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 first ruin cleared, F. I, comprised a series of rooms mostly of small size, grouped in several Finds in
courts round a still clearly recognizable square tank (see plan, Plate 57). The walls, whether of ruin F. I.
timber and wattle or of brick masonry, were found broken down to within a foot or two of the
ground. But outside the area occupied by the house lines of fenced enclosures and the remains of
an orchard with trees planted in regular rows could be traced quite clearly. Fireplaces and sitting-
platforms by their side, built of mud plaster, survived in some rooms. In one of these, marked a,
there was found a well-preserved wooden tablet measuring 12 by 4 inches, bearing on each side five
lines of Sanskrit in clear Brāhmī script (F. I. a. 1, Plate CLI). In the small oblong cella, b, finds of
a few appliqué relievo fragments in stucco, like F. I. b. 006–7, and of the interesting little fresco
piece, F. I. b. 008, made it possible to recognize what seems to have been a domestic shrine. Small
fragments of ornaments in bronze paste, etc., also turned up in the débris. Objects of personal or
domestic use found elsewhere in this ruin (F. I. 001–10) included inter alia a toy bow and arrow,
a bag made of leopard's skin, and whisk-brooms of the type first found at Dandān-oilik.

F. II was a ruin comprising a badly eroded shrine of larger size with dwelling quarters, Remains of
situated about half a mile to the west of F. I on a large and conspicuous erosion terrace. The small shrine
dwelling, arranged in two wings set at right angles, proved to be filled with drift-sand to a height in F. II.
of over 6 feet and to retain a number of interesting relics. Fig. 310 shows its corner portion as it
appeared at the commencement of excavation. In room i, there seen in the centre, the presence
of an image niche set into the south-west wall, but opening to the outside, was a peculiar feature.
There remained of it, at a height of about 4¾ feet from the ground, the decorated wooden panel,
F. II. i. 005 (Plate XVII), 3½ feet long, forming the plinth for a stucco image base on which remains
of two feet standing on a lotus in relievo could still be distinguished. The ends of the plinth had
grooves for fixing side panels and also two sockets in which the projecting ends of the door-folds
once turned. There was a wooden platform behind, measuring 3⅔ by 2¼ feet, on which the stucco
base and image once rested. Curiously enough there were found no supports for the platform,
which rested merely on drift-sand. Evidently the posts or frame of wood once supporting it had
been removed after abandonment, when the building had already been invaded by sand but was
still accessible. A mass of ex-voto fabrics and Brāhmī manuscript remains eaten by mice survived
under the left foot of the image (F. II. i. 001).

Within the room i there were found a number of wooden tablets, both of oblong and of wedge Inscribed
shape, some well-preserved, some broken. Their writing, in Brāhmī of the Gupta type, looked to wooden
me older than that of Dandān-oilik documents; their text seemed to be in the old Khotanese tablets.
language.⁵ᵃ Of other objects found there I may mention as of special interest two clay seal impres-
sions from gems, which judging from their shape and size are likely to have been either inserted in
sockets of wooden documents of the Niya Site type or else appended to the end of wedge tablets
after the fashion illustrated by N. XV. 71.⁶ The impression of the convex gem, F. II. i. 003 Clay im-
(Plate V), shows a hunting scene, composed under unmistakably classical influence, the figure of the pressions of
horseman being in an attitude which resembles that in 'Alexander's hunt' scenes. Late classical gems.
influence is recognizable also in the impression from a smaller intaglio, F. II. i. 004 (Plate V),
showing a carefully cut female bust. Both seals may have been imported from Western Asia, as
seems likely, too, in the case of many of the quasi-classical gems from Yōtkan, shown in Plate V.
The fragments of decorated pottery, including the neck and forepart of a winged-horse handle,
F. II. i. 6, and a grotesque appliqué head of the 'Silenus' type, F. II. i. 002, are of special interest
because they show motifs plentifully represented among the terra-cottas of Yōtkan. They would
throw light on the chronology of the latter finds if once the approximate date of abandonment of