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

i-Nādir, which receives drainage from the Hundiān hills to the north. A flood-
bed from the same passes the alluvial fan on which the fields cultivated by the
forty-odd families of Dalgān are situated. But the water to irrigate them is
supplied by four qanāts carried down from the side of Gulmurti and restored,
according to the local landowner's statement, some twenty years before. Dalgān
lies at the point where the route from Bampūr to Rūdbār is crossed by one lead-
ing from Rāmishk and the Bāshakard tract in the south to Rīgān and Bam. In
more prosperous times it might have been a stage of some importance for cara-
van traffic. But I could learn nothing of old remains there.
The next two marches took us past several places with mounds showing
pottery of the same late type as at those previously visited since Chāh Ḥusainī.
There was a small mound at Chāh Rubāhī, about 11 miles from Dalgān, and a
much larger one 6 miles farther on called Tump-i-Sipāhī from a fort which once
stood on it, the debris of the walls of which now strews the slopes. The mound
rises to a height of 23 feet, and with the pottery-strewn ground around extends
over some 360 yards from north to south and half that distance from east to
west. Here, too, only coarse red or cream-coloured ware, often with a greenish
slip, could be found besides rare fragments of glazed or incised pottery. Traces
of an old qanāt were said to exist to the north of the mound. From its top we
could sight a long stretch of salt-encrusted ground, some 7–8 miles away, mark-
ing the edge of the Jāz-Mūriān marshes. At Gumbat, a mile and a half farther to
the north-west, the track passes a few fields irrigated from shallow wells, and
a small mound surrounded by pottery debris of the same late type. At Chīl
Kunār, too, where we camped on March 26th, such traces of former occupation
were to be seen near an abandoned qanāt.
The following march brought us to Penk, where a few fields are tilled with
water drawn from wells. Beyond them rises a fairly conspicuous mound, 18 feet
high and measuring about 40 yards across its top. Among the usual coarse
red, buff, or greenish plain ware found here were some glazed fragments and
others bearing relief patterns from moulds or flat 'ribbing', indicating occupation,
perhaps prolonged, during the Muhammadan period. We had now definitely
entered an area included in the tract of Rūdbār belonging to Kermān. Though
a succession of sand-storms effaced the view of the higher hill range of the Kōh-i-
Shāh Sawārān, it was possible to discern indications of the slightly increased
drainage it supplies in the ampler growth of jungle vegetation. At the Ziārat
of Zeh-kalūt, where we halted on March 28th, the glittering white walls of a
shrine surrounded by graves with inscribed headstones of marble marked the
approach to a somewhat less destitute region. A similar cemetery covered a low
mound, some 200 yards in diameter, at the Ziārat-i-Mīr Mikdād, which was our