Serindia : vol.1 / 551 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0551	Serindia : vol.1
セリンディア : vol.1

an elaborate stitched pattern and an embroidered design of palmate leaves. Finally, passing refer-
ence may be made to some painted fragments, M. i. xix. 005, of uncertain use. Their material,
birch bark, is of interest, as it manifestly points to Indian origin.

Section V.—TIBETAN DOCUMENTS FROM THE MĪRĀN FORT

The abundance of the Tibetan written records recovered from the refuse-heaps of the Character of
Mīrān fort seemed at the time an encouraging recompense for the trying physical conditions Tibetan
under which their clearing was effected. But even while first handling the dirt-encrusted docu- records.
ments, or trying to clean them with half-benumbed fingers at night in my little tent, I could
not fail to foresee to some extent the difficulties which there would be in interpreting them
later on. Quite apart from the fragmentary state of the great majority of the wooden slips and
papers, and the effaced surface and cursive script in many of them, these difficulties were bound
to be serious. Wholly unversed as I am in matters Tibetan, I knew that Tibetan literature,
while abounding in Buddhist texts and other works of a devotional character, possesses but very
few specimens of early secular writing. Yet from the first it was obvious that the great mass
of the Tibetan records from Mīrān would prove to consist of miscellaneous 'office papers',
more often than not of a petty kind, reports, applications, indents, and the like, all probably
couched in the language of everyday life.

It was clear that for the full elucidation of documents of this kind philological acumen Dr. Francke
would be needed, combined with intimate knowledge of the living language and the ways of examines
Tibet. I had therefore reason to feel specially gratified when, in 1910, the Rev. Dr. A. H. documents.
Francke, late of the Moravian Mission, Leh, the recognized authority on the antiquities and
the living language of Western Tibet, kindly agreed to undertake the examination of the
Tibetan manuscript materials in my collection, as far as they comprise the finds made at Mīrān
and the approximately contemporary site of Mazār-tāgh. But obligations arising from recent
archaeological tours of his own, and practical considerations connected with the great number
of the documents, made it necessary for Dr. Francke to limit his collaboration, as far as the
present publication is concerned, to the preparation of a complete inventory of the above
materials.¹ To this important contribution Dr. Francke was at my request kind enough to add,
in 1913, very valuable notes of a general kind, dealing succinctly with the main results of his
preliminary scrutiny of the documents in their various aspects, philological and antiquarian, and
to publish them for preliminary information in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.¹ᵃ

A reference to the Mīrān portion of Dr. Francke's inventory will show on how many Dr.
points of direct archaeological and historical interest fresh light may yet be expected from a Francke's
detailed analysis of these documents, and especially of the better-preserved ones among them. inventory
It had been my hope to secure from this most competent scholar translations or at least fuller and notes.
extracts of those particular records and letters which, judging from the entries in the inventory,
hold out promise of information likely to be of use for elucidating local antiquarian questions,
or else capable of being itself illuminated by actual archaeological observations and finds. But
this hope has been necessarily frustrated by conditions arising from the war.

It is due to the same cause that I am not even able at present to gain access to the summary
notes which Dr. Francke and another learned collaborator, Dr. F. W. Thomas, Librarian of the

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