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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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0048 Serindia : vol.3
Serindia : vol.3 / Page 48 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000183
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visited the caves during the last reigns of the Mongol dynasty, fixes the early part of the fourteenth
century as the lowest possible date limit, and the *sgraffito* of XIX in Cursive Brāhmī, solitary as it
is, helps to push this back somewhat further still. How long after the painting of the frescoes
these mementoes of visitors had been left behind it is, of course, impossible to determine. In any
case they prove that the site must have been then a well-known pilgrimage place, and this justifies
the hope that some account of it may yet be found in Chinese historical records. That destructive
invasions affected it less than the sacred caves near Tun-huang, which had served as a model, may
be safely inferred from its out-of-the-way position in the hills and from its actual condition. But
does this account also for the total disappearance of the collection of sacred Buddhist texts, etc.,
that the guardians of the shrines must have possessed at one time?