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

be found deposited within cairns, usually along with some pottery or other
modest belongings of the dead.⁵ Those burial cairns or *dambs*, as they are known
in Makrān, had been traced by me before from Zhōb far away in the north right
down to the coast of the Arabian Sea.

There is no need to discuss here afresh the abundant evidence which proves
that the burial customs attested by these *dambs* were practised during prolonged
periods extending within the Iron Age down to some centuries after our era.
There will be an opportunity presently offered for considering some questions
relating to these customs in connexion with the great site of Damba-kōh. Here
it will suffice to state that the cairns found at Suntsar were all of the simplest
type, consisting of rough circles of stones with a low heap of earth and gravel
in the centre, ordinarily overlaid with a few larger stones. Six of the cairns
were opened within the short time available before our start. All of them
contained small pieces of human bones, in some cases associated with potsherds.
In one cairn there was found a small patera-shaped pottery bowl, Suntsar. 1 (Pls.
III, XXXI), wheel-made, of red body, 6½ inches across at the mouth, with a short
stem and a foot 2¼ inches across. Other finds were part of a wooden comb
(Suntsar. 2; Pl. X), cut into a concave curve from edge to edge, and fragments
of clear white glass.

A march of some 21 miles due west across absolutely waterless ground
was made trying by a violent gale from the south. Short showers of rain
accompanied it without laying the dust raised. By nightfall we reached a
halting-place marked as Warī on the quarter-inch Survey map, No. 31. G, where
water could be obtained from a small stream. Next day, after a couple of miles,
the track passed into an area of much broken and utterly barren hills, and crossed
the undemarcated Persian border. The route thence led west along the foot
of the low Sāmān hill chain until, after about 16 miles, the wide flat plain formed
by the alluvial deposits of the Bāhū river was entered (see Map, Sheet I). The
main portion of the Dashtiārī tract consists of this great expanse of level clay
which extends for more than 45 miles from north to south with a width nowhere
less than 20 miles. The potentially fertile soil supports low scrub in patches.
But cultivation is wholly dependent on the scanty and very erratic rainfall, which
in certain years fails to fill even the embanked pools that generally furnish
the only supply of drinking-water. Hence the present occupation of the tract is
limited to a few hamlets, and even at these it is mostly intermittent.

The difficulties in the way of cultivation have become still more marked over
the eastern portion of the area since the Bāhū river fed by streams from the