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

of 2 to 3 miles from Aptār a number of ruined *bands*, or embankments, with
terraced ground above them. These afford clear proof that cultivation depen-
dent on rain floods only, and without the help of *qanāts*, had been possible
on this ground at a period perhaps not very distant. The ruins reported at
Mistābād in a nook of the hills near the southernmost bed of the Kunāru Kaur
proved to be those of small mud-brick structures clearly dating from Muham-
madan times, as shown also by the pottery around them. Moving thence to the
north-west for 2 miles across the scrub-covered plain and its torrent-beds we
came upon a debris area bearing the name of Kalēra, which measured about 600
yards in length and about 200 yards across. Glazed relief-decorated pottery
showed it to be a site occupied during the Muhammadan period.

SECTION III—THE BURIAL SITE OF KHURĀB

On March 10th Īrān-shahr was regained after a 14 miles' march across a
sandy waste furrowed by innumerable stony flood beds, and on the following
morning we started down for the examination of sites reported on the left bank of
the Bampūr river. Its bed was crossed some 3½ miles from Īrān-shahr, above a
roughly constructed barrage. This diverts the water from the shallow channel
into canals to irrigate what cultivation there is along the right bank towards
Bampūr. The bed of the river, where we crossed it, was fully 400 yards wide
and was filled with luxuriant tamarisk scrub. But what water there was in the
shallow little stream passing down it was gathered solely from springs rising
in the bed a short distance higher up. This scanty supply of *slāb-āb*, 'black
water', corresponding to the *kara-su* of the oases of the Tārīm basin, represents
the whole of the water supply available for the central portion of the Bampūr
basin down to where the river-bed terminates in the drainageless Hāmūn of Jāz
Mūriān, some 110 miles farther. More water is carried by the river only during
short intervals when, after heavy rain, floods descend from the mountains. The
question as to whether any change since prehistoric times in the volume of this
water supply might be deduced from archaeological evidence was bound to
invest this far from attractive ground with special interest for me.

The track followed through luxuriant riverine jungle of *kabūr* (*Prosopis
spicigera*) and tamarisk trees brought us after another 6 miles' march to where
the stretch of scrubby grazing known as Khurāb begins. Judging from traces of
an abandoned *qanāt*, cultivation appears to have been carried on at one time
over some parts of the ground. Patches of scanty pottery debris, some of early
type, some of later, marked approach to the place where, according to informa-
tion received at Bampūr, ancient pottery vessels had been dug up in numbers