National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

must have been produced much further west than Khotan. To the former class belong the well-
modelled female bust, Khot. 0080 ; the beardless male head of the type of Alexander, Badr. 002 ;
the fine helmeted male head, Khot. 0091, as well as the Persian-looking head, Khot. 0077 ; the bust
of a Roman warrior, Yo. 0096. a ; and the large beardless male head, Yo. 05. e, round which Brāhmī
characters have been engraved by another hand. Barbarous reflections of some late classical originals
may be recognized in such pieces as Khot. 04. h, j, 004. b, 0075, 0076, 0079, 0092 ; Badr. 001 ;
Yo. 012. b, 0099. To production within or near the Sassanian Empire point the types shown
by Khot. 004. a, with its Pahlavī inscription ; Khot. 0090, with a few characters in a script vaguely
suggesting Sogdian ; and Yo. 00206. The head on the last-named intaglio shows close resem-
blance to I. 001, reproduced in Plate XLIX of Ancient Khotan, which still seems linked by its legend
with the Scytho-Sassanian coins of the Indo-Irānian borderlands. The large stone, Yo. 07, with
its goddess bestriding a leonine dragon, is suggestive of Indian influence. We must assume either
Indian or Khotanese origin for Khot. 0088, with a monkey playing on a pipe and a small figure
dancing before him, on account of the short Brāhmī legend undoubtedly engraved by the same hand.
Seeing that the naturalistic treatment of the monkey agrees closely with that shown by the terra-
cotta figurines, local production appears to me distinctly probable in this case. There still remains
a numerously represented class of intaglios to be mentioned, filling the first three rows in Pl. v
and mostly of small size. Almost all show figures of animals, often cut with considerable skill, and
recalling, in bold but effective design, those appearing among the Yōtkan pottery and figurines.
Considering that the great majority of these intaglios are cut in stones like chalcedony and cornelian,
of which the Kun-lun Range east of Khotan could always furnish a ready supply,⁷ and further that
this class was also largely represented in my first collection from Khotan, I am now inclined to look
upon them as likely to be from the hands of old Khotan engravers.

If I have left it to the last to mention the relatively large collection of coins which I acquired
either at Yōtkan or as coming from that site, it is mainly because they will be separately dealt with
in Appendix B by Mr. J. Allan ; also because the value of the chronological evidence furnished by
coins must obviously be much smaller in the case of acquisitions by purchase than when coin finds
can be authenticated at the site itself. At the time when these acquisitions were made, my leisure
did not suffice for more than a most cursory inspection. The brief remarks to be offered here
are based entirely on the preliminary analysis of these coins with which Mr. J. Allan has kindly
furnished me, and must be confined to their chronological bearing in general. In order to obtain
a safer basis for observations on this point I have thought it best here to leave aside the coins which
I purchased at Khotan, but about the origin of which no information was available.

The chronological range of the coins acquired from Yōtkan, all copper, with the exception of
a single piece in lead, agrees strikingly with that indicated by the collection which I obtained in
1900–1 and discussed in Ancient Khotan at some length.⁸ It extends from the Sino-Kharoṣṭhi
currency of Khotan, issued probably during the first few centuries of our era, down to pieces of the
Sung dynasty, the latest of these bearing the 'Nien-hao' of A.D. 1078–86. In addition, the Indo-
Scythian coinage is represented by two pieces of Kaniṣka (see Plate CXL, Nos. 9, 10).

While the total number of identified coins amounts to 337, the number of main issues repre-
sented is relatively small. Apart from the few non-Chinese pieces just mentioned, there are 47
coins of the local Sino-Kharoṣṭhi type, bearing Chinese legends on the obverse and Indian Prākrit
ones on the reverse (Plate CXL, Nos. 4, 6, 7). The early Chinese coinage, in the shape of wu-shu