Indian Antiquary Vol 16

SR No.: 032508
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 408
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 367

NOVEMBER, 1887.)
MISCELLANEA.
341
MISCELLANEA.
PROGRESS OF EUROPEAN SCHOLARSHIP. were sometimes paid in brick-tea! It is impossible No. VIII.
to give full credence to the great mass of Chinese
historical literature, because it is so mixed with Transactions of the Eastern Section of the Russian fable and is inconsistent with itself. That the
Imperial Archaological Society, edited by historical life of the Chinese did not begin with Baron V. R. Rosen, Vol. I., Part IV. conclude the epoch, Tsin-shi-khunan-li, and that the Great ing the volume) St. Petersburg, 1887.
Wall, as it is called, was not their first architec.
Wall. as it is called. was (a). Accounts of the Meetings of the Society. tural production is clear; but much destruction has Meetings Nov. 20 (0. S.), 1886, and 19 Dec. (0.8.) gone on among their monuments. Their archæo. 1886.
logical writings are not trustworthy, but we may Baron Tysenhausen informed the meeting that learn something from their coins; and the native eleven numbers of the Indian Antiquary had been books on Chinese Numismatology are as unreceived in exchange for the Transactions of the trustworthy as those on history. The writer then Russian Archæological Society.
proceeds to enumerate some early Chinese O. J. Chakhotin sent from Constantinople 12 money, the article being illustrated with eleven coins, two of which are very interesting, one plates, viz.-1. The coins of the Emperors Fu-si. Byzantino-Arabian and another an Arabian coin 2. Sheu-nun. 3. Khuan-di. 4. Shaokhao. 5. of the 6th century of the pijra.
Chuan-süi. 6. Yao. 7. Shun. 8. Üi and the N. Ostrvoümov sent from Tashkand a song dynasty Sya. 9. the dynasty Choü. 10. the terri. in the language of the Sarts, which will be printed tory (or district) Tsi. 11. the territory Tsüi. in the Transactions.
The information given by Chinese Numisma V. Smirnov gave an account of the excava- tists will only be of value when corroborated by tions he had caused to be made during the pre- discoveries of Chinese coins, which, it is to be ceding summer in the Crimes. Count A. Bobri. hoped, Europeans will make in the country at some uski also gave an account of some excavations he time or other. had conducted in the Orimea in the village of (d). Archæological Excursions in the Crimea Autka, near Yalta, and in Alushta. He also in the Summer of 1886, by V. Smirnov. The noticed some curious graves and human remains; chief objects of the writer's visits was to exasome of the skulls being mikrocephalic.
mine documents in the Tatar language, but he (6). Arabian Accounts of the Defeat of the Em- also made notes on other points, as the country peror Romanus Diogenes, by Alp-Arslan (con
contains so much to arrest the attention. As the tinued). Prof. W. Wright, of Cambridge, com- photographs ordinarily taken are only of objects municated to Baron Rosen a specimen of an likely to interest the general tourist the writer interesting manuscript, recently acquired by the got a photographer, M. Babaev, of Theodosia, to British Museum, but unknown till then. The accompany him into the interior to take those MS. is a small octavo of 112 leaves. The author objects which struck him as worthy attention. Badru'd-Din Aba'1-asan 'Ali, lived at the end He began with the fortress of Sudak, one of the of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth oldest spots in the Crimea, celebrated for its past centuries, and the work was written after 590 A.H. history, under the Venetians, Genoese, and T&tars. (1194 A.D.). The extracts sent by Prof. Wright The gates of the fortress are important, and so is contain several acoounts of expeditions of Alp
the so-called Iron-Tower. It received its name Aralan in Armenia and Georgia, which are not from the iron fasteninge, which the other towers found in Ibn-al-Aşir. The account of the over- have not got. On the right is another tower throw of Diogenes also gives some interesting called Kis-kullosi, i.e. the Tower of the Maidens, details, and it is to be hoped that Dr. Wright said to be so called because women were kept there will soon publish the whole manuscript.
to be sold into slavery. Further to the right is (c). The Oldest Chinese Coins, by S. Georgievski. another tower and behind it are the ruins of a In the earliest times the shell Cypræa, cloth and church with Greek frescoes. The chief curiosity silk, were used as means of exchange. This is of Sudak is the building which is now an Armeshown by the characters which imply these ideas nian-Catholic church. A Latin inscription on entering into many words signifying riches, &c. the altar says: In Christi nomine amen. 1423 dio In dealing with strangers the Chinese used ob- 4 Januari (hoc) opus fecit fieri Domine (sic) R. jects for money which they did not employCatalanus. Christus Custodiat. In 1475 the Turlas among themselves ; thus the Mongol soldiers turned the building into a mosque, but in 1789