国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

The evidence of these restorations and of others which had evidently been effected elsewhere Tenacity of
was enough to prove that traditions of Buddhist piety were deep rooted among the people of Tun- Buddhist
huang and by no means extinct even now, in spite of all the périphéties which this westernmost outpost Tun-huang. traditions at
of true China had suffered. It is of importance to note this tenacity of local Buddhist traditions
and their special attachment to this sacred site. There are ample antiquarian grounds, as we shall
see, to justify the belief that the period when the shrines of the Thousand Buddhas and the monastic
establishments near them enjoyed special splendour and affluence lies as far back as T'ang rule. It
was then that the empire assured effective protection to Tun-huang both against the Turks in the
north and against the Tibetans on the south, and just then, too, that Buddhism flourished greatly in
China. During the following four centuries and more, until the establishment of paramount
Mongol dominion, these outlying marches had, except for relatively short intervals, been exposed to
a succession of barbarian inroads.
These political vicissitudes must have sadly affected the glory of the 'Thousand Buddhas'' Marco Polo
abodes and the numbers of those who ministered to their worship. Yet, I think, there can be little on Buddhist
doubt that it was the sight of these multitudinous shrines at the chief site of Tun-huang and worship of
the vivid first impressions there received of the cult paid to their denizens which had made Marco Tun-huang.
Polo put into his chapter on Sachiu a long and detailed account of the strange idolatrous customs of
its people. We have had already occasion to quote its introductory notice. 'After you have
travelled thirty days through the Desert, as I have described, you come to a city called Sachiü,
lying between north-east and east ; it belongs to the Great Kaan, and is in a province called Tangut.
The people are for the most part Idolaters, but there are also some Nestorian Christians and some
Saracens. The Idolaters have a peculiar language, and are no traders, but live by their agriculture.
They have a great many abbeys and minsters full of idols of sundry fashions, to which they pay
great honour and reverence, worshipping them and sacrificing to them with much ado.' Then
follows a lengthy description of various customs connected with worship and the disposal of the dead
which, as Sir Henry Yule has duly pointed out, are essentially Chinese.² Throughout my travels
in western Kan-su—Marco Polo calls it Tangut, the popular name derived from the Tangut, or Hsi-
hsia, rule there prevailing until the Mongol conquest—I had plenty of opportunities to observe the
maintenance of those customs among the local Chinese.
But there was one aspect in the conditions of this sacred site where the break with the Absence of
past seemed great. I mean the total absence of a resident monastic community and even of monastic
remains of such structures as might have served for its accommodation. It seemed impossible community.
to believe that 'The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas', in T'ang times and later, could have lacked
this essential portion or rather base of the Buddhist religious system. Subsequent discoveries were
to place in my hands plentiful evidence, documentary and other, that Buddhist monastic life had once
also flourished here. The causes for its complete disappearance I need not attempt to discuss.
They are likely to be bound up closely with those gradual changes which have led Buddhism
in most parts of China, as far as doctrine and organization are concerned, to become practically
absorbed in the queer syncretistic medley of Chinese popular religion. It must suffice to note that
at the time of my first visit I found this impressive array of cave-temples without a single resident
guardian, and even the small cluster of pilgrims' quarters situated amidst some arbours and fields
near the southern end of the site was only tenanted by a single young 'Ho-shang', a visitor from the
plateaus of Tsaidam.