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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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is directed against those officers who receive gratifications for ignoring acts against regulations and
neglecting the duties of their charges.⁷⁷
Records of
appoint-
ments, bor-
der inci-
dents, etc.
Among official communications dealing with specific incidents we find some where officers are
inculpated or accuse themselves of shortcomings.⁷⁸ But far more numerous are those where new
appointments, returns to duty, and similar service orders are notified.⁷⁹ Official announcements in
advance of 'inspections along the barrier', such as we find in certain documents, obviously deprived
these inspections of any risk of causing awkward surprises.⁸⁰ Yet even thus we read of cases of
unauthorized absence among the men when inspected.⁸¹ In a few records we are afforded glimpses
of attacks and alarms such as must more than once have disturbed the peaceful, if physically trying,
police routine of the Tun-huang border.⁸²
Calendar
records
from Limes.
With the official 'papers' may be suitably classed also the very numerous pieces containing
portions of calendars, written on wooden slips and tablets of varying sizes and often fragmentary.⁸³
Such were obviously needed in order to enable the clerical establishments to date reports, etc.,
correctly, to make out accounts, and so on. Usually these portions of calendars show in order
the cyclic designations, arranged according to the sixty years cycle, which a particular day bears in
the successive twelve months of the year. This system has enabled M. Chavannes to fix in many
cases the exact year intended, and in this way to restore complete calendars with absolute precision
for the years 63, 59, 39 B.C., and A.D. 94, 153.⁸⁴ The result of his painstaking calculations affords
valuable help for the verification of the tables prepared by Chinese chronologists. In this connexion
Erroneous
nien-hao
indicated.
it is of some interest to observe that an otherwise exactly dated document, No. 255, of May 10,
68 B.C., bears an erroneous nien-hao. The year is shown as the sixth of the Pên-shih period, which
in reality had been replaced in 69 B.C. by the Ti-chich period. This inaccuracy clearly points, as
M. Chavannes observes, to the fact that the communications between the capital and the extreme
western border were interrupted at the time.⁸⁵
Private
letters
found on
Limes.
By the side of the official communications and records, private letters figure in considerable
numbers among the written remains from the Limes.⁸⁶ Most of them are too short or fragmentary
to yield information bearing on the life of the border or to be otherwise of antiquarian interest.
But special mention is due to two letters on silk, one long and well preserved, T. XIII. i. 003
(Plate XX),⁸⁷ which were found sewn up into a small bag for holding some medicine or condiment—
luckily with the written surface turned inside. They were both addressed by an officer of superior
rank stationed at Ch'êng-lo on the northern border of Shan-hsi to another exile on the Tun-huang
Limes, the long one being intended to serve as a letter of recommendation for a colleague transferred
to a post on the latter. Amidst much polite verbiage it also expresses the writer's disappointment
at not having, after five years' service 'on the northern frontier, in a miserable country', attained
the desired charge of a command, for which he appears to have repeatedly petitioned the Emperor.
In two other letters also we find the writers lamenting the hardship of the guard service on the
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