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

seen by me far away in Chinese Turkestān in places on the edge of the Takla-
makān, where cultivated ground had in recent times been abandoned to the
desert.

The first inspection of the Tal-i-Iblīs site (Plan 15) made the same day com-
pletely confirmed the impression I had gained from the Surveyor's report and
previous mapping. The mound was found to be situated almost due south of
Ḥaidarābād at a distance of close on 4 miles. It rises above an alluvial plain,
now utterly waterless, covered with light drift sand, which scanty growth of
thorny scrub has gathered and fixed here and there into small rudimentary
cones. In places shallow dry channels mark the course of drainage from rare
rain floods. Quite close to the east of the mound there passes a well-marked
dry river-bed, some 100 yards across, descending from the foot-hills visible to
the south through which the Lālehzār river debouches into the Bardsīr trough.
Over an area surrounding the mound, which subsequent measurement showed
to extend for about 1,100 yards from north to south and for a maximum distance
of some 740 yards west of the old river-bed, fragments of ancient pottery
including painted pieces as well as worked flints and fragments of alabaster
vessels, all marking prehistoric occupation, could be picked up on patches of
ground clear of drift sand.

The mound (Fig. 55) was found to rise to a height of 37 feet from the
present ground-level around. It measures about 110 yards from north to south
and 95 yards across where widest; but it may have been considerably reduced
by prolonged digging for manuring earth. The latest evidence of such digging
was afforded by large holes and cuttings seen on the slopes and particularly at
the south-western foot. Here successive layers of earth containing pottery
debris, rubble and animal bones, interspersed with layers of ashes, could be
clearly made out. Smaller holes on the slopes looked as if dug by seekers for
treasure, and from one of these on the north a large jar was said to have been
extracted a year or so before. As pieces from unpainted large vessels as well
as fragments of bones, apparently human, were found exposed on the northern
slope, that portion of the mound suggested itself for a trial excavation.

To this the officer in charge of the escort, who had kept his eye on us at this
preliminary inspection, agreed after hesitation on condition that the digging
would be limited to a small depth. The keen interest shown by us in the surface
finds seemed to have temporarily removed at least some of the doubts and
suspicions he evidently entertained then and afterwards as to the 'real' purpose
of my tour. But when on the following morning I had started the opening of a
narrow trench at the place just indicated with the few labourers, less than a
dozen, that could be collected at Ḥaidarābād, the work had to be stopped at the