Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 350

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[CHAPTER 1
Fig. 1.
: (i) The earliest information on the subject is contained in the note of Lieutenant Bower, which accompanied his transmission of the manuscript to Colonel Waterhouse, and which is published in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1890, p. 221. It is dated from Simlat, the 30th September 1890, and runs as follows:
"While at Kuchar a man offered to show me a subterranean town, provided I would go there in the middle of the night, as he was frightened of getting into trouble with the Chinese, if it was known that he had taken an European there. I readily agreed, and we started off about midnight. The same man procured me a pucket of old manuscripts written on birch bark. They had been dug out of the foot of one of the curious old erections, of which several are to be found in the Kuchar district. There is also one on the north bank of the river at Kashgar. The one out of which the manuscripts were procured is. just outside the sulterranean city.
*These erections are generally about 50 or 60 feet high, brond in proportion, and resembling somewhat in shape a large cottage loaf, They are solid, and ..... are principally composed of sun-dried bricks, with layers of beams now crumbling away. Judging from the weather-beaten appearance they possess, and taking into consideration the fact that in Turkestan the rain and snowfall is almost nominal, they must be very ancient indeed ......
"The subterranean ruins of Ming or, to which my guide had promised to take me, «re situated about 16 miles from Kuchar on the banks of the Shahyâr river, and are said to be the remains of Afrasiab's. capital. The town must have been of considerable extent, but has been considerably reduced owing to the action of the river. On the cliffs of the left bank high up in mid-air may be seen the remains of the house's still hanging on the face of the cliffs.
"One of the houses I entered was shaped as shown in the sketch (Fig. 1). A-B represents a tunnch, 6 yards by 4 yards, through a tongueshaped hill. C and D are entrances, the hill being almost perpendicular at A and B. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are cells, roughly 6 feet by 6 feet. The walls have been plastered, and what appear to be the remains of geometrical patterns con benade out,
"I was told the remains of other similar towns may be seen in the district. 17 In Yaqub Beg's time a lot of
Sketch through a portion of the Ming-oï of Qumtura. gold was dug up." . . . . . . .
(ii) Nearly two years later, in a letter dated Kasauli, the 17th August 1892, written in response to a request by me for further particulars, Lieutenant Bower wrote as follows:
The story of the finding of the manuscripts is this. A man in Kuchar told me of the existence of an underground city, and said that he had gone there to dig for reasure a few days previously, but had only succeeded in finding what he called a book. I asked him to show it to me; ond he went away, and came back bringing the manuscript as it now is. He was anxious to sell it and
I was very glad to pick up for a small sum what might prove of great value.
" I induced him to take me to the underground city; and as he was frightened that he might get into trouble for taking a stranger there, we marched in the night. When day broke, we found ourselves amongst some low barren hilts, 18 and keeping on, came to the banks of a river, and there the hills were turnelled by the streets of the ancient city. I asked the guide to show me the place he had dug the manuscripts out of and he took me to the large mound-like crection that I have alluded to before (see No. i), to the best of my recollection about 500 yards from the underground city, and showed where a hole had been recently excavated straight in, level with the ground. There some bits of wood lay about, but in a very crumbly state.
17 As a fact, similar Ming-o7, or large groups of rock-cut caves, exist at Qizil, west of Kuchar, higher up the Muzart river; at Qizil Qaghe, north of Kuchar ; and at Buton Turå east of Kuchar; also further rrortt-east, at Subashi and Simsin. See the Sketch Map.
19 According to Sir Aurel Stein (letter of 3rd December 1909) " very low broken conglomerate ridges approach the town from north-West and west."
А.