to acquaint me with
the well-known sites of the Turfan district. The area into
which they are crowded, mainly along the outer hill chain
separating the gravel glacis of the mountains from the de-
pressed basin, scarcely covers more than thirty-five miles
from east to west, with a greatest width of about ten miles.
Yet so numerous and extensive are the ruins that their
rapid survey kept me busy till the close of the month.
For the same reason I cannot find space here for more
than a few general observations.
Starting from the east, I first visited the cañon-like
gorge above the picturesque little township of Toyuk,
where the steep cliffs of reddish sandstone on either side
are honeycombed by numerous small caves, or show ruined
temples built on their ledges (Fig. 262). Much in the situa-
tion and general aspects recalled the 'Caves of the Thousand
Buddhas,' though on a reduced scale. There was unmis-
takable resemblance, too, in what survived of the fresco
decoration in situ. But its condition attested only too
plainly the destructive effects produced by the immediate
vicinity of a large community of good Muhammadans, whose
iconoclastic zeal could find ready vent here, especially after
the first conversion. A different religious spirit had pre-
vailed in Uigur times; for among the numerous finds of
manuscripts which rewarded the German archaeologists,
there were fragments of Manichaean and even Nestorian
texts in early Turki and Sogdian. Other finds, too, in the
Turfan region show that Christians and followers of Mani
then lived peacefully among a population that was pre-
ponderatingly Buddhist.
The close association of the ruined past with the thriving
life of the present, to me a novel experience, was even more
striking when I visited the remarkable ruins of the Turfan
capital of Uigur times at Kara-khoja, some seven miles to
the west of Toyuk. Here a cluster of populous villages
surrounds, and is partly built into, the massive clay walls